Love, lights and a wise act

In deference to the principle ‘once bitten, twice shy’, I had maintained a healthy, clinical distance from my co-actors designated to play my spouse’s role. It mattered little if the play concerned was one-act or full-length. The operative principle remained unchanged, time and emotional tide notwithstanding.

Cut to the time I was “bitten”. I was assigned the role of the second-string hero in a locality play that made waves in Kolkata theatres in its time. A lady from my locality was chosen to perform the role of my better half. Our stage presence in the course of the full-length play was to be characterised by intense romance in the beginning, separation in the middle and reunification in the denouement.

The problem, however, arose off-stage in the shape of her husband. A dermatologist, he happened to attend the second and third rehearsals. It did not require x-ray vision to fathom the depth of his possessiveness for his wife. A frown on his face as his wife performed her part with aplomb, showering my character with endearments, was enough to set the internal cats, caged in his mind, among the fluttering pigeons, in mine, so to speak.

I decided, after torturous cogitation, to sacrifice all hand-holding expected from my character in favour of remote-control romance on D-day, which, incidentally, doubled as a May Day. Off-stage peace was, decidedly, on a higher pedestal than on-stage romance.

My decision to be discreet may, perhaps, have been semi-prompted by his profession and its associated “tools”.  The thought of my skin ending up as a laboratory specimen, to be pointed out by him to interns on clinical rounds, was an effective deterrent for me to change tack when the play was actually staged. Accordingly, I decided to throw innocuous flying kisses her way instead of taking a “hugging and bugging” route. The sterile overtures of romance worked wonders. The frowns, playing hide and seek on his forehead for starters, dissipated seamlessly. However, at one point, she got so into the skin of her character that she reached out to me almost spontaneously. I became so carried away by the mood of the moment that I almost reciprocated. Till, at the nick of time, my eyes fell on the face of her husband seated in the first row of the audience. Not daggers but an assortment of scalpels was in his eyes. I felt a strange rumble, epicentred in the stomach, which sent messages to my heart with a copy to the brain to behave. I obeyed instantly.

I did draw my lessons from that experience, essaying, on the rebound, the protagonist’s role with co-actresses with sage-like detachment. Years later, I went a step further, opting for insulated roles of widowers, servants and, more recently, the off-stage prompter.  Needless to add, with the transition to such “innocuous” roles and through the efflux of time, the spectre of the frowning offstage husband, armed with looks that could kill, is now finally out of the way.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.