The mask

The green room is full of chaos. A bed sheet hanging in one corner acts like a curtain that divides it into two - a dressing room for female actors and a makeup room. Male actors change into their costumes in the open. Rajiv Goswami who is playing an important part in the play is also the makeup man. He is powdering Madhuri’s face and neck with a puff. Her already fair face is shining.

“Wow, looks like today this humble powder will shine like a star”, flirts Rajiv.

Madhuri slaps his thigh, “Come on Rajiv, don’t fool around. Make it quick. I need to revise my lines one last time.”

Supriya comes from the bathroom. She has just washed her face for the second time. It’s hot today.  The big old ceiling fan moves fairly speedily, but that’s not enough. Two table fans have been put to assist it. One is focused on Rajiv and Madhuri, and the other is moving left and right like someone watching a game of tennis.

Supriya picks up her costume, a simple cotton sari, moves behind the bed sheet and announces, “I am going to change. No one should come this side.”

She plays a poor peasant woman unlike Madhuri who is playing the landlord’s beautiful wife.

As she drapes a tattered sari around her, she thinks about Madhuri. “She has a plum role today and she will look beautiful.”

But that doesn’t perturb Supriya. She has ample scope to perform. She has overshadowed Madhuri with her acting in the past too, in plays they have acted together.

Shiva is mouthing his dialogues loudly. That is his regimen before any play he is a part of. Sanjeev who is quietly revising his lines in a corner looks tense. He often gets nightmares before a play that he has forgotten his lines on stage and the audience is heckling him.

He requests Shiva, “Shiva please, slowly. Otherwise I will end up saying your lines instead of mine.”

Rajiv leans closer to Madhuri’s face and paints her lips. She pouts a little. She feels a little awkward doing so, but Rajiv is focused on his work. He is a real artist. An all-rounder. He also makes publicity posters for the plays of their club ‘The Mask’.  It’s a very close knit group. Most of the members have been to each other’s homes. They share deep familiarity and easy camaraderie among themselves.

The only person Rajiv doesn’t like in the club is Shiva. He is considered as the assistant director of their drama club. He does think that Shiva is a talented actor, but he is no director. And with Ranjan Uncle, who is the driving force behind the plays they stage, even he can be a better assistant director. Shiva can be insensitive when he is engrossed. Other members have felt hurt by the way he chides them on their acting. He would surely be more sensitive than him in handling others. But Ranjan Uncle is fond of Shiva, and that is his pain point. Why him?

Ranjan Uncle has been single all his life. He is married to theatre, art, culture, music, cinema, and so on. He likes to read, think, reflect and write plays. He always needed a lot of time for his passions. That’s why he hated it when he joined the Indian Railways in Calcutta. The travel to office and back consumed all his time and didn’t leave him any mental space to dive into his passions. He always missed his childhood home in the outskirts of Durgapur. So, when there was an opportunity to go to an unknown little town in Bihar, he jumped at it. Friends tried to dissuade him from doing so. They warned him that it would be backward and monotonous, with no appreciation for any art. At least in Calcutta he enjoyed watching cinema and plays. But he had made up his mind. He often felt miserable in the city. He felt lonely in a crowd, sad amid laughter and lost while going back to his hostel room. He had to get away.

Samastipur turned out to be a quaint little town. He took an instant liking to the place. It had big railway colonies with people from different parts of India. He made many good friends. He was allotted a big quarter, which became a regular hangout for them. It had a big veranda with a guava tree and a lemon tree. It had enough space around it for gardening. Such space would have been a luxury in Calcutta. It had fresh air, fresh vegetables, fresh milk and everything fresh. It felt like a fresh new beginning.

There was a team that used to take part in Railways’ inter division drama competitions. The members were all from local railway offices. Ranjan Uncle slowly took charge of it and started winning those competitions. He also formed the drama club ‘The Mask’ consisting his friends from the railways. The Mask started taking part in drama competitions and festivals across India. Guwahati, Calcutta, Delhi, Pune… He would scout the families of his friends for casting and select youngster for different parts in the play. He would mentor them and turn them into seasoned actors. They surprised everybody with their finesse and quality of productions. He became famous in local offices. He used to translate plays from Bengali to Hindi, write his own plays and turn stories into short plays. He earned respect for his talent. People greeted him and chatted with him when he walked to his office or the market. They were very polite and courteous.

Ranjan Uncle liked Shiva’s enthusiasm. They always discussed their next project, considered new stories, new plays and new techniques. He would always watch plays when he visited big cities and discuss them passionately with him later. He is always after him to start something new. The fact that Shiva is also single is another thing that’s common between them.

Like every time, Ranjan Uncle is busy in the wings, overlooking everything, instructing people. Today, is a very important day for him. He has worked very hard for this play. It’s his magnum opus. He has his audio player with all the background music arranged in sequence with the flow of the script. Andy is ready with a huge switchboard that controls all the different lighting on the stage: spotlights, dim lights, flickering light, etc. The switches are numbered and they are matched to the various scenes on a piece of paper. He simply has to press the numbers with the scenes mentioned there.

Ranjan Uncle’s nephew Vikas who’s always with him, observing things, goes to the stage and peeps out from a hole in the curtain. The auditorium is full. People are chatting, laughing and waiting for the play to start. Everyone at the club lovingly calls him junior director. He is a quiet and inquisitive boy. Ranjan Uncle always shares his thoughts and plays with him. He mostly incorporates his inputs in his plays. Though everyone has been encouraging him to act, Vikas is too shy for it. From the hole in the curtain, he can also see Dadi Maa. She is Vivek uncle’s mother.

Vivek uncle is Ranjan uncle’s close friend. Though he is not too interested, Ranjan uncle has made him act a few times. And he has always been a flamboyant actor. He has often walked away with the scene.
Vikas remembers an incident with Vivek uncle and his mother ‘Dadi Maa’ that makes him smile.

Dadi Maa had come to watch a play for the first time. She was seated in the front rows. Vivek uncle was playing a critical part in the crime drama. In the course of the story his character was murdered and his body hidden in a cupboard. In one scene, when the cupboard is opened, he had to fall flat on his face like a corpse. He had practiced falling straight on a soft mattress. So, when he fell that day, it seemed eerily real. Dadi ma let out a loud cry and started howling. The play came to a standstill for some time. It’s only when people explained that it was just great acting that she calmed down and the play resumed.  

The siren goes off for the third time and the auditorium goes dark. The hum of the audience dies as the curtain opens. After a brief prologue narrated by Ranjan Uncle, the play begins. Characters come and go off the stage, playing their parts.

In the wings, there is always a prompter to help the actors say their lines without missing anything. Rajiv has finished his part. He has done rather well. He is watching the climax with Shiva at the centre of it. As he is free, Ranjan Uncle asks him to take over from the tired prompter. Shiva often forgets his lines and a good prompter is critical to make the climax flawless. Rajiv is reluctant, but he can’t say no to Ranjan Uncle. He takes the written script and continues prompting. But his mind is not on it. It starts planning something exciting.
“Is this my big chance to burst the Shiva bubble?”, he thinks. “Yes it is. Now”

Suddenly, as the climax reaches an interesting phase, he falls flat on the floor. Shiva notices him falling down and freezes. He forgets his dialogue. He tries to improvise with his own lines. It doesn’t look too natural. The stress shows.

Ranjan Uncle is aghast. Two boys run to Rajiv for help. Someone else is rushed to quickly grab the script and start prompting. He looks for it all over. But the damage has been done. Shiva is blabbering. Audience can feel that something wrong is going on.

Anyway, the climax, ordeal for Ranjan Uncle, comes to an end. Overall, the audience is impressed by the show. They have loved Rajiv’s part immensely.

Ranjan Uncle immediately goes to check on Rajiv, “What happened? Are you alright?”
Rajiv’s soul freezes when he sees Ranjan Uncle’s disappointed face. He is overtaken by a deep sense of guilt and regret.
“I am OK. Don’t know what happened there”, he says.  
Ranjan Uncle is really concerned, “See a doctor.”  
“Hmm…”
Suddenly it strikes him - Rajiv is avoiding his eyes. But he has already spotted the guilt in his eyes. Ranjan Uncle realises what just happened during the climax. Rajiv also knows that Ranjan Uncle knows.

Despite everything, as he walks away, Ranjan Uncle smiles. “I always believed in his acting prowess. Today was his best yet.”

This event was 20 years ago. Rajiv has not been able to see him in the eyes since then.