Riding the Zero: A Triptych {Draft}
An Excerpt from A Three-Act Play on Islamophobia, Racism, and Caste System in India and the US!
This play is dedicated to all those who came together across the world in support of creating a more equitable society battling a once-in-a-century pandemic in the Summer of 2020.
Preface
I don’t know how much kindling my mind, unbeknown to me, must have been amassing until this play sprang forth just like fire. The seed of this play was sown when I was reading a seminal paper that showed that rather than the intelligence or intention of individuals, it is the institutional structures that play the most critical role in our decision-making process. By focusing on intention, we might be making institutions undergirding our lives inordinately complicated. The idea was so simple, so subtle, that it blew my mind. I knew that I had to somehow capture this idea and take it to the world in a more palatable manner. But how?
Though I had not planned about the form, the idea dawned on me after the confluence of two events: The first one was an informal get-together organized by an acquaintance to discuss Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, which had grabbed quite a headline before and after its publication. The second one was after I purchased a Kindle copy of a play by a playwright that I had never heard of but who was invited for a talk show by the writer, Amitava Kumar. Only a few days later, a full-length profile piece on Ayad Akhtar was published in The New Yorker. The profile piqued my curiosity in a way that I ended up buying his play, Disgraced. As soon as I finished the play, and it was a day after the informal meeting, this play burst forth unobtrusively; the outflow turned blissful and continued until I had a draft in my hand a few hours later.
It was Akhtar’s use of a familiar-sounding painter that helped me to focus on using a painting as the axel for this play. I was introduced to a painter at the Yale Center for British Art. When I looked online for the painter’s name whose painting was going to be the touchstone for my play, I realized that Ayad had used the same painter—John Constable (18X7-1837) --to create the scaffolding for his play.
When I was introduced to Constable’s works, I knew that I would one day use his work—the Cloud Study (the painting above), but didn’t know when and how exactly. Reading Akhtar’s play gave me the template, and Akhtar has used Constable like the master-playwright that he is, right in the first act of the play. I took the uncanny coincidence as a sign that I was on the right path, and the story I had in my mind needed to be served to others; I felt coerced to take the story out of me.
[..to be continued]
Outline: A Three-Part Play
Act 1
Anil {A-NIL}
Lila (Anil’s Younger Sister)
A conversation between Anil and Lila set the stage. Anil is going to live in Honduras for two years, and Lila thinks that he might end up marrying outside his caste, this time to some Muslims or Black women.
Act 2
Anil
Trini (Anil’s Housemate—A Jamaican-American)
Uche (Trini’s Stepbrother—A Half-Nigerian)
Uche and Anil set the stage for racism in the US.
Act 3
Anil
Krishna (A Professor in his 70s)
Sara (Krishna’s Wife)
Uche
Trini
Maya Pandey (Krishna and Sara’s Daughter)
A short introduction of the Guna-based Varna-System. A critique of Wilkerson, Ambedkar, and Gandhi. A synthetic idea of hierarchy without violence is developed.
Act 1
[Characters: Anil, Lila]
[Anil at his study desk calls his younger sister, Lila, immediately after booking his ticket to Honduras.]
ANIL (ebulliently): Guess where I am going next?
LILA: You sound so happy. Happiest after your divorce from that Gori Yamani (A White Enchantress).
ANIL: Please do not go there. I am out of Sam a long time back. She does not bobble up even by chance on my mindscape; she is gone from my mind. Remember, I was with her because she insisted that she had to live with me; she talked about her nirvikalpta (choicelessness) regarding me. How can one say no to such a commitment?
LILA: I can’t win with you in words. Tell me where you are going.
ANIL: To the capital city of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. Have you heard of it? Do you know where it is?
LILA: No. Where is it? Is it a city in Texas?
ANIL: Central America; when you look at the map of South America, it is that part of the map which looks like a baby bird is holding the bigger chunk of the continent in its beak!
LILA: I have opened the Google Earth; I don’t see any bird.
ANIL: Okay, okay. Let’s connect over Zoom; I will show it.
[Anil shows her the baby bird portion of Central America]
LILA: Are you going to tell me why are you going there? You must have some deep reasons, and please don’t talk to me in riddles; you are such an enigma.
ANIL: Forget about it; it will take a lot of my time; it is already after my bedtime. I am going to live there for a few years; felt like sharing the news with you.
LILA: Will you find many Indians there? Come back to us; you have moved so far away. Come back to live in India. Enough of your pursuit of truth.
