What's This?

WHAT’S THIS?
(A four act play)

Excerpt: What’s this? (thoughtfully) This is the moment I think I have realized the certainty of an eternal dream. Honestly, it scares me to think of myself, expired in my sleep and rotting in my bed with my head on the pillow for some reaper to call itself the owner of my soul. I have lived alone for longer than I can remember, and this is the first time I am afraid of the end. I was left distraught when Akash told me about Pranav this morning. I have no name for the things my mind has thought of since then.

 

The action takes place in the residence of Dr. Pranav Kothari.

 

ACT-1

 

A garden, with an edgy patchwork of grass and gravel leads up to an old iron gate. Not far from it is a gulmohar tree. It is nearly afternoon on a muggy spring day. Ritika, a petite young woman, with her husband, Hemant, is standing by the silhouette of the fence around the porch of the house, with some plastic bags in her hand. A pathway running through the garden lasts till the porch. There is a wooden dining set away from the shade of the tree. The sun is half hiding behind the terrace to this multistory permanent house on the outskirts of a major metropolitan city. The hue in the sky is slightly pink.

 

Ritika: I felt something drop on my head! (looks around on the patchy grass) Here, it’s a cigarette stub. (looks at the terrace) I see no one on the terrace, even the balcony to the master bedroom seems to be locked. We haven’t even entered the house and I already feel uncomfortable.

Hemant: (looks at the cigarette stub) It sure is strange, Ritika. I have never seen anyone smoking cigarettes in the house. Generally, Akash has the keys to the terrace.

Ritika: (looks worried) If Akash was on the terrace then he must’ve seen us make our way in and dashed at once to receive us.

Hemant: (doubtful) I don’t think he smokes. (pause) And then, we don’t even know who all have come to show their regret. It could’ve been anyone. Surely, Akash doesn’t smoke.

Ritika: (reluctantly sits on the dining set) You have always favored that boy beyond all bounds.

Hemant: I am his elder brother after all.

Rikika: (arrogantly) Hemant, you know exactly how much I loathe it when you think of yourself as Uncle Pranav’s son.

Akash enters.

Ritika: (hurriedly to Hemant) Look how magnificently the garden has been kept. The vines on the old iron gate however do needs trimming.

Hemant hugs Akash and then let’s go of him at once.

Ritika: Somebody nearly burned my hair with a flick of their cigarette. Was it you, Akash?

Akash: (taken aback) Not really, no! (to Hemant) Why didn’t the two of you come right in? Mother had been waiting for quite some time now.

Hemant: We thought it would be better if we breathed in a little bit of the fresh air before we could face any of the sentimentalities behind these things.

Ritika gets up and withdraws the plastic bags from under the dining set and shows them to Akash.

Ritika: I got some khichdi and some tea. (pause) I’ll go inside and look for a place to keep these bags  away from the heat. I am going to aunt Mala.

Ritika pats Akash on the cheek twice in a playful manner and then exits

Akash: (takes a pack of cigarettes in his hands, draws one stick out and taps it on the box) What’s with the stuck up smile on her face?

Lights the cigarette.

Hemant: (takes Akash by the arm and drags him violently to the shade of the gulmohar tree) Since when have you started smoking? I’m shocked!

Akash: (bitterly) Father passed away, god knows when, in the night. Tara, the new housekeeper, found him like that in the morning and woke us up with that scream of hers. We called an ambulance, it took him to the hospital. I filled in the paperwork and left him in the morgue.

Hemant: (freaking out) Where the hell is Ma?

Akash: She hasn’t even woken up properly. (enraged) Father is dead, Hemant! I won’t take any more of your hypocrisy. You heard me? Neither do I want your sympathy, you’ve spilled it on me for longer than I might’ve needed it.

Hemant: (nervously) Aunt Mala needs us here, that is why Ritika and I started first thing in the morning. I will go and see for myself if she is doing alright.

Hemant leaves.

Akash rests himself on the dining set and continues smoking. He looks at the terrace and retracts a tiny notepad and a pencil from his jeans after some visible struggle.

Akash: (alone) Let me see if I have missed out on anything from this list of things father would’ve wanted me to do on the day of his death. I have never in my life, done or even thought of doing half of these things. (gets up and sways on the pathway) I find it all the more intriguing that some of these things I had pictured myself doing in a dreamlike absence of my own imagination. (laughs) How wicked it is, to think of a person dying over and over in more than a thousand ways, but now when it has happened to me, I certainly cannot accept such a loss of life.

