Until the sky falls down on me…

‘Heck, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late! She’s going to kill me!’

‘Your fault really! Spent all your time writing when you could’ve easily gotten ready and left on time!’

‘Damn Shakespeare! Never going to write on him again! Oooh, I’m so horribly late!’

‘You might be late Anubhav Pradhan, but if you don’t do as I say, I will definitely kill you…’

‘Unhn? Oh! Er, right…is it…as in…’

‘Please…’

‘This is weird…weirdest thing ever…’

‘Just do it!’

‘Oh, alright!’

‘Ahha…’

I’ll be your dream, I’ll be your wish, I’ll be your fantasy…

‘I’m not going to come for the farewell.’

I looked up from my disembowelled breastbone. ‘Why?’

‘I’m not. There’s nothing left to come back to. What’ll I do there?’

‘Well, I’m sure people will miss your presence…I mean, what would the English Department farewell be without you, the star attraction, the Queen?’

‘Hai na? Ha-ha!’ and a beaming smile lit her face.

‘Aur kya! Arre, I’m sure they’ll give you that Ms. Farewell thing or something- if they do continue it that is…’

‘Hunha! No, but seriously, I don’t think I’ll come…’

‘But why?’

‘I told you na! There’s nothing left…I mean, what do you remember on your Farewell, hunh?’

‘Um, I don’t know really…this’ll be my first-and hopefully last-college Farewell so I really have no idea…’

‘Arre, I mean, you know…’

‘Yeah, okay, so what was I remembering on my school Farewell…I don’t quite remember remembering anything particular…’

‘Anubhav, see, what I mean is that you remember all the good days, all your friends, the time you spent with them…but I, I have lost all my friends…’

‘Have you?’

‘Yeah, I have…’

‘Doesn’t seem like it…what about, say, J- ?’

‘Well yes, I have her, but, you know, when you think of friends you think of those you had in the beginning…I’ve lost all of them…’

‘Hmm…perhaps…but not all! You have, well, you still have KP for instance!’

‘Haha! Yeah, I have him…but he’d talk with a corpse as well.’

‘Okay…but…’

‘No, I really mean it when I say it! Look at S! We were such good friends! She used to say I’m her best friend! And now…’

‘Er, and now?’

‘Well, now, she thinks I bitch about her! Me, of all people, bitch about her! It’s so unfair!’

‘Um, you don’t?’

‘Of course I don’t! I mean, I’ve said things about my not liking her going into politics but then I’ve never ever bitched about her!’

‘Well, but still, you do have B!’

‘Oh, B, yes, but she and I came close later…in second year that is.’

‘Second or not, she’s still a friend!’

‘Yeah, she is, but with her I don’t have the sort of petty quarrels I have with S…she’s more like…’

‘What you’d call mature?’

‘Yeah! She is! But C…’

‘What about her?’

‘Well, she’s dumb in a way. You know, doesn’t know when and where to say what. She just starts blabbering with anybody without realising the consequences!’

‘Ah yes, a common human flaw…I too know one who suffers from this…’

‘Hai na? I mean, one day she’ll bitterly complain about you to other people and then come back the next day having happily forgotten yesterday!’

‘Very irresponsible…yet, I can’t help pointing out that not all is lost- you still have R!’

‘Oh yes, of course, C! He’s such a darling! He was even ready to marry me!’

‘Oh, I’m sure lots of people are…’

‘Haan, haan…’

‘M, I’m sure, wouldn’t mind at all…’

‘Hunh! He’s so hypocritical! He sends private messages to people on Facebook but publicly he behaves as if nothing’s happened!’

‘Good heavens! You can’t expect the poor boy to be moping around! People like him don’t readily betray their emotions in public!’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever! At least H says whatever he has to directly! The kind of things he says and jokes about…brr! He just doesn’t know where to draw the line! You know what he messaged me the other day? Something like I’m imagining you in the dark…my Amazonian!’

‘Uhm, well, you know, his sense of humour is a bit out of the ordinary, but still, I feel he just does it to tease people.’

