The Audience is Watching

Posted by dizzy on Wednesday October 18, @02:32PM

...but what is this, a story?

Inspite of Tara Patel's vociferous distractions, Romeo continued his perilous climb up the balcony to meet Juliet. An embarrassed K.D who had persuaded Tara to accompany her to the theater squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. "Sit down, sit down, dit sown," said K.D hurriedly enough to excuse the nonsensical spoonerism. "You mustn't, really no, mustn't you really no..." she continued to dither with a horrified look as Tara removed from the inner recesses of her handbag an apple half consumed by an indecisive eater and prepared to fling it at Romeo.

"But, Tara, people are watching..." said K.D. Tara nodded and aimed for Romeo. "I know. That's why this has to stop right now."

It required varying proportions of physical restraining, vocal reassuring and a dismally insufficient amount of reasoning from K.D to restore Tara to her seat and the sentimentally hurt apple to the handbag. "You shouldn't be so rude to the actors, you know," K.D said, like a school teacher reprimanding a biology student for tormenting a frog with pincers. "...After all they are acting for us."

"Strange," said Tara settling into her seat. "There was once this man I knew who spent his entire life acting for an imaginary audience. He went through the motions of his life secretly suspecting that he was being watched and being appraised. Consequently, he lived his life in such a way that he thought might appeal to the invisible audience.

"I wonder how he received his feedback," mused K.D as Romeo slipped down the ivy for the sixth time. The agony of not having reached Juliet the last time was particularly strong since he was only a foot away. "Next time he should try climbing head first," recommended Tara. "What did you ask? Feedback....well, he made up the feedback just like he had made up the audience."

K.D snickered derisively at the man with a fertile imagination. "What a dull life he must have been leading," she said. "Maybe his wife was called Imogen," and she laughed at her own joke loudly enough to frighten Romeo and cause him to take another earth bound plunge. Her companion corrected her with the biting coldness of an Arctic Tern. "Actually, his wife's name is Tara."

"Oh! What a coincidence," mumbled K.D, feeling as embarrassed as a Polar Bear admitting to the zoo keeper that it needed woolen blankets to see the long cold nights through.

A few days later, K.D owing to the good nature that all women are endowed with, decided to break the ice between her and Tara, and took her out to what was reported in the following day's Art Review as a thought provoking play. "Culture, that's what that woman needs," K.D had told her husband that morning in between sips of Tumbactoo tea. "She has no idea of the good things in life..." she elaborated. Her husband, with a far away look in his eyes and a suspect grin nodded, "Oh! but she does...she does."

"I don't think the actors are giving their hundred percent," contended K.D looking disenchantedly at the stage where a group of actors were huddled around in a corner.

"That's probably because we are the only ones in the auditorium," put in Tara.

A month later, K.D made another valiant attempt and managed to drag the kicking Tara into an alleged Theater Hall. But it soon became clear to Tara that K.D had given up on trying to impart valuable tips on culture to her. A quarter of an hour into the play, which was yet to utilize the lights so that the actors may be glimpsed at, K.D confided to Tara that she suspected her (K.D's) husband might be going mad. "Really?" asked Tara joyously like an earthquake victim who finds that his creditor's house has also perished. "But whatever gave you such an insane idea?" she queried, keen to display her masterly grasp over words synonymous with K.D's husband's sudden affliction.

And K.D went on to recite with sound effects how during a solemn gathering at the long due funeral of a long dead relative, who was generously given sufficient time by the family to prove his deathly state, her husband had suddenly broken into a rendition of an unnamed piece of classical music originally composed by a person who wished to remain anonymous. "Wait! There is more," K.D said, putting the brakes on Tara's attempted escape. The unannounced purchase of a unnecessarily expensive painting, the incessant strumming of a violin and the zealous study of religious classics were the other symptoms that K.D diagnosed as the early onset of senility.

"I've always maintained that senility sets in early in the young."

"But, Tara, he is already twenty five!"

"Oh, well. There are exceptions, of course. Recently I read a report by The W.H.O that senility will set in four years earlier in every succeeding generation. I do agree with them; musicians know more about senility than anyone else. Soon, one can accuse one's grandchildren of being as whacky as oneself. Isn't that a pleasant thought? Didn't you mention your husband was exhibiting interest in music?"

"Yes," said K.D, in a voice that might have led those of good hearing to predict an outbreak of dignified sniffing and snobbing.

"Though I can't really understand why his sudden passion with culture should worry you." "But I have never seen him like this before," cried K.D plaintively. "As far as I can recollect he has been at his cultured best when retrieving the mortal remnants of an insect from his tea with his own fingers."

By this time, the actors on stage had realized the futility of maintaining their physically tiring pose in aching anticipation of sudden illumination. So, while the crowd had to reckon with Tchaikovsky floating eerily around like a disgruntled spirit, the actors huddled around in a corner of the stage and sipped tea. The intermittent collision of the cymbals finally roused the slumbering light engineer and the spirit of his deceased uncle. With the agitated alarm of an over sensitive executioner, who suddenly realizes that by dreaming about his chrysanthemums he has dispensed many more morbid minutes to the poor man in the chair, he flicked on all the switches at his beck and call and flooded the hall with lights. However, the actors continued to sip their tea with the leisurely reticence of firemen who have long since given up on extinguishing an uncooperative blaze.

Understandably, the crowd reacted in an unorthodox fashion. Perhaps, it was the sound of Tara putting a mosquito out of it's vexatious existence between her palms, that prompted some others to give vent to a tentative clap. A gentleman from the back seat gave a double clap with as much hesitation as one trying to get down from a spinning giant wheel. Pretty soon the momentum picked up and what started out as drizzle turned into a downpour of clamorous celebration. After the ovation died a death as slow as a man being stabbed with a dead eel, the actors made a graceful exit, pleased that their job had suddenly become much easier. The tea vendor later confided proudly to his wife in hushed whispers that there was more water mixed in the milk and also more whiskey mixed with the water.

K.D got up from her seat unsure as to whether talking to Tara had been of any help. As she scanned the things Tara had said that evening for a prospective solution to her problems, Tara cried, "But, look! You've been sitting on a half eaten apple all evening."

*****

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