A clank of the iron gate. An old man in a white dress enters slowly whilst buttoning his khadi sleeveless jacket.

Akash: (reminiscently) Uncle Batra, You’ve been with our family through both good times and bad. A dear friend of my father’s, look… look at what has happened! Father is dead.

Sanjay Batra, owner of a floral shop across the lane and a lifelong neighbor to Dr. Pranav Kothari strides alongside the gulmohar tree and halts next to Akash.

Sanjay Batra: It is a great tragedy, son. Doctor sahib had a good ten more years ahead of him. It is a shame he had to depart our company at such a young age. Pardon me, my memory fails me… But he must’ve been no less than sixty years old?

Akash: He would’ve turned sixty next year.

Sanjay Batra: (places his hand on Akash’s shoulder) How is Mala?

Akash: I don’t know what to say, Hemant is with her, he arrived just a short while back.

Sanjay Batra: Cigarettes are bad for you. They light up your intestines and your chest cavity like a dim lamp running low on fuel.

Akash flicked the cigarette out of the garden.

Sanjay Batra: (voicing a deep thought) Your mother would’ve insisted on not lighting the stove.

Akash: Yes.

Sanjay Batra: I thought so, although I can’t remember the exact reason behind such a practice for It has been quite some time since I attended one of these.

Akash: (confused) What… a funeral?

Sanjay Batra: (fingers his glasses on his nose) It is not a funeral till the deceased till the deceased arrives on the scene. Now come let’s take a look at what is going on inside the house.

Akash and Sanjay Batra leave.

 

ACT-2

 

The living room in Dr. Pranav’s house. The wall clock is showing half past two. The chirping of the birds can be heard from the garden through a window on the far side of the room. In between is a door leading to the kitchen. Opposite it is a door to a bathroom. Mala, a heavy set woman, is sitting in an arm chair in front of the television in the center. She is watching an environmental documentary. Ritika is sitting on a sofa next to the widow. A spiral staircase extends through the ceiling. Next to it is a bookshelf. The commentary of the television is loud.

Akash and Sanjay Batra enter.

Mala: Sanjay! You have arrived already? Pranav is not here. He must’ve gone for a morning walk. Come sit, he should be coming back any moment now. We’ve been waiting all morning. (pause) They came, you know, the people from the hospital! They came not long after Akash phoned them and… and…

Her voice fades and she resumes to watching the programme as it proceeds. Sanjay Batra seats himself next to Ritika with a faint groan.

Ritika: (anxiously) Aunt Mala and I were discussing why there were so very few people gathered here today.

Mala: (screams) None of his family came at our wedding, why should they bother now!

There is a sound of the flush from the bathroom followed by the opening of the door. Hemant enters. He is wiping his face and his neck with a towel. He sits on the sofa.

Hemant: (to Ritika) Get a cup of tea for Uncle Batra, he is our guest.

Ritika gets up and runs to the kitchen. The sound of unwrapping of plastic bags can be heard and she instantaneously returns with a cup of tea on a tray. Sanjay Batra receives it with graciousness.

Akash: Tell me uncle Batra, if there is anything more I should’ve done for this to be called a proper funeral. Was it a kind aspiration on my father’s part to ask for a funeral without any rituals?

Sanjay Batra: Doctor sahib was a man of science, we all know that. This is a gathering of his close ones in his absence. It is very much like his habit of taking morning walks. The difference is that today he dissolved in the sun like sugar in a cup of black coffee.

Mala (sobs) He had so many of those habits didn’t he? He had to exert them on others too… that is what annoyed me the most about him.

Ritika: (comforts Mala) Do not mourn such a death. There is no use of it. Remember the day of the Diwali feast? We had all gathered here and you kept telling everyone how it would be better for the family if Uncle Pranav had been dead.

( Brief pause)

Akash: (fiercely) It was light hearted humor Ritika! Get over it. It was not meant for you to hear. I am sorry we ruined your first Diwali with the family last year.

Mala raises the remote control, points it at the television and finally lowers the volume.

Mala: (carefully to her guest, Sanjay Batra) Doctor sahib was ruining the meal for me with his awful-awful stories. (aggressively) “The dentist is like the reaper… They have the same soul… They look at patients as if they are nothing but made of skull and bones”. I couldn’t take it anymore! He was making me feel nauseas.

Sanjay Batra: (delighted) Oh yes, the old anecdote of the resemblance between the professions of a dentist and a reaper. Doctor sahib’s grip over fantasy was mind blowing.