‘Bloody tease! You know what people call him? They say he’s a thirki!’

‘Well, I’ll be dashed! That’s just not right!’

‘Haan, haan, tum toh ussi ki side loge! In sab ki side loge mere siwa!’

‘Nahi bhai, aisi koi baat nahi hai!’

‘Aur kya? Uss A ke mamle mein bhi tumne meri side nahi li!’

‘Well, uski koi khas galti toh mujhe samajh…’

‘Fucking ...! Hunh! I know him inside out! I know he knows he’s at fault! With others I can still reconcile, but with him…with him there’s just too much negativism, too much bitterness now…it’s over with him.’

Over. The walk was over too. Too soon. Never realised it was so near. So near…so far. So very far. Going, going, farther off. There’s something about empty corridors and deserted lawns which chills you to the bone, inspires that sense of transition, opens your eyes to the illusion of permanence. There she was, popular, desired, yet walking down an empty road into a friendless hostel: hurt, her old ties broken, alone…

How lucky is it to not be alone! We come, we wait, we go, alone, but to have one on the way, that is to not be alone…

I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love, be everything that you need…

‘So, this guy isn’t that sort; you know, the sort who would do gyming and exercise and sweat out…’

‘He’s sort of non-violent?’

‘Yeah, you can say that, but…yeah, you can…so, anyway, he’s not a violence person; but he’s still the sort who has lots of interaction with women, who interacts with women a lot…’

‘A ladies man?’

‘Yes, you can say that…you can, but…so, anyway, so after that other guy, who’s the beating sort, after he punches this guy and this guy gets up and says ‘below average moron’ and then this other guy is about to punch this guy again when the other guy, the my boy, comes and pulls this guy on the ground and saves this guy from that guy and they all get into that guy’s car and there’s that guy’s girl, who’s actually not that guy’s girl but my boy’s girl but that guy’s just thinking this girl to be my girl in that typical chauvinist way, she’s also in the car, and all three, this guy and my boy and my girl, they all drive away.’

‘Ah…how very interesting…so, what is it called?’

‘In the Land of Women.’

Women. Where is that woman when she’s really needed? Why can’t she be around? If only she could be, if only…

I’ll love you more with every breath truly, madly, deeply do…

‘No, we are not going on the roof!’

‘Chalo na!’

‘Listen, I’m not at all in the mood to walk across this parapet onto the blasted roof! No! Just sit here quietly!’

‘Chalo na please!’

‘Argh! How difficult is it to understand! I want peace; I’m not in the mood for adventure, certainly not for breaking my neck!’

‘Accha theek hai. Sorry. Mein disturb kar rahi hoon. Ab mein chup rahungi.’

‘Good! Hamesha chapar-chapar karne ki zaroorat nahi hoti hai! Shant rehna bhi sheekho!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Oh well! Theek hai, sorry! Bol bhai, bol! Jo bolna hai bol!’

‘Chat pe kab chalenge phir?’

Phir kab chalenge? Kabhi nahi shayad. Jaane hi toh waale hain, jayenge kahan? Aur jaake toh bilkul nahi jaa payenge…chat pe, sabse upar; alag, akele, ek saath…

‘There’s something clawing my insides. I can’t bear the thought of you sad…I love you and I’m…I’m here darling…Always, with you…’

I wanna stand with you on a mountain,
I wanna bathe with you on the sea,
I wanna lay like this forever…
Until the sky falls down on me.

Before Shakespeare: The forgotten playwrights of Elizabethan England

Think of Elizabethan England and immediately Shakespeare comes to the mind. Nay, think as much as of English Literature and Shakespeare looms large, an interminable specter of bardic grandiloquence. To the lay man Shakespeare is synonymous with English Literature, with all its ancient and sublime grandeur, with that very essence of Englishness which makes it a class apart, in a niche well above the others. Five centuries after his death Shakespeare continues to inspire and provoke alike, all in a manner which is typically him, typically Shakespeare. The Bard lives on…

To the perdition, however, of others. For with all our emphasis on Shakespeare we forget to take into account his contemporaries, more so his predecessors who laid the foundations of Elizabethan theatre and made it possible for a genius like him to make all the world his stage. The general impression, even amongst Literature students, seems to be of a bearded Shakespeare standing aloft a high pedestal with a fallen Marlowe on one side, a foxy Jonson on the other and a philosophic Bacon somewhere in the controversial background. This is all that is commonly taken as the range and expanse of Elizabethan theatre so that probing the average DU Literature student for more would yield disappointing results.