ANIL: I carry you all inside my being; don’t worry about me coming back--I belong to this earth. Okay, I need to take care of something. Chalo Chalo. I will talk to you some other day.
[Lila asks her daughter to find out what kind of people live in the continent of South America. Since she didn’t catch the name of the city where Anil is going, she calls Anil after a few hours. She is a little worried.]
ANIL: When will you learn to calculate the time difference? It’s 3:00 in the morning here.
LILA: Sorry. Sorry…. I always forget to keep the time difference in my mind. Priya, my daughter, told me not to call you, but it didn’t occur to me she might have meant in terms of the time difference. Tell me again what time it is there? It always tickles me when I realize what a strange world we live in. How can it be a day here, and you are living in the darkness?
ANIL [with amused irritation]: Told you it’s still dark here; it’s 3 in the morning here.
LILA: No wonder people are so selfish there; if they can’t see our Sun god, that’s what would happen. Come back to live with us.
ANIL: Lila, don’t be a fool. We do get the sun here. Anyway, tell me why you called me. Come on. I am still half asleep. What is it?
LILA: Promise me that you will not marry anyone in whatever city that you are going to live next. This time you will have to listen to us, your family, and marry within our caste. See what happened when the last time you married that firangi.
ANIL: You know I cannot make such promises.
LILA: Women from our caste know how to live in Maryada (moral boundaries). She will never even imagine calling you totally drunk and then force you to come back home in the middle of your work.
ANIL: I told you I don’t want to discuss Sam.
LILA: At least marry a Hindu from all the twice-born castes--there are so many; there are millions of women of marriable ages in India; why can’t you find one for yourself. There must be some Hindu women in the US too.
ANIL: I like a Muslim woman, but she has a kid.
LILA: Do you want to kill our dad before his time? We will never accept a Muslim woman in our family. Or, for that matter, a pitch-dark black African woman.
ANIL: If I will take you to Sudan or Ethiopia, people there will think that you are a local woman. What’s wrong with an African woman?
LILA [feeling totally annoyed]: You want stability in your life or not. If you want peace, then marry a woman from your caste or, at the very least, from your religion. I don’t want to hear any more arguments; this time, you will listen to us. I just know that something inside me goes berserk at the idea of having a Kalikaluthi (pitch-black) or a Muslim becoming part of my family.
ANIL: Lila, you, yourself, are pretty dark. And what do you know about Muslims? Do you even know what Islam means? All they fundamentally are seeking is dignity; the whole clamor to proselytize the entire earth will dampen as more of them will learn to appreciate how beautiful our diverse world is. Only an immature person would ever like others to be like him or her; maturity lies in appreciating the way others are!
LILA: Again, philosophy; I would not be convinced by your words this time; I am not our dad. Hey Bhagwan (Oh, my God!). Why did I bother to call you? Go back to sleep.
ANIL: Okay. Let me call you when I am fully awake. I went to bed quite late.
LILA: Okay. Okay. Call me first thing in the morning.
[Anil called her after a few hours.]
ANIL: You know, it makes me feel sad that you have never put in an effort to have a sense about where exactly I live. Your sense of geography is all screwed up.
LILA [giggling]: Stop treating me like a child. I take good care of my husband and my children, and I am happy.
ANIL: I don’t want you to feel bad; I know your daughter hates me for making you feel bad. But it saddens me to see the level of ignorance that you live with. You don’t even know where New York City is on the map; it is pathetic.
LILA: Okay. Okay, my Ph.D. Scholar Brother, make the promise, and I would let you go.
ANIL: I cannot. First, you have to convince me why I should not do what you want me not to do.
LILA: I can’t. [repeating herself] All I know is that my heart skips a beat at the idea of having a pitch-black woman or a Muslim woman becoming part of my family. People will laugh at us. Do you know what our dad had to tolerate after you marry that white woman? I heard people say that our family was the last family they had thought would lose their Hindu dharma (a way of life) to the materiality of the world. People were saying that Papa should first take you to a Shiva Temple and purify you and then put pressure on you to come and settle back in India after you separated from your firangi wife.
ANIL: Wow, I didn’t hear of any such thing; Papa never told me anything.
LILA: He didn’t because he trusts that you would always do the right thing. But this time, promise me. PROMISE ME. And you should also think about what kind of lessons your nieces and nephews are learning from you; I will kill myself if my kids do what you have done.
ANIL: You know that my words are sacred to me; I can’t make promises that I cannot keep. Have you forgotten those lines that our mother used to sing?
