Many of us would remember our school days with a tinge of
nostalgia. The days, when we, as school boys were carefree and life
was great fun. Well, some of the days were not really that
good. The bad days in school would be when we were asked to complete
homework by the next day on a topic which we knew nothing or little about; we
had to read the entire chapter or lesson in detail to undertake the homework;
or when we were asked to stand up on the bench for apparently speaking to the
boy seated next to you, while the fault was entirely of the other boy. The
other boy who actually spoke to you first would get away, while you would get
caught while whispering back to him on his query or laughing at some joke the boy
had cracked. If you argued with your Teacher that the entire fault
was with the boy sitting next to you, the Teacher would increase the quantum of
punishment and the other boy would become your sworn enemy for betraying him
and giving him away. Well, the life of a young boy in school had its
own pitfalls.
There were other times, when as a school boy, I wondered, why were we
asked to memorise a complete poem and recite it in front of the class. When
the poem was clearly printed in the text book, what was the need to memorise
and recite the same poem, once again. If one made mistakes in
reciting the poem, the whole class laughed. When it was the other
students’ turn to recite a poem and they committed some mistakes, we laughed
louder to make them understand what the ‘shame’ part of it meant.
In the mind of a young school boy, ‘grown-ups’ were almost always a
source of envy, because they did not have to attend school; they only had some
office job to attend, where they paid you handsomely in return. You
could buy any number of ice creams or chocolate treats with the money earned
and no one would dare question an adult on his choice of purchases. As a school
boy, I always felt that the boys were at a disadvantage, compared to the
‘grown-ups’, who had everything going for them. Of course, now as a
‘grown-up’, I feel differently; life as a school boy was the best of times, in
one’s life.
I am reminded of an incident when I was in 4th or 5th standard;
the class Teacher had asked us to enact a drama for the ‘School Day’
function. One of the boys in our group took the initiative. He
knew the story of Emperor Akbar by heart and he had suggested that, we stage
the drama of Emperor Akbar. The boy who had taken the lead, wanted
to play the main role of Emperor Akbar. Most of the other boys in
our group had no objection to this, as none of us had any experience in staging
a drama. Moreover, the boy who was to play the lead actor was taller
and well-built, compared to the other puny little boys in the group. One
fine day, we all arranged to meet at the home of the lead actor. The
home of this lead actor, had an open porch in the front of his house. This
place was quite convenient to stage our drama rehearsals. I had,
albeit, reluctantly agreed that my role would be that of guard who would stand
in front of Emperor Akbar’s throne. My role had very few sentences
to recite; hailing the Emperor, whenever he appears on the stage and announcing
the name of the visitor to the assembly. I had to loudly announce at
the top of my voice, ‘Hail the Lord and Master, Emperor Akbar’ or something to
that effect. My role was to always remain as the main guard and
attendant of Emperor Akbar. I was told that my role is important as
I would appear in every scene, whenever Emperor Akbar took centre stage. I
felt pleased when I was told this. My role did not need much
rehearsals, which was a good thing. I did not have the patience to
read through the drama scripts or dialogues and mug them up, word by word, at
rehearsals. We had prepared dialogues sheet,
actor-wise, by writing down the dialogues on a page in the school note
book. Each actor had to memorise his part of the dialogues from the pages torn out from the school note book.
The rehearsals for the drama went on for almost a month. We
would diligently meet every week end, at the lead actor’s house and stage some
part of the drama rehearsal. I don’t remember we ever enacted the
entire drama in one stretch. The rehearsals were always in bits and
parts. After enacting a few scenes, we would soon get bored with the
drama rehearsals and sneak out to play, Cricket. We were more
interested in playing Cricket rather than enacting the drama rehearsals. All
the boys in the group were of the outdoor type and excelled in physical sports
rather than displaying dramatics skills at school functions. We, however,
assiduously practiced the drama rehearsals, though we were not sure how the
drama would be received by the audience.
We were asked by the school Principal to stage a dress rehearsal with
the basic props required for the stage, including dresses to be worn by the
characters. We had arranged to rent out some dresses for the
characters in the drama. A decorated chair was arranged for the
throne and I remember that I had taken out some flower pots from my home to be
kept before Emperor Akbar’s throne. There were more number of drama
entries to be staged from participants of other classes too. The
school Principal, had agreed to watch the dress rehearsals of all the dramas, before giving his approval of the final play/drama selected to be enacted on the function day.
On the day of the dress rehearsal, we were all called on to the stage to
display our dramatics talents. We staged the play of Emperor
Akbar in the presence of school Principal, although during the play, some parts
and bits were totally forgotten by the drama actors. There were some
awkward silences and few slip ups. We were all told to speak in a
loud voice as there was no microphones on the dress rehearsal day. I
clearly remember that I had shouted at the top of my voice, hailing the Lord and
Master Emperor Akbar; my voice had boomed through the empty hall.
We, the actors of the future, were all waiting with bated breath for the
Principal’s final approval, which was to be announced the next day on the
school notice board. When we did not see the name of our drama on
the notice board, we were all crestfallen. All our
efforts in enacting the great drama of Emperor Akbar had gone down the
drain. We did not have the resourcefulness to meet the Principal
again to put forth a request for reconsideration of his decision. After
seeing the plays of other classes staged as part of dress rehearsal, we knew in
the heart of our hearts that, our play simply, did not measure up. We
were disappointed that the careers of all the budding actors of our drama had
come to a premature end. Hail the Lord and Master Emperor Akbar!
👍
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