The Showboy

Green Room, I wonder why they call it the green room, they should rather call it the ‘Dark room’ or may be the ‘Black room’, everything over there is so dark and blank, you can hear your sweat drop on the floor and as you move towards the curtain you can hear the roars of the people behind it, makes your heart pump harder than ever, and when you step up that stage, the volume is turned down like the television is on the ‘mute’ mode. All you can see and feel is that flash light just in front of you and the silence, you don’t want this silence to remain for long. I don’t know why I do this? Maybe I am addicted to a part of it.

It was 1996 , I was in fourth standard, when I first got the courage to step on that stage as all my friends thought it was exciting, I didn’t wanted to look bad in front of them, I went for the auditions and got rejected, I cried all day, the next day my mom came to school, she said she was there to pay the fees. I knew she had come to request the faculty to keep me, she always wanted that unlike her I should get all the opportunities to be on the stage. I got in. Now whenever she is there at my show, She comes out proud with all her friends telling her “Bahenji aapka beta toh Hero hai Hero” (Sister! Your son should be an actor), and she is all smiles. May be I do it for her, or maybe not.

It was my first year of college and I was enjoying my college fest, and the music stopped! Walking the aisle came a thin boy in a shiny outfit showing off his moves, and trust me at that moment everyone bowed down to him. Later, we became friends and he taught me a lesson, “scholars, writers, toppers etc never get a girl, there is something special about a stage artist.” And he was right. You can hear the most random question from everyone “Are you the guy who did that show that day?” and you reply with a pause and a smirk “YES!” and boom! She is yours. Suddenly your presence is felt, your opinion starts making sense, even when you are not a scholar. People start believing in what u say, people have nothing to do with the medals and the trophies you get but u still become their Hero. The small college politicians start getting friendly with you so that they can stand with you and make a clean image out of it. College becomes easy for you .. but is this why I chose this ??...... May be not!
Years later, I saw a girl sitting disinterested in the rehearsal hall, she was pretty so as always I was flaunting my moves, She still remained unaffected, I went to her as she was my dance partner. I introduced myself and asked “nervous?” as if I was a big star and she replied “I do folk, I am not into bollywood”, I took the opportunity and said “Well I need to know bollywood, as I am going to be an actor soon.” She still wasn’t impressed, and we went on talking about dance, plays, shows, movies for hours and this became a routine every day, every time I performed I tried to impres her, she wasn’t into drama but yes she was a better dancer than me. For the records, I dated that girl, and it was amazing, may be these shows kept us connected. Now I am not with her but I always think that ‘arts’ will be the one common thing between my partner and me. But am I doing it for the ‘Girl of my life”..... I don’t think so.

I recently took up professional theatre as I planned to be an actor and also make some extra money out of my talent as I was too charged up by hearing “bhai tu yahan kya kar raha hai Mumbai ja Mumbai!” (You should go Mumbai to become an actor). As I went there and met the people whom I was to work with, they were businessmen, teachers, a handicap boy, a middle age man who is on the verge of divorce, a call centre executive, and these people were actors better than those that we see on screen, these people are regular people with regular lives, they do accounts, take care of kids, go to work and have a parallel life when they are on that stage. All this reminded me of things which I kept ignoring in this journey. A classmate who was a singer with issues with his father, financial issues, academic issues and every damn issue (you name it, he has it), he used to cry at nights but one thing which could make his life better was that one good Show, the other friend who is still trying to make a mark in the industry, started taking up offers to perform at Wedding parties so that he could collect money for his Folio, the cost of living in Mumbai is high and there is nothing else he is good at. I don’t even know if I would ever see him on screen or may be dancing at a party behind a star as a background dancer.

There I got my answer, people like us are not born with a talent so that we can sell it, we do it because it pleases us, it’s not the money, the fame, the women or any such thing, but the satisfaction that makes us do it, directly or indirectly our whole life is related to that stage. And then I realized “I didn’t pick the Show, the Show picked me!”. Maybe people like me would never win an Oscar, get in movies or television or get a national award for performing arts but I want to take this opportunity to tell a layman, we didn’t opt it for all this, we do it because we love it. So next time you meet a performer, don’t forget to ask his story.