Memorabilia

The drama was rehearsed at the terrace of our school building located beside a lush green rice-field. This was for two reasons.

One- We didn’t have a room to conduct rehearsals at our small higher secondary school building .

Two-There was no staircase to the terrace. So anybody who wanted to see the rehearsal had to climb on the slippery wall, then take the next step to the roof of the toilet ,then third step to sunshade of the main building and finally need to roll over to the terrace. For that reason the presence of others were limited and helped us not to lose the suspense of the drama.

We worked hard for our first time ever stage show, rehearsed for long hours(Ofcourse we started off all for the sole purpose of bunking the classes ;-)).We got nobody for that single female character as none of the 6 queens who were our classmates were not interested. That was how we sat down to edit out some part of the script.

Finally we landed up on the stage for the school day. None of us had a background in any kind of stage programs. Everybody looked each other as if they had just landed up on an unknown planet.

Nobody remembers the dialogues!! what next??

This was something which was plainly unfair for the audience. The show had gone for a toss!!.

But soon I realized that there was no shortage of real talent in our team. We proceeded to try and sort out the complicated set of circumstances, we managed to place ourselves in.

Everybody started-off with their own self-made dialogues. After a few hiccups my team eventually got adjusted with… but we never knew how to stop the drama…it went on and on. The battle was far from lost, but one can imagine what happened to the pulsating play written by revolutionary Malayalam author N.N.Pillai. We made a plan during the interval to start the car and park it very close to the stage.

“why?”

“Boss, do you really think that the audience would be quiet all the time by seeing all this!! as soon as the drama finishes off or before somebody from the audience puts hands on us, we need to save our little @s#* out of this place.”

At the end of the play, to our surprise ,the audience including teachers, friends and parents gathered around us to commend on our performance. They said, they never felt like ,we had unusually stuck up somewhere. Thanks to the terrace, that nobody knew what the real drama was all about. Rather than the why and wherefores, it is still mystic that who can author a drama better ?N.N.Pillai or our drama team?? But at the end of the day we were sure about one thing... if the author came to know about our performance(of his drama) he wouldn’t have thought twice to kill himself…after murdering us.

As the bottom line I should say about my teenage friends that, it was not bad they struggled (that too without being endorsed by any teachers) and the way they have behaved in difficult moments that we lived on the stage. ..N’ when I look back now .........................
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Ya - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life...
Ain't no use in complainin'
When you got a job to do
......I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life
Back in the summer of '69...
Man we were killin' time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind…
I guess nothin' can last forever - forever, no...
...And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six string
I think about ya'n wonder what went wrong
......I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life…..