Backstage glory

When my long-ignored, soul-mate bookshelf demanded a good dusting, instead of completing the task I ended up sitting on the floor with Shakespeare’s ‘ As You Like It’ reading Jacques’ famous monologue, ‘All the world is a stage.’
 Every time I read it, the speech leaves a new set of questions with me that I keep asking from my inner-self.
If the Bard were alive, I would have told him that in a world devoid of honesty, people become actors by choice not by nature. And the world is so politicized that limelight has become another essentiality like food, clothing and housing. People do act perhaps roles that are too big for themselves in order to gain mileage and goodwill of the others. In this process devils become angels and the angels prefer to go backstage.
Those who live in the limelight do not know the comforts of being in backstage. The work done by those who are behind the curtains always go unappreciated. Yet, the fact that their hard work is not commended does not make them put down their guard. It is just that life for them does not happen under the floodlights.
When talking about famous monuments that held the whole world in owe, we only tend to remember the king or the emperor who extended his state patronage for the construction. The slaves who died in the sites of the Giza pyramid and the masons who worked their hearts out to make the Taj Mahal the symbol of eternal love were not even mentioned by name in the annals of the building. People keep commenting about Shah Jahan’s timeless love and nobody remembers to comment on the architectural miracles performed by Ustad Ahmad Lahauri.

We read inspiring books and go book-hunting to read the other books written by the same author. Never for a moment we recall that the book must have gone through the scrutiny of a good editor. Such is the universe of humans that those who seek limelight get it with the support of those who do a heavy work behind the curtains. Perhaps, they are not made to be onstage or they go offstage by choice. But sadly, those who become actors forget who did their props, wrote their lines and did their make-up.
Those who work backstage perform for themselves while those who perform on stage do not know to whom they are performing.