Akash: (angrily) Father never cared about anyone. That was the only way in which he resembled a reaper. I am sure if mother had died in his place, he would have drowned himself in alcohol and wouldn’t even have turned around to look at her remains.

Akash storms out of the living room through the staircase onto the terrace.

Ritika: (eerily) What was it, the old anecdote?  The skull of a patient and the embroidery of it’s teeth? Something like that, am I right, Hemant?

Hemant: (confidently) Ah yes, the euphemism!

Mala: (animatedly) “This one had twenty four and that one had thirty one” he would say. I mean how distasteful, huh Sanjay? We were having a family dinner for peace sake, not a bloody archeological conference!

Sanjay Batra sips on his tea. Mala changes the channels on the television rapidly. She finally gives up and shuts the television off. There is a serious silence in the room now.

Hemant: (melancholically) I remember how he encouraged us to dream fearlessly. Life and death are sides of the same coin, uncle Pranav used to say. Oh, how badly I miss him already. (sighs) The house seems so empty without him.

Mala: It seemed empty the day you had left as well.

Ritika: Aunt Mala, I hope you are not blaming Hemant for the tough times that followed after he came to live with me in the city.

Mala: No it is not like that.

Hemant gets up and walks next to the bookshelf.

Hemant: (childishly) Look at this, huh! And the candle stands on it.

Mala: I am going to get rid of it. I don’t need it anymore. It takes up too much space and with your uncle gone, Hemant, I could use the extra money.

Ritika: (gladly) There is no one to stop you now auntie, you can do whatever you feel like doing. You can hum again.

Hemant: … And come live with us.

Mala: No. I wouldn’t like that. I like this house and I will not come live with you Hemant.

Hemant: Okay.

Uncle Batra: (with prudence) Having to let go of a loved one without any ritual is too much in its own asking.

There is an awkward pause and a random exchange of glances.

Sanjay Batra: Mala, you have my condolences but I really should be going now. I have to open the shop too.

Ritika: (persistently) Uncle, stay for lunch please. I will serve it right away for you. (to Hemant) Darling, please ask Uncle Batra to stay a little while longer.

Hemant: Yes uncle, you surely must stay a little while longer. There is enough food for ten more people.

Mala: Good thing you brought it up. I am starving. But Ritika, can we wait for your uncle to come back from his walk?

Hemant (very carefully) Auntie, Uncle Pranav is dead. He died this morning. He is in the morgue.

Mala: (sadly) yes… yes. Can we wait for the housekeeper at least?

Ritika: What’s the use, I will serve lunch today.

Mala: (irritably) Oh what the hell! This wretched housekeeper is never on time. I think I might have to get rid of her too. Yes will let her know when she comes that she is no longer needed here.

Ritika: You could save some more money, auntie! Think about it.

Mala: Yes, I could use all that extra money.

Ritika: You should go on a vacation very soon.

Hemant starts to feel uncomfortable. He marches to the staircase.

Hemant: I am going to get some fresh air. Don’t let me stop you from taking your lunch.

Hemant leaves.

Ritika: (excitedly) Where do you think you will go, auntie?

Ritika goes into the kitchen and returns with two plates of food. She serves it to them and traces her steps back to the threshold of the kitchen, stands against the wall and drinks tea from a cup. She watches them cherish the lunch and smiles at them.

Sanjay Batra: Mala, you should go to Goa. I’ve heard it’s quite hip.

Mala laughs full heartedly.

 

ACT-3

 

Akash is standing on the ledge of the terrace facing the garden, the canopy of the gulmohar tree and the clear spring sky. There is no wind. Hemant enters. He leans against the railing on the terrace.

Hemant: Why are you standing on the edge of the building. Do you want to fall and perhaps wake up with a start thinking all this had been a dream?

Akash: (annoyed) That’s how you remember me, don’t you? “The enigmatic one” or will you side with them and see me as a failure too?

Hemant: (calmly) You need to stop beating yourself up. You have help aunt Mala let go of the denial. (pause) I know life hadn’t been all very good with a person like him around but it wasn’t all bad either. We have to remember the doctor sahib who taught us to be honest and not be scared of thinking about what life is all about.

Akash: (interrupts) A person like him… You think you knew my father?

Hemant: (coldly) and you, you think that you knew him? Nobody knows what anyone looks like.

Akash: (continues) … They just have to wait and see.

Hemant: (surprised) You remembered? I was thinking you were too young to have listened to him saying this.

(pause)

Akash: He changed, you know. After you were gone he became a completely different person. (coughs) why have you come to bother me now? Just, leave me alone will you?