Students are not to blame in this though. The syllabus is constructed in such a fashion as to reinforce this overwhelming centrality of Shakespeare. At the undergraduate level the English Renaissance is only a part of a much larger structure covering some two hundred years of English Literature from Chaucer onwards. It is meant essentially to impart generals, to give learners a very broad idea of the evolution of the English tongue and the socio-political circumstances which made Elizabethan theatre possible. One hears vaguely, for instance, of Gorboduc, of the ingenious Burbage, of the Master of Revels and Court diktats but that is all: everything else remains shrouded in that characteristic bogginess which so typifies general attitude to Shakespeare- a beacon of brilliance out of impenetrable darkness…

Current classroom pedagogy only reinforces this misconception. It is forced, of course, to follow constrains dictated by exigencies of syllabus and examinations but then, perhaps by way of habit, it also naturalises these into general truths. The impression which comes across thus further entrenches Shakespeare as the only Elizabethan dramatist of count.

One may argue that at this level students are supposed to engage with texts on their own, to explore conscientiously the various strands of background handed unto them by professors. Indeed, one may do so, for the pivotal aspect of higher education is self-study- but then while arguing so one must also take into consideration the lamentable infrastructure available to students in this University. Libraries are mostly tailor made to aid tutoring and address concerns issuing out of prescribed texts; the bigger ones usually broaden their range without including exhaustive matter on this so-called background. The Ramjas College Library, for instance, has a shelf and a half of Shakespeare and related criticism but only three books dealing with his contemporaries. Of these, only one has entire full length plays, and those too of mostly his Jacobean successors- the other two are histories of drama wherein are dedicated compact chapters to the early pioneers of Elizabethan theatre. Faced with this inadequacy, one cannot but be disappointed.

Of course, one may expect this disappointment to be ameliorated at the postgraduate level but alas, by all indications there seems only further disappointment in store. Once again, the syllabus is structured to assert Shakespeare’s centrality: a compulsory paper covers four of his plays while Jonson, Middleton and the like are clubbed together under the broad rubric of an optional course. After imparting generals and introducing students to the genres at the undergraduate level, the University of Delhi persists in delaying specialisation by extending the same logic to post-graduation as well.

This is in no way to deny Shakespeare’s significance: no, instead it is to call for change, for a reworking of the syllabus which would holistically take in account the tradition which leads up to-and in some ways culminates with-Shakespeare. That there are no holy cows is by now well established: we need therefore, not as much as to de-sanctify Shakespeare as to move beyond that stage, to broaden our outlook-and thus to change the processes by which it’s generated-by bringing greater flexibility and choice in the way Elizabethan drama-and by extension Literature in English-is taught and thought of. And even though we need not necessarily go the way Poona University has and make Shakespeare optional, we need to acknowledge that our current zeal for Shakespeare makes us gloss over those who made him possible.

It’s a classic case of marginalisation within the mainstream, by the mainstream, of the mainstream. We need to go beyond and look back. To make available infrastructure and provide options. To see what came before.

Before Shakespeare.

The Way of the World

What is happening to the world! I mean, like heck! What the hell is wrong with things?

Okay, calm down! You want to know what went wrong, right? Like heck you do! Bless me poor soul, like heck I do too! Things fall apart, that’s what it has been!

It all started with M. M who for long had nursed passion for C. He’d told her some time back, yes, but basically it started with him. There we were, G and I, waiting for him by the ramp: at peace with the world, innocently denouncing some hapless teacher. Suddenly the discussion turned to him. To M. To his lamentable case. His fall. The very remarkable nature of this self-same fall. Of other falls. Of my fall. G’s fall. His shady past as he put it. ‘I can’t believe what I said! I’m like ashamed to even own up!’ Yes, quite shady; G talking about it to me of all people- shady indeed! Do all of us have some shades of grey to our past, some mushy cupids in our ivory cupboards?

It seems we do.

For what else am I to believe after old B’s tale? B who of all humanity I thought incapable of such concealment! It was she who bore it, so perfectly hidden from all eyes as to not exist at all! She, so open and trusty, her life such an open book, she put it deep down, so deep as to almost be out of reach for her own self! Such passion, such suffering, all disguised behind that varnished façade of easy familiarity! The more I listened, the more I thought; the more I thought, the more I pitied. I could sympathise with her, yes, but more- I could understand her pain, feel it through that old severed bond. A sad tale, yes, but with hope…

Alas no! I thought I was done for the day, done with the quota of shocks, surprises and falls. Not so, not so!

I came back home and got talking to M. We discussed C; he told me all about it- how, when, where, all of it. Then, talking of falls, he told me of P.

Good heavens! Even P! P, that sturdy, stoic rock of sense and solitude! That lofty personage, so aloof from the base passions of life, so a man on his own, an institution unto himself! P too had fallen, and long too had it been since the fall- long days, long weeks, long months, a long year perhaps…P fell, but not alone. As last man standing he took with him a whole system, an entire way of life: of affection, of camaraderie, of friendship.

Indeed, of friendship. For B apart, we four formed that old-fashioned type of gentlemanly friendship- all good chums, each for the other a fine chap. We lived on discussions, talks and debates, an exclusive life of ideas, ideals and ideologies. We talked of the world; the glories of civilisation, the follies of man, art and culture and all that is noble and high and true!

No more. The group lies broken, the loyalties dissolved. To each his secret heart, the call of love, the cry of desire. What of the world now? The world looses its charms when all your world gets condensed in a single person…

Does it always have to be this way though? Is there no escape? I used to think Sherlock Holmes the epitome of pure reason; pure objectivity untrammelled by the subjective fallacies of common humanity. Aloof, above, beyond- the unflinching rational man of world. But even he had a blind spot. There was always ‘the woman’, Irene Adler of ‘dubious and questionable memory’- she whose one photo he treasured above all gifts and rewards; she whose memory, perhaps, inspired so many of those mournful violin originals. Yes, there was a chink even in his armour, a fault line beneath even his own surface...

Yet, imagine…what if a person could really be out of the structure? Agreed, not as Bohemian as Holmes, not as misanthropic as Timon: somebody gentle, genial and wise, somewhat like the good Doctor without the wife. Someone above the lures of love and its manifold traps, in that calm, undisturbed serenity of perfect harmony. Not ascetic mind you! No, rather someone in and yet out of the system. Understanding love but unaffected by it: a heart not closed but open, so wide open as to remove all possibility of love. Affectionate, yet not desirous; caring, yet not covetous…

Not unless you’re god. Perfection.

And that we humans cannot be. It’s the only consistently human trait we’ve got, perfecting imperfection, loving desire, want, need…it’s a good thing perhaps. Certainly has been very nice for me! We cannot stop loving; even hatred stems from love. Love is universal.

And that is the way of the world.

Death of Theatre

It has been in the air for some time now. A decade or so at the least. Theatre, widely acknowledged by its own dwindling proponents as a dying art, is on its last legs.

It can be traced back to the 1950s when television and cinema came in a big way all over the world. As their appeal intensified over the years and more and more televisions and movie halls found their way into homes and communities, the importance of theatre steadily declined to the point that today it is no longer significant in our social life.

Indeed, for all its functions have been successfully taken over by these two mediums. Where earlier theatre served as an accessible medium of mass entertainment, diffusing societal tensions and propagating ideologies as it made people laugh and cry, now television and cinema act as carriers of culture and propaganda.

