Woh Shaam Kuch Ajeeb Thi…

November 3, 2010 at 9:15 AMNov (Friends, Literature, Media, Musings, Poetry, Slice Of Life, Soliloquy, Theater)

I was excited. Nothing similar, as I knew, had happened before in Manipal Institute of Communication, until then. 8 Oct 2005. Kalaam-E-Jazbaat, a tryst with poetry- we had named it.

To add more to my joy, I asked Govind to be the master of ceremony. He refused. I wasn’t willing to let him go. “Dude I am not dressed properly” etc etc he had reasons on the tip of his tongue, like always. He had more excuses and I wasn’t willing to listen. Finally he came up with the actual reason, as to why he was refusing. “Sam, you know, I am a comedian to the entire college. They laugh at me. Yours is a serious programme. If I come on stage the programme will lose its seriousness. That’s why I don’t want to do this thing man”

He had a point. Yes, he was a material to laugh at, for many. Everyone loved him as much as they laughed at him. The serious side of him always went unnoticed by the mass. Deep within he is a man with immense depth. The very incident gives a glimpse of how seriously his thoughts went about. He could have accepted my invitation and come over the stage to enjoy all the attention he would have got. But he decided not to.

Karthikeya Goswami, Neeraj Agarwal, Pankaj Gupta, Rashmi Ambastha, Rumi Ambastha and myself recited our poems sitting on the stage. Sasi Vadana had taken up the responsibility that I wanted to give to Govind, who was sitting in the last row and enjoying the programme.

I was the last to recite. Once I put a full stop, Sunil Sir asked the people who until then were audience, if they wished to share some poems. There was silence for a while and it was from that silence that a boy walked on the stage. In his usual style-, which unfortunately is not his own-, he started delivering dialogues from some soapy bollywood film, just to make the audience laugh and enjoy the applause that would follow it. What an attention-craving boy he was! People laughed and also clapped. He was good at making people laugh, with his shallow stand-up comedy! The waves of laughter and applause diluted the seriousness, which the programme carried until then.

Govind told me how much he liked the programme, as we, with Sunil sir, sipped tea at press cart. His words were a relief after the disappointing stand-up comedy show, which followed our poetry recitation. That evening I saw golden rays of the sun and darkness dance together hand in hand on the leaves of the trees that stood next to the press cart.

13 May 2008