FROM BAD TO GOOD

“Mud sticks” – so goes an English saying. People remember and believe the bad things they hear about other people even if they are later shown to be false. But is this approach of forming opinion about others based purely on hearsay, justified?

THE FIRST TIME I went to a movie-theatre was when I was 12 and the experience is still within my memory. It was the most immense hall I had ever been in, crammed with row after row of maroon velvet-covered plush armchairs; so plush that when you sat on it, you literally sank into it all the way up to your hip. A maroon velvet curtain covered the stage, its hemline adorned with thick gold-tasselled ropes. From the centre of the ceiling hung a huge white-and-gold lotus-shaped frame from which hung an equally huge chandelier that cast mysterious shadows on us, almost giving the impression that we were in some kind of an enchanted cave. All along the cornice, little lights flickered like flames until a flute started playing. Then they went out, leaving us in hushed darkness.

I went back to see the place once – I had grown up by then and was in college. I found an air-conditioned market where the movie-theatre used to be. Although it made me sad, I felt relieved in a way, for, I can reminisce about it endlessly, without allowing my critical adult eye to ruin the spell.

And how did the characters, when they appeared on the screen, look? How do I describe it to you! To me, a girl from Class-5, who had never been taken to a movie theatre before, they looked like Gods! Their gestures were grand and true and touched something that I did not even know existed in me. The priest was dressed in an immaculate white dhoti and his ears were adorned with rings. His bald head shone with divine light and his wooden clogs clacked on the stage with an authority that made me absolutely still. The soldiers raised their deadly swords all at once as they marched, their shields decorated with glittery bronze studs; their commander wore a golden breastplate and shouted orders in a terrifying voice as he directed them to catch the thief. Even the thief, dressed in tattered clothes, with black circles under his tired eyes, and manacles around his ankles, was a creature right out of mythology.

For months afterwards, I’d act out the story at home, sometimes for my mother and sister but mostly for myself. I’d take turns acting out each of the characters: the saintly priest who provides shelter to the thief during a stormy night; the priest’s sister who warns him not to trust strangers; the soldiers who spy on the thief and raise an outcry. I improved on the dialogues as I went along by adding long, emotional harangues. I had found my life’s vocation. I told my mother that I wanted to become an actor and she smiled patronisingly.

Most of all, I enjoyed playing the part of the thief. In the middle of the night, visualising that the priest and his sister were asleep, I would rise from the bed, and tiptoe my way to the golden lamp in the alcove. My face would betray frenzy, transformed as it was into the face of a man calloused by the world’s indifference towards him. What did I care that the lamp was the priest’s only valuable possession? Sneering at myself, I swept it into my sack and climbed out of the window. When the commander caught me and brought me back to the priest for identification, I felt ashamed. I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the wall. “Do what you want”, I dared them all. It was only when the priest declared that he had given me the lamp himself that my hands began to tremble. My knees grew weak; I lowered my head to the floor and implored: “Forgive me; I am your servant for life”. The room resonated with applause from my sister and mother.

I thought about the play a lot over the next few years, even after I had exchanged my dream of being an actor for that of a judge. There was something about the play that kept nagging me. It was only later, after coming across another play of a very different kind that I realised what it was. I really liked the guy who stole the lamp; I really wanted to believe that he had changed into a good man in the end-but I could not. It did not help that our teacher told us that the story was from a novel written by a famous French author. People did not change from bad to good, just like that.

I bet you’re wondering what the other play was all about; well, it was Macbeth. Since it was part of our English syllabus for the 11th standard, I had to prepare well in the subject. A particular scene depicts Lady Macbeth trying to persuade Macbeth, who is very loyal to the king, into killing the King, when he visits the castle. Finally, Macbeth budges and that’s it.

Sometimes in the night, I found myself thinking about it. Why did not Macbeth see what he was getting into, I’d ask myself angrily. He was a smart man and pretty brave too. Why could not he restrain himself then or at least years later, when he started killing all and sundry - friends, women, and babies?

Let me tell you, this was not like me- I was the kind of girl who always relished running around with friends and fell asleep upon hitting the bed. If I ever entertained any thought, it was only about what would mum pack by way of lunch for school or how I would wangle a new Barbie. But the thought of what happened to Macbeth, scared the living daylights out of me. On a few occasions during that year, I dreamed about a lady (I did not know who she was) who inadvertently slipped into quicksand. To her it looked like a gorgeous tropical garden, vines copiously scattered with fruits, birds chirping, monkeys swinging from tree branches in gay abandon and then, just as she reaches out to grab a ripe mango, she slips, and before she knows it, she is into quicksand right up to her waist. She sinks further - up to her chest but still hoping against hope, she keeps shouting for help all the time. Eventually, in a last-minute effort, she stretches out her neck, not minding the mud that has penetrated her mouth and her eyes; she disappears after making one final effort when her fingers claw at nothing but the air, as they show in adventure movies. I would wake up from the dream in a sweat, my mouth smeared with clay. But the dream taught me an important lesson.

Good people turn bad, I believed it then and do so even now. I guess there are things we can do, to prevent ourselves from falling into quicksand; but most of us do not realise it until it is too late. What I want to know, before I sink further and disappear is ‘whether there is something out there I can grab to extricate myself from quicksand”; or whether is it true, as with Macbeth, that “once you start going bad, you may as well give up, because there’s no way back?”