Hemant: You must not have eaten anything since morning. Ritika is serving khichdi. Come downstairs and have something to eat.

Akash: I’m a grown up man. I will eat when I have to eat. Father is dead now, you don’t have to be so pretentious anymore. It is not your duty to look after me.

Hemant: (frustratingly) I never thought of you as a responsibility, Akash. I cared because I felt one with the family. I grew up thinking this was my family too!

Akash: (boldly) If you hadn’t left two years ago, you might’ve given a thought to what “this” was. But you had to leave everything aside and go on living as you pleased. After everything my father has done for you. He put you through school and sent you to college. He treated you like a better son than me and never made you feel like an adopted son.

Hemant: (ironically) It is so easy for you to accept that I was a mean of charity for Uncle Pranav. I can’t believe you see nothing wrong in the way he picked me up and then let me go when I could stand on my own two feet.

Akash: Father allowed you to do as you pleased. You could’ve stayed and helped me get through school.

Hemant: Uncle assured me before I even brought up the idea of me not being here that you were attending regular tuitions and could manage to pass on your own.

Akash: (overcoming with emotion) But it was me, who flunked in twelfth standard and I have to suffer to this day because of it. It was a horrible time for me and nobody seemed to care. Father got inaugurated his clinic, you left for the big city and I was left with an overprotective sociopath who could hardly keep up with her usual self.

Hemant: (aggressively) maybe you enjoyed fooling the two of them a little too much. For all those sleepless nights they had to live through to make our lives better wasted on going around town on the bicycle, wasting the entire length of the days doing nothing at all. You should be ashamed of yourself to have such an opinion about your own mother.

Akash: What about our sleeplessness? With the two of them quarreling with one another for reasons that were more important to them than us.

Hemant: (comforts Akash) It is beyond us to put our finger on the consequences of the actions of others let alone our own. I think there is no need to blame anyone for what happened in the past.

Akash: Let it be, Hemant. I really do not want any sympathy right now. There is simply no room for it. There is only so much anger bundled up like a log of wood waiting to be drenched in kerosene and brought to an end with a fire.

Hemant: (screams) will you step away from the ledge!

Akash: You’re talking about having to deal with consequences and here, there is no mourning on my father’s funeral because my mother had been anticipating his death for over two years.

Hemant: (sarcastically) If you don’t hop on to this side of the railing I’m going to push you off the terrace myself.

Hemant and Akash play a humorous tug of war. Suddenly the iron gate clanks open. Their attention is diverted to a new visitor. The housekeeper, Tara enters. She is a young woman in her early thirties.

Tara: (yells) Is madam in the house?

Mala’s voice is heard with the shrill of her scream from the living room.

Mala: Yes, we are in the living room. Come right in.

Tara smiles at the boys naturally and exits. Akash hops onto the terrace and leans against the railing casually.

(pause)

Hemant: You will have to be here to stop aunt Mala from selling everything that will remind her of uncle Pranav. I know that is the way her defense mechanism will function. The two of you can live with ease on the earnings from the clinic. I will look into it personally that nobody steals her share in the profit from her.

Akash: Come, let’s eat.

Akash and Hemant leave.

 

ACT-4

 

Back in the living room. Next to the kitchen, Tara, the housekeeper, is standing and sobbing. The sun has started to set in the window. It is quiet. Ritika, Mala and Sanjay Batra have gathered around the bookshelf. Hemant and Akash descend from the staircase into the room.

Hemant: Ritika, serve Akash and me some khichdi and some tea.

Ritika turns to the kitchen.

Tara: (exclaims) Let me get it for them.

Tara exits into the kitchen. Hemant and Akash sit on the sofa.

Ritika: (relieved) Thank goodness for your appetite! (pause) Hemant, auntie here, has named a price for the bookshelf which looks to be in a good condition, why don’t we get it for the study?

Hemant: I simply won’t be able to live with it staring at me while I’m working. It will remind me of the various set plastered teeth that had once found their place on it when we were young.

Akash: (prompts) I could get us a buyer.

Hemant: Good thinking. (to Mala) If you really must get rid of it, you should hand it over to a complete stranger. They wouldn’t know of what morbidity comes with it. How are you even standing so close to it Ritika? Can you not smell uncle’s perfume on its wood?

Tara enters with two plates and a bowl. They begin to eat.

Tara: (to Hemant) I had no idea of what had happened. I was surprised to see you back in the house but I hadn’t anticipated the reason behind your visit. I am in shock for doctor sahib’s fate, he could’ve met his creator later on in his life.