[A Chorus will sing this song]
रघुकुल रीत सदा चली आई,
प्राण जाए पर वचन न जाई,
{This is the norm of Raghupur, you die to fulfill your promises}
LILA: I know. But when would you learn to live in the real world? Have you not learned anything from your last marriage? Be practical, my Bhai (brother)! Be real; get out of the mind that your world has created and imprisoned you in.
ANIL: I have learned a lot from my last marriage. I am filled with deep gratitude for what I took away from that marriage; I can live without a woman for the rest of my life—living with her taught me about my completeness.
[Anil broke into singing a shloka from the Isopanishad]
[A Chorus will sing this shloka]
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
LILA: All this is good, but please do keep me informed about your life in Honduras. If you feel complete and nothing can affect your sense of completeness, then show and share such beauties of life with someone; otherwise, what’s the point of your life. At least, have a son; he will take care of you when you get old.
ANIL: But you do not have a son? When will you stop being so parochial? Your daughter will take care of you and me when we get old. Won’t she?
LILA: I don’t think you would have said that had you spent any time with her. She is on her path; she does not even listen to me; she thinks she has grown wings.
Act 2
[Characters: Anil, Trini, and Uche]
[Anil is back in his university town after living in Honduras for six months and staying at an AirBnB apartment. On the very first day, he meets Trini, a woman in her early 30s. She lives on the first floor of the house; she is a research scholar in humanities at the same university that Anil is at. In the morning, a week later, he stands in front of a small whiteboard in the kitchen with a few colorful markers. He writes ‘woman’ in Sanskrit, Hindi, and English.]
“Oh...My, O my. No wonder I am living atop Trini (the 3); she is the portal. Now I know why her voice, the way she sounds, creates such blissful vibrations deep inside me,” Anil says to himself.
He opens his iPhone and writes to Trini, inquiring if she wants to join him for an early dinner. Trini agrees. They go for the early dinner and then come back to Trini s living room spartanly decorated. Anil goes back behind Trini’s loveseat, where she is sitting, lost in her thoughts, and starts to massage her shoulder.
TRINI: Tell me about your stay in Honduras. How was it? What made you go there to live. I don’t know anyone who has left the comforts of New England and went off to live in the most violent country on the face of this earth.
ANIL: It was great. I had to go there; there was no choice once the opportunity arose for me. I wanted to go there 10 years back, but at that time I didn’t know anyone there.
[Anil paused, and then he looked lost and took a serious look at Trini.]
ANIL: Ms. Three, tell me. Why did you come and held my arm tight when you saw the policeman coming up on the elevator in the mall area?
TRINI: Why are you calling me Ms. Three?
ANIL: Oh, that’s what your name means in my native language.
TRINI: How does it matter what my name means?
ANIL: It does not if you do not know the symbolism of names and forms. Forget about three, tell me about you coming and holding my arm tight before entering the restaurant.
TRINI: That’s my visceral reaction to the police. Pleasssse… let’s not talk about it. Tell me about your time in Honduras. Did you get a chance to travel around and go to other countries, to Jamaica? What was your life like?
ANIL: That’s going to be a long story. I am planning on writing a book about my experience there. Before I start, tell me the story behind your name.
TRINI: What do you mean?
ANIL: Trini sounds so much like an Indian name.
TRINI: You are not the first one to tell me that. Usually, I tell people that it has some native American connection. But you are right. It does have some, not some, tons of Indian connections. My mother was an Indian woman.
ANIL: Wow. I would not have guessed that. Usually, I have seen women with Indian roots having long hair, and with shorter hair, I would not have guessed your Indian lineage. I am not surprised by my atavistic feelings for you!
TRINI: What feeling are you talking about? What does ataaa….vataa…mean?
ANIL: Nothing, I meant your Indian roots do not stand out, as the way mine does. [Anil says this in a very self-effacing manner, afraid not to come directly on to her, but feeling impatient to signal his attraction for her] …So you were telling me about your connection with India? Your mother?
TRINI: Yes, my mother. I so so… hate her. I do not like my Indian roots. I had a challenging childhood after my mother left my father and returned to India.
ANIL: If I may…why?
TRINI: That’s a long story; let’s leave it for some time; dark clouds will descend on my mind if I start to talk about her. You tell me about your time in Honduras; you seem so light and content, always smiling and light-footed.
ANIL: What do you mean by light-footed?
TRINI: I never hear your footsteps, and you have been living here for the last so many days.
