The story continues from:
part I: Dreams
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part II: PADMA
“There are times when I’m not even sure I have a real life… It’s only on the stage that I feel really alive. For a certain length of time I have to become a person whom I totally believe in.” - Maggie Smith
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“Little star, shine bright; little star, you are my light… mmhmm… little star in my eyes… mhmmh… little star! Little… naa… na, naa… mhmm… my darling little… sta… aa… aar!!” The notes escalated off-key.
Padma dropped and lifted the scales again - waves of her mother’s song planted in her childhood; they've grown up with the twenty-three-year-old. The tune involuntarily sang in her throat everyday; it brought a little skip, a lightness to her duty-bound routine of scrubbing and cooking (she has been scrubbing and cooking everyday for fifteen years; that’s what girls naturally do).
Just like it had done for Mai.
Padma did not remember her mai very much. She was unsure if what she felt was the same as “missing someone”. How do you miss someone when you don’t know much about the one you are supposed to miss? It is a delusional expectation of what could be.
So Padma never dreamed.
It was just her and Baba in a one-and-a-half-bedroom-hall-kitchen matchbox house that father and daughter inhabited for the last four months, and their stage shows.
*
Padma hurried through her menials. She was never picky about orderliness, and today’s business got clumsier. She didn’t think much of it - Baba would just exhale his customary disapproval, perhaps a light scolding; that’s all. The daughter even snuck in tailoring a new blouse for herself for the performance tomorrow (the old one was yellowed, and frayed pathetically at the seams).
All this by 4.30 p.m. Perfect! She could return in good time for her hour-long evening riyaaz (training) and set up dinner. Baba can’t complain!
All Padma needed now was Baba’s leniency.
She thought a good deal about the approach she should take. Rebellion? Tcha… no. Emotion? Guilt? In hindsight, she should’ve been more obedient with her house chores today.
Hari was in his study. The 10ft x 12ft space originally came to them as a handsome living room. A clutter of books, scripts, unfiled papers, press cutouts, bills, a harmonium (wind instrument), costumes, collapsable props, and a blackened brass ashtray, presented the room as the “Hari-Padma Theatre Co” office-cum-study. A small printed board hanging on its door said so.
Padma stood at the doorway. "Baba, please take me out,” she requested with an earnest yearning in her tone, eyes lowered just enough to discern the familiar outline of a head in a fog of cigarette smoke, bent over some papers.
She waited patiently.
The fan whirred and some papers flapped, pat-pat!
Padma raised her gaze by five degrees.
Wait, wait... one…, two…, three…, four…, five breaths.
Nothing. Besides the fan’s whrrrrrr, and the papers’ pat-pat, nothing.
Even the tobacco smoke didn’t swirl. That head could’ve been a stone bust and no one would’ve thought otherwise.
She prodded cautiously with her well-rehearsed angle, “Yesterday's act has wrung me dry, Baba; I feel (clears throat) parched.” A gentle pause, then, “This, this fatigue, it has left me lifeless. I feel so… lifeless. Can I step out, Baba, see some daylight? Can you take me to the town fair?”
Whrrrrr. Pat-pat-pat.
“I cannot perform when I’m, (choosing her words carefully) when I’m not alive.” Padma let her plea trail into a whisper.
One…, two…, three…, four…, five breaths.
Whrrrrr. Pat-pat. Whrrrrr. Pat-pat. Whrrrrr…
Her father’s impassiveness was getting exasperating.
Whrrrrr… hrrrrr…
One..., two,... three,...
Padma’s resilience was stretched to snapping. She looked up at the stone bust.
“Please, Baba!”
Desperation.
Whrr...
“It is many months since we moved here, to this new town. I have seen nothing beyond these, these dead, cold walls and floors and, and these, these ugly, dark drapes," she sputtered, sensing the uselessness of it all, but didn’t give up.
“I hear motorcars, and people talking, and children, and the ice-cream vendor. It is noisy outside,” arms spread wide, “so alive! Please take me out… “
Intuitively, she withdrew her excitement into a softer appeal, "... just up to the street corner? For half an hour?"
Padma had already made herself up pretty and ready; so confident was she, before her plan turned into a monologue that was headed nowhere. She chose a happy rosey-pink tunic printed with large sunflowers, and yellow trousers. (This was Mai’s evening outfit and Padma’s blossomed figure now fit into it.) She wore her hair oiled and plaited, and pinned a fake yellow rose to the braid, lots of chinking metal bangles, silver anklets with tiny bells that sang chham-chham when she walked, and a cheap chiffon head-cover to veil her face when she would step out. The dolled-up daughter looked gaudy in the sombre surroundings.
Wrong place, and definitely wrong time.
Hari was absorbed in calculating expenses and the benefits of accepting an invitation from the neighboring village. He had long drained his sixth cup of chai, and his “Fish” brand tobacco stick balanced nicely on the groove of an overfull ashtray. (He had had his last fling with alcohol decades ago when he had absconded from what he knew as home, with Little Padma - his liability and his winning card, in tow.)
He stopped scribbling, eyes still focussed on the numbers before him. The girl’s whimpering irritated him, and the dim-witted words that followed riled him up. Hari’s patience was getting edgy.
