Anis was my admirer and critic. From school to St. Xavier’s to Calcutta University, we had read together. Though he was a good actor and director, poetry was his forte. He’d written plenty of poetry. Enough for two books. He asked me to join the one-act play competition at Diamond Harbor, and gave me the idea on which to write the play. Though I never used other’s ideas, I couldn’t dishearten him.
The play, The Patriots, was about three national heroes: Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose. I used them to point out their sacrifices, our political stupidity and hypocrisy, our corruption, the rise of chaos and separatism. He okayed The Patriots. The rehearsal was done in their sitting room.
On the day of the competition, he drove us to Diamond Harbor. The two plays, which had been staged, couldn’t impress the audience. The plays were not good. The actors couldn’t do justice to their roles either.
The Patriots was a better play. The excellent make-up made the young people look fittingly old. Anis played Nehru; Bipin Dastidar, Gandhi; Ronty Roy, Bose. I directed the play. Among the judges, there was a famous stage director. We hoped for the best. But, in the middle of our play, some audience began to catcall and pelt the actors with tomatoes and eggs and clods of earth. Some audience threw shoes, too.
Before the curtain was dropped, someone from the audience had run onstage. They screamed at us in foul language. They looked for the playwright and the director. They alleged that the play had lowered the prestige of the nation. They dragged Anis, Ronty, and Bipin into the greenroom. The hall exploded into chaos: chairs flew, people stumbled into people past people. The Patriots trembling in my hands, I kept standing at the stage door. It was an unforeseen attack. I couldn’t decide what to do. A middle-aged man snaffled The Patriots out of my hands. Baring his canine teeth, he tore it along the length, forcibly threw it in my face, and spat.
He punched my nose and I bent double, pinching my nostrils. I furiously attacked him. With minatory gestures, Anis, Bipin, and Ronty stepped forward, and I asked them to go back and they complied. I spat my bloodstained saliva in his direction. He disappeared through the empty hall.
I collected the parts of The Patriots. We would’ve been beaten like anything if the police hadn’t appeared in time. I couldn’t guess there would be uncivilized people in the audience. I couldn’t guess they wouldn’t be able to understand The Patriots. Anis, Bipin, and Ronty stood by me silently after the sympathizers and the stagehands had long been gone.
After a few minutes, as we went to the exit, a hand landed on my shoulder, sending shivers down my spine. That was the hand of an old man. He was a freedom fighter. He patted me on the back, then slowly walked off with his rolling gait across the strip of light out through the large window of the flat on the left.
