CET: Poovambazham!!!

I can go on and on about my CET (mis)adventures. Throughout my college days, I used to consider myself an all-in-all in the dramas and skits department. (You will understand why the time span is restricted to the college days, once you are through with this post). Bole tho, like our mega serial all-in-all Madhu Mohan. “Story, Script, Directorion and Main Actor – me myself and I” kind of stuff... I gained confidence and learned many tuff lessons from our highly successful skit “Enkilum ente Lakshman-aa!!!” at Lovely (my entrance training institute at Pala). In CET, at the end of each academic year we used to have a department celebration called Computer Night, which used to be a get-together of all the comp-sci dept students. It also doubled up as a farewell party for the senior most batch. During our third year comp-sci night, we performed a skit “www.Panchaali Swayamwaram.com”, which was well received by the audience. So my confidence levels had skyrocketed. Finally, for my passing out year, I was breaking my head over getting some fresh idea. Then my Bethany (prestigious Trivandrum hostel which had the privilege of accommodating us) friends came up with this idea - “Lets re-do the skit that was successfully screened for Bethania (well known hostel day celebration of Bethany, world famous all over Trivandrum).”

As usual, it was one of those stupid stories involving some police officers, a thief, a dead woman and some idiotic investigation involving a lot of double meaning dialogues and soft vulgarity. A batch of comedians from Bethany had performed it well for Bethania and they got enuf accolades from the MTT (nearby Ladies’ hostel, which was the primary motivating factor for all the action during Betahnia) crowd. So we were sufficiently inspired and decided to take that up as one of the items. We, the Bethany Engineers being hyperactive, were not ready to stop with just that. That was our trump card, but we had two other skits as well. The only thing I can say now is, both were equally or more advanced in vulgarity. USP of the second skit was the costume of a woman film star. We planned to make Sow wear a bra and place 2 big rubber balls in strategic locations, and top it with a short white T-Shirt with BASKETBALLS written across the chest. It was only due to the strength of our stars that we managed to escape beatings when we went shopping for the bra. Imagine two guys rushing into a shop, heading straight to a saleswoman and one of them telling her “Chechy, we need a bra, for his size” pointing the other.

Anyways, we did all the preparations. We worked a lot on our main item. Countless rehearsals at Bethany Audi. I was acting as a Police SI. Sow was the constable and KK the thief. The story line was something like me prompting KK to narrate an imaginative rape attempt on the murdered woman and stuff like that. We were pretty confident as we had already seen the skit doing well. And the plus-two kids of the hostel who had seen our rehearsal were all laughing away to glory. All of us were confident about our own acting skills as that was what enabled us to survive in our hostel and college.

Finally, the D-Day arrived. The program order was announced. Our police skit was the second or third item. Our turn came. We did all the usual post drama announcements... ”Bethany Kalakshethra proudly presents... our 132^nd drama, ‘Poovambazham’ (yes, that was the goddamn name given to that skit). We are doing this on our 34^th stage. For bookings, contact... etc etc...” I was the one doing the announcement from back-stage in that typical high pitch dramatic tone. The curtain was mercilessly raised before I could complete my announcement. Sow the constable was all alone on the stage in the very first scene. He was waiting with muttered curses for the SI (me) to turn up... The next thing I remember is dropping the mike and running to the stage grabbing an over-coat, which I was supposed to wear. I entered the stage trying to zip my coat. That goddamn zipper was stuck and I was pacing from one end of the stage to the other struggling to zip up my coat. I think somehow the audience understood what was going on and the cheering (read howling) started. It never stopped after that. It was being modulated depending upon our dialogues. In fact we got some appreciation for some of our stunts, but the howling was present as a background music throughout.

Actors came and went but the shouts never stopped. Sow, KK and I had to suffer it all as we three where always on the stage. At one point, it grew so loud that our voices were drowned in the mess. Then I approached the mike and made an announcement. “We are overwhelmed with your enthusiasm and encouragement. As a token of respect, we are giving you a chance to express ur feelings for the next 5 minutes. We will resume once you are done.” I think it was the first time in the history of drama that a drama was muted/paused on stage to accept crowd’s ‘acknowledgment’. All of us ‘actors’ waited on the stage itself while the crowd was howling away to glory. Just imagine students of an entire department, shouting and howling at full throat, including girls :_(, in front of all the professors and even the HOD. It almost went on for 5 mins... At last, KK grabbed the mike and made a second announcement. “No matter how long u continue this, or how loud you get, we will leave the stage ONLY when we are through”. The cacophony subsided all of a sudden; I believe the crowd appreciated our spontaneity ;_). We restarted our gimmick. We couldn’t keep the crowd silent for long... it was a repeat performance. Finally, we managed to somehow finish it off and escape successfully (safely) from the stage. Even though I could act smart on the stage, I was so embarrassed and I persuaded Bethany guys to cancel out the remaining 2 skits... I don’t think I will ever forget that onstage experience ever.

As an icing on the cake, got this rocket of a comment too.... In next day’s class, Divya ma’am was trying to be gentle when she offered this as a form of consolation “The crowd was overreacting...” I tried to make the best out of the situation “Yes ma’am.... in fact, some people who had personal grudge on us were trying to settle scores with us... that was what happened”. She gave me a pathetic look and asked, “So you guys genuinely thot it to be a good one or what?” Then as they say, my (fainted) body was ferried on the shoulders of four of my friends to the nearest medical center.