Pat-pat-pat. Whrrrrr…
The chai cup teetered over the table-edge.
He stared at the pathetic plea in his daughter’s eyes.
She lowered them. They were timid, but she understood their behavior as being respectful.
Whrrrrr…
Three breaths.
Hari grabbed Padma’s porcelain wrist - fingers his wrapped around so tight they whitened the back of her fingernails, and yanked her out of the rented space they called, “house”. The green wooden door swung hard on rusty hinges and slammed shut.
Slap! The sudden warmth of the early evening sun stung the captive. Her thirsty pores sucked the bright, in deep satiating gulps. A soft breeze kissed her and calmed her exuberance. She turned oblivious to Baba’s numbing hold on her wrist, and on her existence; even if only momentarily.
They walked ten paces towards the evening bazaar. Vendors had returned from their routine siestas, and were rearranging stalls or setting up handcarts.
Padma feasted on the vibrancy laid out in front of her, the chaotic movements of people, the hollering sounds of “fresh tomatoes, 5-for-10, 5-for-10”, “take a look at this new material from Punjab, saheb”, and “exchange old utensils for new!”
Baba halted near a bangle-seller who was adding more color to his rows of glassy brilliance. He looked at Padma, "Who are you?”
Padma did not understand, and her eyes questioned her father through her flimsy veil.
He frowned with a little impatience. The fingers tightened, almost crushing her wrist, “Who are you at this moment in the middle of a noisy street?”
Padma stared, clueless.
“Who, in Saraswati Ma's (the goddess of art and learning) name, portrayed Anarkali yesterday?” Why does this stupid girl not understand this? Hari gave a sickened glare to his apprentice.
He tried again. “Who was telling the story,” he paused; the words were visibly affecting his student, “and whose story was it anyway?"
His rebuke ruffled the hairs on her forearm. She felt she had been walloped as her father hit her with the truth of her existence.
”Can the audience connect with a happy Mirabai tomorrow? Think, you delicate work of self pity! The audience wants a true-to-life Mirabai. They come to watch her renunciation, her surrender, her pining for her god Krishna. They want to carry that devotion with them when they leave. This is why they come to our show.”
“They come to watch Mirabai incarnated. Not Padma!"
Padma broke into a million pieces.
The protégé’s head bowed in guilt of its own accord. The jasmine-scented breeze did not soothe the heat welling up in her eyes. "Baba is right. Baba always is. What was I thinking? What was I doing?”
I am perfect, so perfect,... I cannot be flawed. No more flaws… no more blemishes…
Padma touched her face to remind herself of who she was.
*
The sky was shading into a heavy purple when Hari turned towards their quarters with Padma, carrying a renewed burn in her heart, walking a step behind him in reverence.
She did not know when her father released his hold on her (wrist).
*
Padma was a Bahrupiya.
She was nothing like her father, The Supreme Impersonator.
She was far beyond.
Padma was hewn from all of Hari's bitter rage, his heartache and despair, his numbing agony, and his disgraced genius. His manic obsession to create an “Absolute Impersonator” beyond all human comprehension was what had kept him alive, and sustained him.
It had destroyed the child Padma.
Padma grew up never to hate her father - she did not know what “love” was, so she did not know “hate” either. She did not remember the doting father from the village of Devgaon; memories of her life in their yellow-walled little home on Jambul Street, the village people, her friends Rita and Rekha, and Mala Kaki, all were insignificant keepsakes buried within her being.
She did, however, know she was never to return to their ancestral home, "never!"
*
The newly widowed and shamed Hari had travelled thousands of dusty miles with his girl child, performing short skits for pittances in obscure villages that were only too delighted to have the grand performer stage a show for them.
He always put Little Padma on the stage with him - she started out as a messenger bird at six years of age, gingerly holding on to the king's letter in her beak, and graduated to multiple character roles supporting her father’s act.
Padma was fourteen when she delivered her first solo performance, slipping into the virtuous white garb of Mirabai, the saint who renounced her royal status for her divine love, Krishna. Prior to her debut, the adolescent actor thirsted and hungered for more than forty-eight hours. The deprivation and yearning she would experience were imperative for an impeccable performance.
Padma had been ruthlessly chiseled to unnatural perfection.
*
Hari’s student became the “Supreme Shapeshifter”.
This was not her profession. This was who she was.
She was an enigma.
For nobody knew who Padma really was. Nobody knew what Padma really looked like. It was only when she performed that her senses touched and felt the world that existed beyond her father. She stepped out when heaven and Hari permitted, even then, never without her baba. Then she became Meena, a sweet little thing with kohled, doe eyes, or Ratna, the grey eyed, dusky young woman, or Asha, or Suman, or Kaveri.
Padma’s identity was Hari's best kept secret.
Nobody knew who Padma really was. Nobody knew what Padma really looked like. When she wore a character on stage, she let it gnaw at her deep, very deep, till it caressed and lovingly coaxed every pinprick of her soul to transform.
This was Padma’s secret, and she did not know it.
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Disclaimer: This written work is imaginary. It is not intended to bear resemblance to a specific individual(s) or place. If it does, it is purely coincidental.
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