My Grandfather's Chair

MY GRANDFATHER'S CHAIR

This story was written around seven years ago. a theatrical situation was in mind since then. but that was materialized only in December 2008.  We were ahead to an international theatre festival-cum seminar on The Tourist Audience: Redefining the audience and Performers in Traditional Dance and Drama in Kathmandu, Nepal, 26-28^th December 2008.  Along with a seminar paper we in the name of KANKHOWA experienced an installation-cum-performance project THE MISSING PAGES (compiling artisans from several places. this narration was a part of the project.

  

The performance was in Hindi, with one actor on stage, named as “Mere dadaji ki Kursi” (by Samudra Kajal Saikia). The participators of the debate were: Shakti Bhatt, Akhilesh Arya, Kaustubh das, Komal Pande and Nila Saikia. Place: Rastriya Nach Ghar, Kathmandu, Nepal. 

Later it was planned for a publication as an illustrated story book. but somehow the process stopped and the book was not published.  

The Story

Oh! Why are you so many people sitting here, what are you looking at? Why this chair is here? I see, this is the only chair my grandfather used to sit. How did it find a place here?

Well, let me tell you about this chair only.

 

There was a long portico in our house. Sunlight used to embed it across a bamboo screen intricately designed with some star-shaped motifs. On the other side of that bamboo-partition there was a huge courtyard.

I cannot remember exactly how long this chair was in that portico. Perhaps it was hard for my father as well to guess that. I witnessed my grandfather being seated there - like this. Huh-uh, yeah, exactly like this.

Being seated in this chair my grandfather used to sink in his bottomless thoughts. Staring at my grandfather's face, I too used to think randomly. As the courtyard was a static, inorganic thing, - as the portico or the chair were static things, the impression of thoughts on my grandfather's face was static like them. I also tried to sit bearing a grave, motionless, static facial expression on my face. But it was not possible for me. I became restless very often. My grandfather pinched at my smooth, plain and soft cheeks and used to offer teeth-less smile at me. I also pinched back at his uneven, folded and loose-skinned cheeks, and used to think: when would my cheeks turn like them! When my cheeks would turn as uneven as my grandfather's, when they would tremble at the time of chewing the grinned betel-nuts, only then I would be able to sit with that desired consistency: with all those 'thoughts' - what I had no idea about.   

I had a keen desire - I would deserve such a chair of mine. As per my knowledge is concern, this chair was as it is - always: tarnished with colors, superannuated. It could fall apart at any point of time. But what I felt was somehow different - for me it appeared as the most novel chair on earth. Among all the chairs in the world, it was the most graceful with its newness.

The chair was static. Stable. A constant.

The chair was the most powerful. A thousand of elephants won't be able to do any harm to it ever.

One day a sudden hue and cry along with the reverberating drums and gongs woke me up. All people were running out of house and were uttering the God's name. My mother embraced me tightly in her lap and asked to pray the Gods, it was an earthquake! I forcibly freed myself from my mother's embrace and ran to my grandfather's chair and grabbed the chair as tightly as I could - just like this, hmm, like this. 
       

My grandfather is no more today.

The chair lost its place. The betel-nut grinder (Khundana) of my grandfather was displaced. The portico became empty. The courtyard remained vacant. I didn't weep a bit at my grandfather's death. Perhaps, I was just weirdly staring at the other people weeping and crying at that time. 

Gradually I became very lonely at that desolated portico. 
Day by day, the sunshine that used to come across the bamboo-made starry decorated screen appeared increasingly mysterious to me.  In those sprinkled rays of sunlight I felt the warmth of my grandfather's palm. It was quite strange and illogical to imagine but I was willingly imagining about my grandfather's metamorphosis to sunshine. Searching for my grandfather in the warmth of the morning sunshine - I grew up.    

  The elongated bamboo partition with intricate starry designs was weaved by my grandfather. The portico was the universe of my grandfather. Sitting on this very chair my grandfather used to talk about the stars of the evening sky. He told stories of the seven seas. He taught me to look at the milky ways and to identify the sptarshimandala, the constellation - Ursa Major. Now, I could see the stars of the sky in these little handmade bamboo-stars. I realized, my grandfather was like the Gods, he could make out stars with his own hand.

Today, not only in that portico, but across the universe I can feel the warmth of my grandfather. In the evening I look upward and I see stars made up of bamboo sticks - throughout the sky.

Several days later, I found this chair lying at a corner of our abandoned cowshed. I cried a lot for the poor condition of the chair. I cried aloud for the chair, but noticeably I did not weep at all for the death of my grandfather. At my arrogant indulgence my father was forced to clean up and replace the chair once again at the same portico.  

This time the chair was a property of mine - absolutely mine. As if I owned a precious thing which I longed for several births. Now I was contented enough. I felt like an empress when I used to sit on this chair. I could see with my fascinated vision that there was a series of ambassador from different kingdoms sitting at my portico. I put on a dazzling headgear. Gamkharu (precious bangles) were at my wrists, and I was wearing muga-silks. A little cat, Pussy accompanied me.