Of course, it was television much more than cinema which really struck the fatal blow to theatre. It stripped it of the mass popularity which it once enjoyed before its advent, and by thus usurping its vital role as the propagator of popular culture it pushed it further onto the margins of the entertainment industry. Television was cheap, widely accessible and convenient, providing all that drama right in your living room without the hassles of going to the playhouse. No wonder general interest in theatre declined as the reach of television increased.

No wonder too that an increasing amount of plays produced from the 1950s onwards were shown on T.V. For all their dedication to the institution the producers could not resist tapping the immense potential of this wide-reaching medium. Yet, even as it opened avenues it narrowed them down so that while the producers made greater profits the people got another incentive to stay at home glued to the box. A move meant to bring theatre back to the masses ultimately succeeded in furthering it from them.

Deprived of its primeval foundation, its watching audience, all theatre today is, to a great extent, redundant. What purpose remains to a communal art which fails to attract people to it? One can read plays, yes, but that essence of communality so integral to any dramatic performance is lost in any easy-chair appraisal. To feel theatre, to be moved fully by its power, to even strip that illusionary power, one must see the action unfold before one’s eyes. The binary is quite simple: no audience, no theatre.

Though it was not just this pervasive disinterest which brought theatre to such a pass. The death of theatre has also been precipitated by the death of its two distinctive genres, tragedy and comedy.

It was Modernism which took its toll on the genres. Before the reductive, unifying pressures of a modernity which laughed at all things great and grand and which sought to locate the source of life, its very greatness, in the routine life of normal, everyday subjects these primary distinctions had to fail and fall into each other. It became imperative to recognise comedy in tragedy and tragedy in comedy and so came about the genre of tragicomedy, an in-between form which best reflected the absurd realities and tensions of everyday life. What came about was the Theatre of the Absurd.

Which, as can be guessed, was not spectacularly popular with the masses. Critically acclaimed as the movement was, it was typically urban and drew only a small section of that population towards it. The middle and working classes remained more or less isolated from it, caring as little for it as the movement cared for them and their tastes. Once initiated, this process of alienation of the art form from the masses only picked up speed and though in the late 1960s and early 1970s Agit-prop and the Theatre of the Oppressed brought it momentarily close to the people the old days of regular, popular theatre were over.

Indeed, for what has emerged is basically a queer, eclectic residue of the Absurdist and Agit-prop, a brand of theatre which adapts, modifies and re-enacts. Theatre today is more or less black, satirical tragicomedy, reflecting a bleak worldview running short of hope and despairing of change. Most new plays are adaptations of established classics, attuned to (post) modern sensibilities by changes in language and costumes. Some of these are comic, ridiculing the older tragic works through mock-heroic imitations. Others, loaded with sarcasm and generally cynical, are openly political and critique society through juxtaposition of an essentialised past and present- a tried and tested dramatic trope wherein a figure from the past miraculously appears in the present and laments about existing social evils. Others still present tormented subjects trying to bring change but failing in face of the overwhelming social superstructure.

Be that as it may, it is these types of productions which have further contributed to theatre’s alienation from the general public. Whether justifiably or not, theatre is widely perceived to be an elitist institution, the refuge of be-cigeratted khadi and jhola clad (pseudo?) intellectuals: subversive malcontents who wish things to change but have nowhere else to go and no one else to listen. It has gone back into a niche, an exclusivity reminiscent of the isolation which Restoration Drama enjoyed, though, of course, the seclusion here is much in the manner of an irrevocable exile than a voluntary migration. Consequently, it has again become a predominantly urban middle-class art so that only those connected with theatre through familial ties or attracted by extraordinary curiosity find their way into playhouses.

The abiding irony of this situation is, therefore, that while on one hand theatre screams to be listened it gets only the converted as an audience. Talking about poverty, safe sex, unemployment, caste, communal and regional politics, female foeticide, corruption, dowry and so on to a section which deliberately maintains a distance from governance, is educated enough to generally have nothing to do with these social evils and does, on and off, try through civil institutions to bring change is ultimately redundant. When theatre should actually be diversifying and reaching out to the masses our self-appointed messiahs remain stuck in the comfortable campuses of the Universities and the NSD, so much so that even street plays-nukkar natak-are usually organised in air-conditioned halls in posh localities.

