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.

My Avurudda

My roots keep calling me, above the baby green paddy fields, over the ice-cool waters of the tiny streams that run unquenched in the hot month of April. When things back in Colombo take the shape of devils, I will remind myself the welcoming smile of Achchi who stands on the doorstep, looking at the footpath the whole day, expecting our arrival.

I will dream of disappearing into her embrace and later listen to her bedtime stories whose charms are still very much intact. She will take me around the garden showing me an interesting plant or a creature or gently complain about the bunch of squirrels that ate all the guavas she was saving for me. She would think it’s her duty to make sure my mouth is busy during my stay. ‘kola kenda’ will replace my morning tea. I will eat green vegetables for all three meals and feel the freshness imbibing into my cells.

‘Avurudda’ is the ticket she gets to see us. It is the time she gets into the role of the queen and orders the cow-dung and clay paste to dry on her fresh hearth, the ‘kokis’ to dance in the oil and ‘kevum’ to have perfect hair. It’sthe time she buries herself among the bunch of us grandkids and become one of us.

However much mild she can be,  Achchi is a disciplinarian when it comes to auspicious times. She makes sure that every ‘charithraya’ is performed right on time and all of us are looking at the right directions wearing the clothes of right colour.  She would feed us every sweetmeat,  prepared with a lot of love and care. And at the end of the day, like a kid, she disappears in the mound of gifts the villagers and relatives bring for her.

Even the village is urbanized and the old hype for avurudda had toned down, it is this picture which keeps pulling me from the Colombo buzz and makes me feel like an alien in the very city I was born. It is part of the legacy that was handed down to me by my parents, along with their brains, the DNA, the family names- the love for traditions. Even in the valleys of the river Neil or on the bridge of Sighs in Venice, I remember that one event awaits me so many miles away. When I see her smile lighting up at the sight of my face, I know I have come home.

Coming home empty-handed

I was one among many of the Lankans who wanted to see them landing home with the Cup safely in their hands. Closely observing them for the last couple of months had created a strange bond between us. When my rational side said we were going to lose, my cricket-feverish heart only said this time we were going to bring it back. But, like those of many, my dreams got shattered and like India won, my mind won over the heart.
When the regular cricket fans took it to another one of those defeats which are not unnatural in the game of cricket, the newly christened fans who went World-Cup-crazy took it rather badly. The following morning saw the roads gone vacant and the shops closed in the Colombo suburbs. Had the previous night been ours, the colours and the looks of the roads would have been so much different, and as a nation, we would have had a different story to tell.
As we rediscovered in this World Cup, cricket has become an inseparable part of our lives that even an anti-climax in the grand finale could not stop the people from crowding the roads to give our heroes a good cheer. This again shows us that we are intelligent fans who know better than to pelt stones at their houses or burn effigies in the public condemning the defeat. Perhaps, the only comfort of coming back home empty-handed must have been the fact that, whether you win or lose, people will still salute you and treat you with dignity because, as a nation we believe that you are worthy of being respected.
The couch potatoes and the cricket-fashion- crazy youth who were gathered in front of TVs would have never believed that the time you had to spend out there in the middle was harder than it appears on the screen. And even if you keep chanting the litany of the better team taking the cup away, people will still find it hard to figure out how India was a better team than our team.

It is on this backdrop that you had to say your confessions, at least in a place you call ‘home’ where nobody judges you and everybody loves you even with the mistakes you did in the Saturday’s game. You will also be glad that, the people here at home believe that criticizing you is the job of sports columnists and critics and that they are not umpires to raise their fingers skyward.
Four more years seem like another aeon from where we stand right now. But there’ll be plenty of cricket to fill the gap, and plenty of victories to make the wait worth it. When we gets closer , I will still hero-worship you, as a twenty-seven-year-old who ceased to grow anymore when she was twenty-three.