The play within the play!

There was a time when, in college, like many others before me and, without a doubt, like many who will follow, I was fascinated with reading about death, sadness and, for want of a better word, similarly morbid things. In fact, I have no doubt in my mind that I first felt motivated to read The Myth of Sisyphus because I discovered that, essentially, it was about the legality of suicide. In those days, I used to spend a lot of time in the libraries in college and at the American Centre. And, when I wasn't looking for reference material, which was quite rare, I would look for books (Malone Dies), plays ('Night Mother) and poems (...it's not the river that runs but the water / it's not the time that passes but us...) that were, generally, about death, dying, sadness, depression, hardship and struggle.

This fascination with the darker aspects is best explained, I think, as a phase that a lot of people go through, almost as a rites of passage sort of thing. I'd love to say that my interest in this general area was purely academic but that would not be true and, if I said so, it would be only for effect :-) A little later in life, when passage of time had allowed me to view the phase more objectively, I realised that my pre-occupation with the subject owed itself entirely to a part I had been playing in real life at the time. Needless to say, at first, even I was not aware of what I was doing. It took a friend's friend to point it out to me and, amazingly, no one else, besides the two of us, ever knew or saw this. After so many years, I still remember how she took me aside and said what she said. What is funny is how everyone fell for the con I was dishing out and, even funnier, that, after some time, I started believing my own con! Believing it to the extent of actually living it out, from being an actor playing a part to becoming one with it. Man, Stanislavski would've been proud!

Hell, I even wrote a (very bad) poem at the time. Appropriately, it was called Black Dog. Actually, I wrote 2-3 other, really bad poems on this blog but...I swear...never again.

Anyway, this whole business started as a joke, which, unfortunately, my friends took seriously and believed...maybe because they wanted to believe it...and which I then kept building on. In the beginning, it was a joke for me too and, to be fair to myself, I said so to a few people but, like the indulgent parents of a child caught with his/her hands in the cookie jar, they dismissed my protestations as a definite sign of guilt. And, so, after a while, the con took on a life of its own and became real. Even for me.

For those who might be wondering about the nature of this con, it was nothing serious. No crime was committed, no law was broken, no malicious lies were told and, generally, nobody's life was adversely affected. :-)

I'd rather not mention the specifics here...after all, a man needs to save stuff for his autobiography, right? Or, at least, for a rainy day, when there's nothing else to fill this space :-)