My mom, prima donna

Watching Chandalika last week at the India International Centre happened completely by accident.

Watching Chandalika last week at the India International Centre happened completely by accident. A friend and I actually went to watch another performance that was too pretentious for our liking and so we walked out. It struck me that a Tagore festival was on at the IIC and, on reaching there, we enjoyed the performance a great deal. It was very nostalgic, took me back to the times when my mother and I would both participate in these dance-dramas when I was growing up in Bombay.

It also brought back another memory: my mother8217;s performance in Chitrangada. That summer, for Tagore8217;s birthday celebrations, the Bengali association we were affiliated to had decided to stage the grand musical, and my mother came home and excitedly told us that she landed a key role. The next month we hardly saw her, she was rehearsing all evening and would come back at dinner time and huff and puff about how tiring it was, but still, how wonderful. 8220;I have to get the timing right,8221; she would say to nobody, and my father and I were long tired of these conversations.

On the day of the performance, we found ourselves seated up front. The musical began, voices soared in unison and although I don8217;t remember much of the storyline, I do recall looking for my mother onstage and not finding her. Song after song, scene after scene, my father and I craned our necks although we didn8217;t need to but Mum was nowhere. We8217;re at a scene change now, Chitrangada is praying and dry ice and blue lighting fill the stage. She kneels with her whole body down to the ground as the prayer music fills the auditorium. As the lights dim, Chitrangada gets up and a shorter, rounder woman dressed in the same finery, kneels down and takes her place as the actor rushes into the wings. My father gasped beside me, 8220;That8217;s your mother!8221; I looked carefully, it was a figure I would recognise anywhere. The song goes on for three minutes till the real now in different costume Chitrangada returns and Mum 8220;dissapparates8221;. After the performance, Papa and I met her in the greenroom where she smiled defiantly, daring us to say anything. 8220;You certainly got the timing right,8221; said Papa while I snorted, unable to contain myself. My mother looked grim and then burst into laughter and we joined her.