ANIL: Oh, that’s because my mother will strike my sole with a measuring ruler if I would make a sound while walking around the house. She would tell me one needs to respect the mother earth when one is directly in contact with her.
TRINI: That’s crazy but so beautiful. I wish my mother were so sensitive towards me. She fucking didn’t even care how I would feel—me [...she points violently towards her own body] …made of her body and blood. Let’s talk about Honduras….is it real that archeologists have ruins of temples dedicated to some Monkey God?
ANIL: Yes, it is. But…why are you changing the topic? I am quite keen to hear your story. We can talk about my stay in Honduras; this is turning out to be super interesting.
TRINI: [totally annoyed and reticent at first] Super interesting for you; traumatic for me. I don’t want to talk about it. The more I think about it, the more distaste I have for Indians. My mother fucking turned racist after she came from India and saw that Blacks are on the bottom of the totem pole of American Society. Can we please talk about something else?
[Anil felt a little lost about the turn of the conversation; he walked away from the loveseat and stood in front of a bookshelf. On seeing Wilkerson's Caste, he pulled the book and then turned to Trini.]
TRINI: Have not started it yet. Looking forward to it. Do you know about it?
ANIL: Yes, I am reading it too. It has created some sensation in the media; Oprah sent it to the top 500 powerful people in the country.
TRINI: Yes, I know. I read her last book, which won the Pulitzer Prize; it was on the Great Migration from the Southern States to the Northern States.
ANIL: Yes, I know I looked her up after a colleague, rather a mentor of mine, shared her piece in the NYT Magazine; I was still in Honduras then.
TRINI: Is he or she someone that I know?
ANIL: You might have come across his pieces on the School of Public Policy website. His name is Krishna.
TRINI: Yes, I know him. He lives with his wife right in the neighborhood, a few blocks from here. I see him during my morning runs. Always walking fast and by himself; not sure how his wife is doing. I see them during many Classical Music and Dance events organized by the South Asian Society at our school.
[As the temperature of their conversation gets less onerous, Anil goes behind her and starts to play with her hair twirling a bunch around his finger. Trini slowly moves away without saying anything, signaling that she is not easy to get. Anil walks behind her, harboring an intense desire to hug and stand, letting his body envelop her lithe frame.]
ANIL: Yes, that’s the person I am talking about; he is one of the most holistic minds that I have come across in this god-damn university where so many intelligent and so few wise people you find. Anyway, let’s go back to your mother’s story.
TRINI [gradually warming to his persistent cajoling]: She holds his hands and takes him to the chairs near the French window. Anil, let’s not talk about my mother; thinking about her always makes me feel lonely and not loved.
ANIL [slightly turning his arms and holding her hands tightly while sitting in his chair]: No worries, I am here for at least a month; we can always talk about your mom’s story at some other time. Why don’t you come and sit here and let me give you some nice shoulder and head massage?
TRINI: [without saying anything, she comes and sits on the floor between Anil’s legs facing away from Anil] The weather is so nice today. Feels so salubrious; we should go for a short walk up the Rock.
ANIL: Let’s check the weather [he does that]. It’s going to be nice again tomorrow. Let’s do it tomorrow.
[After massaging her for a few minutes, he takes her to the couch in the living room and spoons her.]
TRINI: It feels so nice [speaks very groggily]. This pandemic is not the right time to get so intimate. We will not exchange any fluid; promise me no insistence beyond just simple making out.
…
…
…
[…to be continued]
[Anil looks for some lyrics on his iPhone and burst out in]:
Wise men say
Only fools rush in
But I can't help falling in love with you
[Trini smiles, gets up, and they dance on it. When Anil stopped singing, Trini’s mind was still lingering on her mother.]
[…to be continued]
Act 3
[Characters: Krishna, Sara, Anil, Trini, and Uche]
[This last act will be released in the final version of the play]
[THE END]
*Acknowledgement: I thank Professor Shyam Sunder, Ms. Manjula Sunder, Jeremiah Coffey, and Aatish Taseer for finding time to read the early drafts and for their immensely valuable critical feedback.
Disclaimer: Nothing I have written here is set in stone. It’s a play, totally fictional and concocted to bring people to talk, discuss, and debate the issues captured here. Give me feedback, and I will keep updating it. The proceed from the play, once I get the final form, will be used to build a few replicas of the Thoreau’s Cabin in the Champaran region of Bihar, the Ground Zero of Gandhi’s Fight for India’s Real Freedom, i.e., freedom from pernicious selfishness and tribalism—An Unfinished Task!
(c) Copyright Sanjeev Kumar 2021
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