Hritu Charya Concluding and Thoughts Arising, Seasons and life.

Venue and Situation:

Overcome by a whirlpool of emotions, and pinned down by a short series of disappointment, the bell jar and brain droppings and pressed into the window seat by a plump being.

Seasons take hold of the soul if you let them. I wonder if it’s all about priorities; the people and the plans, unless the Singhadurbar traffic has you stranded on a Sunday night. 

The weather lately demands of you to wear jackets heavier than yourself, cover every possible inch of your skin and the conductor demands you to be flexible like in the summer. Say, you get a call from the head of your office asking you to stay a little over time for a few days. That’s a highly likely ‘Yes.’ Say, you get a call from your friend for a little help that requires you to exit the blanket mode - A little hesitant, yes. Now, say there’s a person that considers you a friend, and you wonder what he is to you and that ‘he’ asks for a hand - A quick no with an excuse. Priorities, plans and problems; they decide things for you while you’re falsely assured of your command over things.

Seasons aren’t here to send any message. Being a person who can draw reason out of everything that happens outside of your bodily presence, we make things up and of course, validate it backed up by some ‘proper’ research. Well, a body then also has its series of season and the influence flows accordingly. Have you noticed that the weather clearly doesn’t meddle with your day trip when your heart scents like spring? It’s a bright day, and the ambience befits your preference, but your heart’s a mess. The response to any offer, invitation, or call is negative. 

“Hritu charya” spun me around for a while once again. The characters dallying and scurrying about different phases of their lives hit the bell of emotions. As this was my second time, I also sat back to witness the audience react. They were floating in perfect rhythm with the play; there were smiles here and there, plenty of laughter followed and the “ahems,” and “hmms” of people trying to fight back tears came after. Basanta, Girish, Barsha, Sharad, Hemanta and Shisira were in perfect tune with the weather, but the going wasn’t easy for any of these seasonal avatars. To cheekily put it, the youth here is hurting. With life these days going through unusual rollercoaster, and learning to accept it whilst failing to change it, the seasonal voices would strike the ones in their twenties.

I felt this connection to what the play was expressing through the assortment of the characters it put forth. If it didn’t feel like me, it felt like someone I know or someone I’ve seen or heard of. Relationships of all kind flourish or perish over time, and at a time like this it is indeed necessary, as the play connotes, to tend relationships with time, care and attention and hold them together for it will in return, knit one back to life. Also held together by sarcasm and humor in between the bittersweet phases of life, the play is a life in itself. 

I now can define a play as a product- A certain period of life, if not a year of learning, early mornings, late nights, myriad of reflections, studying, writing, rehearsing and re-rehearsing. 

As the play came to its end, I could feel the end of an era; a lifetime on its own. Tears, trembling bodies, sighs, and eyes pointed skyward after they took a bow made it obvious. 

 

Seasons on foot,

Reminding you 

It’s time to keep the promises,

And carry that soul everywhere you go

Time is a concept and we’ve framed it to certain hours, days, months and year. Moving on isn’t a choice; it’s the one rule of life that everyone abides by whether you sleep your life away or continue running.

Ramblings, again…

 

Next day, 

At the bus park

Observing People shoving each other at the bus door

And refusing to participate in the mess…

After “Hritu Charya,” in the theatre and out of it, what I’ve been left with is an itch.

The itch tells you to take care of your body and your mind as you move through this puzzling circle of life. 

Seasons come and go,

People come and go, 

If you’re enough for yourself,

You’ll last happily for some time.

Every moment will have things you could complain and blabber about…

The microbuses here reject to go the whole route and instead make rounds from Lagankhel,

More people, more money...

They call students “dus ko maal.”

 

The street vendors here sell stuffs for above 30 percent profit

There’s hardly any room to squeeze through in the pavement,

The hucksters and salesman basically own it,

Should you go over your head, it could be one big conspiracy weaved up by the trio of them, the bus drivers and the police ??

Whatever it is

For complaints,

there isn’t enough lifetime. 

Go ahead, and complain,

But

Go Ahead.

While i sit here with self-pride for waiting it out and scoring vacant microbuses,

I’ve realized that shit keeps changing.

The moment you think

You’ve made it,

there’s another train to catch, or a bus for that matter.

It’s not never-ending as it appears to be.

It helps to fool yourself

That the end of the tunnel-like life 

Brings light,

 

It helps to

believe in 

silver linings,

brighter side of darker things,

The man in charge,

Dylan when he assures that times will change,

And love.

 

You’ll survive

If you surround yourself with your aspirations,

Not just with things and people that you resonate with.

It helps to remember 

That there’s an end to all things and people.

It’s time to keep the promises

you secretly made to yourself.