Consequently, theatre has become an easy and convenient way for naturalising the society’s dramatically-inclined malcontents, for by giving them an exclusive space for expression the State on one hand effects a sort of cumulative catharsis and on the other furthers their marginalisation. Indeed, as far as the State is concerned, nothing can be more beneficial than this sort of hermetic containment which ostensibly encourages the form but in the long run only works towards its ultimate doom. As it becomes more and more a part of a system whose ideologies it takes pains to oppose, theatre will only loose its importance and become gradually redundant.

It has already started. We’ve come to the last act; the curtains are about to draw- we near an end.

The end.

The end of theatre.

Flying Over

Since ancient times, roads have been central to the growth of civilisation. The ancient Romans were the first to realise the great opportunity of growth and development that roads offered and as a result, the Empire was criss-crossed by numerous highways that even today stand as a testimony to Roman Engineering.

The modern world too depends excessively on roads, which provide vital links from ports to inland cities, from commercial hot spots to residential complexes, from isolated hamlets to bustling cities. Roads are indispensable and their growth inevitable.

In cities, thousands commute to and fro from their homes to offices. In big, cosmopolitan cities of the world, despite the presence of alternative means of transport (like the Tube in London, Subway in New York and the Metro Rail In Delhi), a major chunk of the population still relies on roads for its day to day movement and with more and more cars getting on the roads, the volume of traffic on roads worldwide has reached mammoth proportions. In India too the situation is far from rosy and Indian cities are inarguably host to some of the worst traffic jams in the world.

Predictably, the state governments were for a long time oblivious to the worsening situation on our roads. When they finally woke up, they gave way to a bigger folly of constructing flyovers.
It’s amazing to see how myopic Indian authorities become when it comes to long-term planning and making flyovers id just yet another classic example of this costly short sightedness.

Flyovers undoubtedly increase the net available road area; when you can’t widen a road, you can atleast build yet another one over it. So for the time being, everybody celebrates when a flyover is constructed over congested roads.

However, in doing so, our authorities as well as our people are ignoring some very serious implications.

Firstly, flyovers are constructed at a fantastic cost to the exchequer. Their construction is usually delayed and with material thrown helter-skelter, construction sites more often resemble devastated war zones. Moreover, prolonged delays in construction aggravate the traffic situation.
Secondly, by increasing the net available road area, what flyovers really do is to just make way for more and more private cars to ply on roads. What would we do when the number of cars increases the available road area (as it has during the past decade)? Build flyovers over the existing flyovers?

Thirdly, despite the best attempts to introduce Bharat II systems in cars, vehicular pollution is bound to increase if there are more cars on the roads.

The real solution to our present traffic problems then lies not in increasing road space, but in upgrading our public transport system. This is not just about making Metro rails all over the country, but also about completely reviving our buses so that instead of just the lower middle classes, even the upper middle class begins to consider buses as a feasible means of transportation.

To ensure this, the first and the utmost priority must be to establish Bus Driver’s Training Academies all over the country so that all drivers can be taught basic traffic laws and common ‘driving’ sense, something which most of them lack today. This will not only benefit the drivers, but also the common man who might then be assured of a safe journey in buses. Secondly, Transport Corporations (like the D.T.C.) must go in for an image makeover and transform themselves from mundane loss making bodies to energetic, profit making corporations. Thirdly, the existing fleet of rackety-rickety buses must be scrapped and new, disable and senior citizen friendly buses must be introduced in a time bound framework.

It is more than obvious that the current rate at which flyovers are springing up all over urban India would lead to more congestion in not too distant future. The media, which is only too quick to pounce on the minutest of errors that the government might make, has surprisingly been bamboozled into believing that flyovers actually do good for our roads. The sooner we realise that this is not so, the sooner we stop flying over the real solution, the better will it be.