A Hard Life

Western Maharashtra was mercilessly pounded by rains last weekend. As I stood gazing outside the window on Sunday morning, poetic thoughts made their way into my mind. I was blissfully unaware of the havoc rains had caused in my city the previous day.

A construction labourer working at the site of an IT park in the city lost his 6-month old baby. Before leaving for work that morning, the labourer and his wife put the baby to sleep in their makeshift room near the site. The baby ended up drowning in the water that flooded the room and by the time the parents returned, it was too late.

Such heart wrenching tragedies of those not living in pucca houses occur year after year. The reports on their plight are invariably relegated to the inside pages of most leading newspapers. Why has society become so comfortably numb to the loss of human lives?

Broken Images- A Review

This is the story of Manjula Sharma- Hindi professor turned author of the bestselling English novel ‘The river has no memories’.  The play begins with Manjula giving an interview to a TV channel prior to the screening of a Hindi telefilm based on her novel. It is only after the interview is over that the real drama unfolds- Manjula suddenly finds herself face to face with her own image on the TV screen. From this point onwards, the play takes an eerie turn, as Manjula’s alter ego takes her into forbidden territory, confronting her with all the ugly truths that Manjula has tried to bury under her new found fame thanks to the success of the novel.

As the skeletons start tumbling out of the closet, Manjula goes from denial to reluctant acceptance to extreme rage and guilt at having ill treated her physically challenged yet more accomplished sister Malini- the real author of the bestselling novel. Manjula’s resentment at having played second fiddle all her life to the pretty, intelligent and vivacious Malini not only when it came to her parents, but also her husband, makes her seem more of a victim than a victimizer.

Manjula’s attempts at masking her feeling of inadequacy and seeking self validation through the fame brought about by the novel come to naught in the hair-raising climax which shows her horror as she is made to realize that by passing off her sister’s novel as her own, she has yet again lost her identity and is nothing more than a fraud.

Written by Girish Karnad and directed by ad guru Alyque Padamsee, this is a play not to be missed. Watch out for Shabana Azmi as she expresses myriad emotions effortlessly, both as Manjula and Malini. This play was first performed in Kannada and Hindi by the prominent theatre personality Arundhati Nag.

Angry Brooding Autodrivers

One of the advantages of not having your own vehicle to travel in after work is frequently encountering the angry brooding auto drivers in this part of the country who have the air of a Mercedes driver. Their characteristic disregard for the meter has the potential to turn into a fit of rage at the slightest provocation.

 A defining quality of this species is their sense of timing- they have a knack of driving within their potential customer’s range of vision at a snail’s pace when the last thing he/she is looking for is an auto! As it turns out, the same auto drivers will not even give their customers as much as a second glance when they are in frantic search of an auto. Many a times, I have found myself in this situation waving at the auto driver in desperation only to be met with a cold glare as he passes by, sometimes shaking his head from side to side emphatically.

The other day a little later in the evening, while I was bracing myself for the arduous task of looking for an auto to go to a friend’s birthday party, I waved at the first auto I spotted. Screeching to a halt, the auto driver gave me that familiar menacing glare. Before I could tell him where I needed to go, he thundered- ‘Time!!!’ – which made me wonder if he wanted to know what time it is and I started looking around perplexed as I wasn’t wearing a watch. Within seconds, he again went- ‘Time!!!!!!!’ with a louder boom this time, followed by some angry utterances in the local language which suggested his intent to overcharge as I was asking to be dropped to my destination at that supposedly late evening hour .  At the end of my tether by then, I decided to let him go and looked for another auto.

On my way back from the birthday party, I dreaded the prospect of again seeking the benevolence of another auto driver to take me home. Having left with no other choice, I set myself up against another ordeal waiting for me. The auto driver this time was an old frail looking man who came up with an ingenious excuse for overcharging- he wanted to replace his meter and needed money to buy a new one! Too tired to argue with him, I got in and counted down the minutes till I reached my house.

This after- hours fleecing and misdemeanor by auto drivers is so commonplace that I am tempted to tip the ones that agree to charge as per the meter without a sound!