Which is the real world

The sheer joy of performance and of seeing the ideas in your head being staged live is second to none.

I stand in the wings, watching Yasna as she speaks her dialogue, “Kitna waqt? Kab karega shaadi?”. The angst and conviction in her voice sends a momentary chill down my spine.
In another scene, when she gets late to the factory, and I suggest to her to say something impromptu to explain her late arrival, the next moment I get tense thinking that this new dialogue might take the Seth by surprise, and he might fumble. As she walks from the right wing to the down left portion, my heartbeat is racing, and eventually normalizes when I listen with immense satisfaction to a on-the-spot dialogue improvised by him in response to the one by Yaasna.
When Abhishek retorts, “Kya karegi phool ka”, and the audience catch the catch in it, their minds in synchronization with mine while writing it, it’s almost like a successful telepathic communion.

My friend Milli asks me in the evening if I have returned to the real world. It is then that the question occurs to my mind which is the real world.

I realise that whenever and whatever we do, we are always distracted. There are so many hidden implications in the words we say. Many of the things we say are superfluous without any real meaning in it. Sometimes we eat, watch TV and talk to a friend altogether at one time, and actually doing none of it. We send emotional SMS thanking our friends for being there for us and stuff, but that too forwarded SMS ‘Sent to group’. Most of the times, we wear fake smiles on our faces, and keep typing ‘hahaha’, ‘lolzzz’ ‘J’ in the chat box, talking about all sorts of haywire things and beating round the bush, even when there are personal things wanting to be shared. We ourselves don't often care if the other person is actually alright.

“How are you?”                                                                   

“I am good. and you?”

“Yeah, I am also good.”

“So what’s up?”

“Nothing yaar, the same boring office and stuff. You tell.”

“Apna bhi yaar bas aisa hi hai.”

“Aur how is your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, she is fine. Teri bani koi?”

“Apni kahan aisi qismat yaar?”

“Aur bata, how is everyone at home? Uncle-aunty theek hain?”

“Yeah, everyone is good.”

“Aur bata.”

We announce our love to our lover so many times in a day, half because we know they would like it, and half because it becomes a habit. But how many times does it actually surge right from the heart?

On the contrary, I remember that day how tears started falling from my eyes and my voice quavered when Heathcliff is missing his dead lover Katherine. How I went into a sad and silent mode for the next few hours after the performance, with the remnants of its shade and the love for Katherine still beating inside my heart! When you are on the stage, you can’t do anything else; you can’t think anything else; you are on the stage in your body, mind and spirit; whatever you say, you have to mean it, you have to have conviction in it, if you want it to come out excellent. There is no other way.

It was very difficult to focus in this case with the people constantly hooting and clapping. These people don’t see the difference between theatre and a fashion parade. They  don't want to let you be subtle, they want over-the-top dialogues which you speak out suddenly shouting, comic dialogues preferably with double meanings or a long emotional monologue in which you cry and fall to your knees, and they would clap, hoot, laugh, counter-comment. Still, you could act well in such places, and have the audience continuously cheering you, but it’s very difficult to stop acting and being in the act.

But yes, there happened to be some moments of stillness, when the world disappeared. The audience disappeared. Vijeta and Yaasna disappeared. In that magical world filled with smoke all around us and a green rose in my hand, the ogre looks at Phulwa. Her face is sullen and anxious. My heart storms with empathy and love for her. At this moment, I wish to fill her life with joys and get her everything she wants. In my reverie, it doesn’t occur to me that I had to give her the rose first. The gates of memory are closed - there is no way to remember or forget. My love and my instinct guide me. Nothing could go wrong. I announce to her my love - a sweet proposal without any expectations.

"Bahut muhabbat karta hun tumse. Tumhein paana chahta hun, aur khud ko tumhein dena chahta hun."

Then I see the rose, and give it to her. Looking back at it now, should this not actually have been the right order of things? She accepts my proposal.

And so, I wonder talking to Milli which world is more real?