Dramatics...losing in style

By the time one reaches XIIth standard in Sainik School, one has already gone through most of the experiences that life in SSG can possibly offer, barring the experience of leaving this life during the final farewell; pampered with a regimental dinner, a school memento and some in-house events. I felt the same, only to be proved wrong in a grand way.

Any SSGian would vow for it, how loyal each cadet was to his respective houses. Inter house competitions were especially charged with conflicting loyalties: of loyalty towards one’s house and towards one’s batch.

Inter house dramatics was one such event, which aroused loyalties and the desire to win into unthinkable fervor. Senior master, Mr. V.N. Pandey along side Mrs. K. Sharma were discussing some issue with frowned foreheads as they lay in wait for the principal outside the noisy auditorium. It was the third day of inter house dramatics, and only the four senior houses were allowed to participate. An itchy moustache pasted under my nose, made me sneeze, as I lay holding the over head projector, for the name casting.

Flashback: Finally I made it to XIIth standard after scraping through the XIth exams. Roll numbers mean a lot in SSG. Mine was 3295 and there was Nurul with 3294. Slightly taller and slightly fairer, we shared almost everything else by virtue of being neighbours vis-à-vis roll numbers…3294 & 3295. Examination sitting plans was one such ‘shared’ fields. (Will narrate a story about it at a different time.) So Nurul and me, we both were in Lohit house and when we reached class XIIth, we decided to win the dramatics trophy- the apt way of winding up our last year in school.

We started in the right earnest. Occupying the last benches in the wooden galleries, we started writing our own play, The Vengeance. After painstaking months of writing, and shorter tea breaks, we came up with the story.

The Story: A person is convicted wrongly and is been killed by the King. The dead man’s sister vows to take revenge and manages to marry the King. In the climax, the queen (the sister) appears wearing a mask and brandishing a sword to kill the king. A minister to the king confronts and captures the queen after a sword fight without knowing her identity. The king takes off the mask, and a grand conspiracy is unearthed. Fabulous! Ha!
(Note: The question still haunts me as well as Nurul, as to why our English teachers never introduced us to Shakespeare’s plays and other Classics.)

The principal finally arrived, and the noise died down. I announced the title ‘The Vengenace’ in an artificial, husky voice and started the name casting on the screen of the stage. The play was turning out to be a grand success. Nurul was the king, Aroonabh was the queen (may I mention it here, that Arronabh as any other SSGian had cropped hair, and we managed to find a wig for him) and I was the minister. There were several other characters, but I’d refrain from naming all.

The play speedily progressed and the sword fight with the queen was perfectly choreographed with ‘techy’ moves and dodging. Now it was the King’s turn to take the mask off. The auditorium wore pin drop silence – the perfect climax!
As Nurul tried started pulling off the mask, Aroonabh whispered, (da wig khuli poribo)‘my wig might come off’. So on one side, I saw the audience waiting with anxiety, for the climax to get over, and on the other I had my own share of anxiety. I poked Nurul with my sword indistinctly, urging him to be careful. I perhaps prayed too, but I don’t remember now.

Another minute of climax and Nurul flung the wig and with it went rolling, the black mass of wig too! I looked at Aroonabh (the queen) with horror. And then my gaze went to a soldier (Dupthup, a junior student from Bhutan) and somehow he stared back at me questioningly, What next? I smiled and then laughed riotously, Dupthup laughed, Nurul laughed, the queen laughed and the audience laughed too.

Results: Lachit house somehow managed to stage a worse performance and Lohit (my house) stood third out of the four competitors. I still, and I am sure, so does Nurul believe, that had the wig not come off, that would have been ‘The Play’ in the history of Sainik School Goalpara. Nonetheless, it was the most embarrassing moment in SSG and now my fondest memory.