When Tragedy Turned Itself Into Comedy

Today I am going to share with you all another personal experience of my life, although this one probably won't be even half as colourful as the previous one which I had described. But still, my stupid intellect is somehow telling me that this would be an experience worth sharing. Even though what I am going to share now was highly embarrassing when it actually happened, but still this incident occupies a very special place in my heart. This may partly be due to the common childhood nostalgia which is attached with it.

Every year a cultural program of some sort is organized by the residents of the locality where we stay. We all eagerly look forward to the event, since it gives multi-talented people like us to showcase the various deeds (and misdeeds) that we are capable of. But on a serious note, the annual cultural program is really a very joyous occasion for all of us. It brings together the residents of our "para" and makes us all feel like a single happy joint family. That is something which rarely happens during other times of the year, except probably during the four days of Durga Puja.

Anyway, let's cut the introduction short and try to get on with the actual story. The year I am talking about is 2003. We had a notorious group of friends in the true sense of the term (ask those poor residents who had to change their broken window panes every time we played cricket!) Anyway, somehow somebody in our group managed to put forward a brilliant idea that we should make our presence felt in the cultural program as well. But merely proposing an idea wasn't enough, we had to reach a consensus on something we could perform. After much deliberation and heated arguments, we finally managed to zero in on something worthwhile. A consensus was reached, and we eventually decided to perform "Julius Caesar". Well, of course, there were several reasons which influenced the choice we made. First of all, he was one of the few global historical characters whom we admired a lot, and secondly, the play was once a part of our English syllabus, so we were kind of familiar with the lines.

The choice of the play had been made, now came the dreaded prospect of assigning particular roles to different individuals. We were well aware of the kind of quarrelsome nature each one of us had, and so we silently prayed that the assignment of roles would not create any furore among those who were deprived of bagging the more meatier roles. But luckily for all of us, our apprehensions did not materialize and everything was settled in an amicable manner. It was decided amongst us that a boy named Rajesh (names have been changed on request) was going to be Brutus and a very tall boy named Neel would play the role of Julius Caesar. But it was a pity that the role of Caesar was actually the shortest of all roles, since Caesar had nothing much to do apart from lying on the desk and pretending to be dead. And as for me, I actually had the guts to consider myself the best elocutionist of the lot, and so I donned the role of Mark Antony-cum-director. Being the director was something which I regretted later, and the reasons why I did so would become clear very soon.

Our rehearsals went on in a fairly smooth manner, except for a few hiccups here and there. Being the director, sometimes I could not resist the usual directorial urge of shouting at people when they were careless enough to forget the lines. I have lost count of how many times I had to shout out loud. But believe me, I wasn't acting as the usual grumpy director when I did so. Any sane human being would have gone mad at the antics which were displayed on the stage. I just failed to understand how one could pretend to be dead with one leg sticking up in the air!! But things like these were exactly what I had to witness. But anyway, we practiced and rehearsed diligently till we were sure that we were going to display the most heart-wrenching tragedy ever acted out on stage. But little did we know about the truly wonderful surprise which was waiting to greet us!

On the day of the program, we found out that we were slated to be the last performers on stage. Honestly speaking, that was a prospect which we truly relished, since that would give us the golden opportunity to snigger at the other performances before we could act out our masterpiece! Aha, how could we ever let such a golden chance slip away? Pure devils in disguise, weren't we? We roared out in laughter when the performances began. Oh my God! Did they call that acting or what? Then, finally, the opportune moment came for us to stage our own performance.

We all waited in the wings as Rajesh entered the stage dressed up as Brutus. He staged an otherwise perfect entry apart from tripping over the electric wire and falling flat on his face. The audience was busy laughing out loud and I truly cursed them from the bottom of my heart. Was it so very unnatural for someone to trip over a wire? What a dumb audience, for God's sake! In the meantime, Brutus was back to his senses, and we all rejoiced at that fact. Now would be the grand beginning of a true masterpiece, wow!! But the next thing that Brutus did was to face the audience with a facial expression that could best be linked with the expression of an agitated goat. He managed to croak out just a few inaudible words before we came and dragged him off the stage. Then it was time for me to make my grand entry, and I was more than determined to undo the effects of the mess created before me. But alas! Having only determination is sometimes not enough in life. Destiny always has a crucial role to play, whether we like it or not.

After my entry on to the stage, I carried off my speech pretty well and that started increasing my confidence. But the increase in confidence resulted in severe over-confidence which brought about my glorious downfall. I began jerking my head in such a carefree and confident manner that my wig fell off! The audience had again started to burst into peels of laughter. What a perfectly dumb audience! What was there to laugh? What was so humorous about somebody's wig coming off? Oh God, people and their atrocious sense of humour! In the meantime, I had picked up my wig and had immediately put it back again. The next two or three minutes went on well without any more memorable mishaps. But little did we know that we had saved our best for the last. Before we could realize anything, our "dead" Julius Caesar let out a grand fart, complete with all kinds of sensory effects! The next thing we all did was to run away from the place as fast as we could. I don't think there was any other option left in front of us.

But nevertheless we managed to receive cheerful applause for our performance. One guy came to congratulate me and said he had never laughed so hard in his life. It was actually good for him that I let him go with just one black eye! I was heart-broken and livid at the same time. My first directorial venture had gone up in flames right before my eyes. And believe it or not, our act was eventually labelled as the "best comedy". Has anyone ever heard of "Julius Caesar" getting the distinction of being called the best comedy??? Well, that can only be achieved by great individuals like us, and we are proud of that!! I am sure that Mr Shakespeare himself would have been proud of our achievement. He must have been laughing in glee! A heart-rending tragedy had been transformed into a comedy of errors!!!