Hemant: He wasn’t a creationist, I’m sure. Isn’t it so uncle Batra? I mean, you knew him better than any of us.

Sanjay Batra: I am not a creationist either.

Tara: (confused) It’s your first visit in a year, I suppose.

Ritika: Yes. The last time we were here it was the time of the Diwali feast. I believe this is the worst of all causes for a family gathering…

Sanjay Batra: What’s this? (thoughtfully) This is the moment I think I have realized the certainty of an eternal dream. Honestly, it scares me to think of myself, expired in my sleep and rotting in my bed with my head on the pillow for some reaper to call itself the owner of my soul. I have lived alone for longer than I can remember, and this is the first time I am afraid of the end. I was left distraught when Akash told me about Pranav this morning. I have no name for the things my mind has thought of since then.

Mala: For the past couple of months doctor sahib had been talking about what it would be like if he passed away sparing us to further suffocate in the big black void he would leave behind. (angrily) “Donate my corpse to science”, he said. Bloody hell!

Sanjay Batra: (mockingly) I know it for sure that my children will not return from abroad to show their grief. But, there sure will be a lot of flowers for my funeral. I will have to get rid of the shop after all.

Mala: Why don’t you take Tara in, and keep her in your house as a caretaker? She will surely take note of your death!

Tara: (surprised) I work for you madam!

Mala: Haven’t I told you already, oh it must’ve slipped from my mind. I don’t need a housekeeper anymore. I can manage to maintain the house myself. I am saving money. I quite miss the times your uncle and I spent building our lives in this house with your help throughout our lives. I thank you.

Hemant: Auntie please, there is no need to stress yourself at such a age. Uncle Batra can find another caretaker. Let Tara stay and keep the house as she has for so many years.

Mala: I can look after my own house Hemant! Why live a boring lifestyle when I can go on a holiday to… What was it Sanjay?

Sanjay Batra: Goa.

Mala: (continues) Why spend the money on a servant then?

Akash: Mother, Hemant tells me he will look after the accounts of the clinic, it must surely give us enough to keep living as we did with father around. I’m sure it will be possible.

Mala: The clinic never really picked up. It consumes more resources then it repays. It is settled then, Sanjay? You will take Tara as a caretaker.

Sanjay Batra: If it is your final word Mala, I agree to the proposition. (to Tara) Dear, you will take a note of it if I pass away in my sleep sometime in the future?

Tara: Yes ofcourse, uncle.

Sanjay Batra: That is all I want from my caretaker. Also, just so you know I am the proud owner of a floral shop down the lane. Your dear uncle Pranav used to buy flowers from me to keep in his office. He did that for a little over twenty years I think. You will clean the house, cook and then come with me to the shop at noon to help me look after business.

Mala: (cheerfully) Sanjay could teach you the skill set that goes into basic gardening. You would like to learn something like that, won’t you? It will be good for you spiritually. The life of a housekeeper doesn’t suit you if you ask me, there is no space for spirituality if you’re stuck moping the floor every single day.

Tara: (innocently) I have to keep my family fed, madam.

Sanjay Batra: I will pay you the appropriate sum, dear. There is no second questioning it.

There is deep silence in the room and an exchange of glances. Mala rests herself on the sofa with a deep sigh.

Mala: I have waited all my life to live a quiet life. I think I would like to be left alone now.

Akash: If it will bother you mother, that I live in this house scavenging off of your savings then you can tell me now. I will find something to take me away from here, possibly live the life of a hermit. Uncle Batra says he fears the sort of end father had to meet with.

Hemant: But it is simply the end that has no end.

Mala: I will perish too, Akash. We can all gather here for that when it happens till then you will live here and stop whining about the things you can and couldn’t do. It is what I despise about a character.

Sanjay Batra: Akash, what everyone is trying to tell you is that you have to learn to feel just the way a bird learns to fly. It isn’t all that difficult.

Akash: (viciously) Do you want me to drop you back to your shop uncle Batra, you must be losing your customers.

Tara: I will walk with him to the shop if I am no longer required here.

Mala: Yes that would be best. There are some questions I need to answer from the point of view of someone who has a responsibility towards something that is not quite mine but also a half that had filled my existence. That has been the way of my connubial journey.

Hemant: Come Ritika, let’s see uncle Batra to the gate. We’ll sit with Akash in the verandah for sometime before we leave.

Ritika: (to Mala) Rest now auntie and soon peace will come.

 

THE END