Once a boy came to our house for household job. Somehow I didn't like that guy. He pitched a very crooked look at the chair. Being an empress I ordered Pussy and imagined Pussy dragging that evil guy with an iron fetter and making him surrender in my court.    

The chair transformed to a sheep in the Mediterranean. Like the tales of Sinbad I went out for my voyages around the continents. Pussy was my most faithful sailor.

 

I spent my times playing vehicles on the chair. The chair was my passenger-van where one hundred passengers could ride in. I was the driver and Pussy was the conductor-cum-ticket collector.

Standing up on the chair I felt standing at the highest pick of the world's largest mountain. I witnessed the snowfall at the hillside, witnessed the tidal waves of the ocean. I witnessed a group of people dying in starvation in one corner, and in another corner, I saw my childhood friends Bubu and Pona playing with marbles. This very chair was a place for my afternoon siesta also; I used to sleep on it just like Pussy used to sleep in such a small space.

This, my grandfather's chair had extraordinary qualities. Whenever a person sat here behaved in a strange manner. People changed their characters.

Once Ratan theft a brass vase and sold it at the market. I suspected him; I didn't like that guy from the beginning. My father shouted at him a lot but he was constantly lying. Once my father made him sit at this chair and interrogated. Quite astonishingly, Ratan submitted his crime as soon as he sat on this chair. I realized, no one could ever tell a lie sitting on this chair. This chair was not a joke; it was the chair of the great truths-speaking king Vikramaditya.   

Other than Ratan, there were two other men, whom I disliked, sat on this chair. The first man, one day, was sitting on this chair and talking to my father. Ratan, very notoriously put Pussy on his lap and said, "See, what a beautiful cat this is." the man reacted in a strange manner. He started counting the hairs of Pussy one by one. He counted up to fifty, and exactly after the count of the number fifty he threw Pussy to a corner.

The second man was sitting here another day. Ratan did the same notorious job; he put Pussy on his lap. The man was very harsh in behavior. He observed Pussy from all four sides, dashed her rudely, making her upside down repetitively. And then he made a knot out of Pussy's legs, ears, and tail and kept her on the ground. Pussy was hurt badly, I felt.

Quite later I came to know that the first man worked at a matchbox factory. His regular job was to count out fifty matchsticks, to put them in a box and then to throw to the next table. That was his regular practice. I doubt if he could count beyond the number fifty. For him Pussy, too, was a matchbox, not a little and cute cat. And what about the second man? 

The second man worked at a biscuit factory. The whole day the man was engaged into folding papers and making packets for biscuits. How could one behave indifferent of his practice and habits? 

However, one day our old house made up of timber, bamboo and mud was broken down. Concerning about our future prospects my father built a big concrete house. For the sake of our future, my grandfather had to lose his own future. For our future, the future of my grandfather's chair was snatched. I wept desperately thinking of the chair of our old house, I didn't eat for a couple of days as a sign of protest against my parents. For my arrogant demand the chair got a place with special care at the new portico of our newly built concrete house. But the fact with what I too agreed with was - the old chair was a mere mismatch in the new house.

After a lot of agreement and disagreements the chair was finally decided to remove one day. Oh! Look at Ratan, how happy he was, as if he was the all in all in the house. He never liked the chair at all. At the moment he was dragging out the chair there was an awkward cacophony produced from the friction of the old chair and the ground of the new house. I could hear the cry of the chair, "I won't go, I won't go".

The omnipotent, mysterious and the most graceful chair - which I thought not a thousand of elephants could displace ever, Ratan, dragged out with ease. He didn't hear the fanatic lament of the chair. Ratan was seemingly a monster in front of me. Duhshasan! The Chair was crying like Draupadi. (I remember how Sarukan used to lament when he played the role of Draupadi at Bhaona, our village performance fair)!   

I, sometimes, control all my anger and forgive all. What was the blunder of that man who worked at a matchbox factory? What the offence the man from the biscuit factory committed? just like my grandfather made out his own universe - within the elongated portico making a partition full of starry designs with the fine bamboo sticks - they also, perhaps, confined their own universes within a matchbox or a biscuit packet!

Now-a-days we stay in the new house. New house. Big house. Made up of concrete: sand, iron rods, gravel and cement.

There are massive windows with equipped glasses. They pass sunshine sufficiently. But that bamboo screen with starry designs made by my grandfather is not there. My grandfather was among the Gods. He made stars. He brought the sky down and according to his own requirements restructured a tiny adorable sky of his own.  My father could make thousand of concrete houses, but, couldn't make that sky.

Anyway, have anyone of you seen the monster named Ratan? He might drag this chair up to here.  If he comes to my sight, I’ll grind his head in my grandfather's betel-nut grinder and chew him up.

Front cover of the book in Assamese

Back Cover of the book in Assamese

Three of the Performers at Nepal examining the spectator's gathering site

The Missing pages

Here is a Glimpse of the On-Stage Debate after the performance on the same text: