And Then One Day: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

intensity of the lighting, but then I felt the boards under my feet, and I took a breath. In the dazzling blackness, dim shapes of heads gradually began to identify themselves. They looked expectant, receptive, not hostile and judgemental, as in life. And every one of them seemed to be looking at me. I had one of the first lines. After, for a few brief seconds, almost submitting to the most intense fear I’ve ever known, I finally spoke and got it out loud and clear and not garbled and not nasal at all, and they laughed. They had listened and they had responded! And I discovered that no one in the cosmos is more desirous of loving you, for that moment, than an audience is.
    I have sometimes tried to explain the sheer alchemy of this moment to indifferent journalists waiting for the ‘apt line’, or to other actors not so diffident as I was, people who’ve had no problem being listened to or responded to, and I guess it’s not that they can’t understand, but that I can’t explain it any better. It was the defining moment of my life and made me feel I was of some worth after all. Acceptance and appreciation were things I was not familiar with. And vain though it may sound, it is absolutely true that never again while stepping on to the stage have I ever felt the slightest anxiety. All I have felt is impatience. I can’t wait to be up there. And being up there, for the most part I have known only joy, even when subjected to hostile audiences. Because it’s not you they are responding to but what you are providing. A ‘bad’ audience can be turned into a ‘good’ one by a good performance and vice versa. I have always wondered if it isn’t something of an aberration to want people to respond to you and yet to not want it. Anyway, that is also why meeting the audience after a performance is not my favourite activity. The audience often mixes you up with the part you’ve just played.
    The arrival of the December vacation in school was heralded by icy winds and the appearance of our trunks in the quadrangle. These had lain since March, when we’d all arrived, in the box room, a huge mysterious room below the study hall, which was kept locked through the year. The day of departure was a day of celebration. ‘No more Hindi, no more French, no more sitting on the hard old bench!’ Till next March, that is. Then the bus ride down to Kathgodam, the nearest railway station, catch the train to Bareli (then spelt ‘Bareilly’ like ‘Cawnpore’), change at Bareli for Delhi. An overnight journey, and finally chugging in over the Jamuna bridge past the ramparts of the Old Fort and into Old Delhi station and parental embraces, followed by warm toast and tea in a pot in the station refreshment room. And then the final leg of the journey to Ajmer, arriving there normally in the dead of night; and the tonga ride home, perched precariously on our trunks all the while. The horse would invariably crap on the way (an ability I’ve always envied, to be able to do that while running full pelt) and the smell of horse dung is inextricably woven in my mind with the feeling of coming home. I love the smell, and it is definitely responsible for my love of horses.
    There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Ajmer during the hols. The Sunday morning English matinee was allowed us but other outings were uncommon, and with Baba being the kind of person he was, so was socializing. We visited and were visited by maybe one family, the Capoors, Mrs Capoor being the most beautiful vision of a woman I have ever seen in my life, but even them we saw only on festivals or weddings or suchlike. Spotting Mrs Capoor taking a walk while we were cycling past would make our respective day. Playing cricket was our only pastime, and our most, and only, prized possessions were a bat, a ball and a set of stumps. None of us ever became terribly proficient at the game despite playing it every day in every vacation. There was, however, always one thing to look forward