14.02.2025
A: So what did you do on this Valentine’s Day?
S: I went to watch a theatre play, The Ophiolite. It was at this theatre which seemed to have quite a few Greek plays on. Probably someone Greek on the team out there.
A: Would you do Indian plays if you had a theatre?
S: Most probably. Who else does them in London? The sad truth of the world is that you have to do things for yourself that no one else would do. That is the state of humanity. You would like to do everything for everyone. But in fact, you are only allowed to and only can do things for yourself. You would like to be included with everyone. But you can never really be included anywhere else but in the small world that you came from.
A: But you have those from outside your world, your friends, the one that is yours. How can you say this?
S: We are talking about theatre. We are talking about representation. We are talking about the wider world. Not the world of intimacy.
A: You write plays. You are always writing dialogues.
S: Is it a dialogue? Or is it a conversation with the self?
A: What did you make of this play, The Ophiolite?
S: I sat there with a belly full of Turkish kebabs. Hearing them talking about the Turks.
A: Come, I will ask again. What did you make of this play?
S: Greek culture is like Indian culture. We are the ancient cultures that exist into the present.
A: The Greeks do not think that they are Indian.
S: They are our children. We are the most ancient culture.
A: I’m sure the Chinese would beg to differ.
S: We Punjabis, we are the fathers of this world. We are the ones that invented the mathematics that would shape the world. We invented the university and every form and structure of learning that followed.
A: Come to the play.
S: It is about the family. It is about The Mother. It is about the Orphan. It is about Cyprus. It is about love across cultures. It is about how Britain tries to shape the children that come from a marriage across cultures. It is about family and its delusions, its grasp of total purity. It is about the clash of cultures, about the seismic tectonic clash of cultures. It is about mourning. It is about inheritance. It is about Antigone. It is not about Oedipus. It is about Elektra. It is about dying. It is about the law. It is about deceit and it’s relationship with love. It is about fairness. It is about colonialism. It is about postcolonialism, although there is no postcolonialism and only colonialism. It is about romanticism and truth. It is a metacommentary on the theatre tradition from Ancient Greece to Chekov. It is about the nature of understanding and misunderstanding. Above all, the play is about anger.
A: You are the angry. You are the one that rages. You are The Tiger. Only you could understand this play.
S: Only the honour culture understands this play. Because it is fundamentally about honour. Honouring the dead. And honouring the father.
A: If this is about your culture, then why do you say that the Greeks do not think they are Indian?
S: Ask the Greeks why they think so.
A: What did you make of this play?
S: It was the unfolding of passion. It was deep. It was the expression of rage and separation. It was the contest of power between the entities in the play. The younger against the older. The young as the hope for the future. The tense relationship between tradition and modernity, belonging and individualism. The meaning of the nature of freedom in a colonial context. And the law’s orchestration of this freedom and the future.
A: You see much.
S: I am India. We are the Eye of the World. We are the Voice of the World. And we are the Heart of the World.
A: You are performing. You would talk about a play within a play, like Shakespeare.
S: Shakespeare was not as inventive as I am. Because my life is the most engrossing drama that has ever been concocted. Pieces of interest make up this metalwork that is my existence.
A: What do you look at when you watch this play?
S: I watch the drama of the face as the expressions dance upon it. I watch the dance of the bodies and the hands and the legs. I watch the postures adopted. The actions taken. It was all energetic. The acting was electric.
A: Was it natural?
S: The intensity was unnatural. That is why it was conflict and drama. This electricity would confound the world.
A: You too have this intensity within you. You are far from natural. And you play with words which none can stand.
S: He that is the poet would play. He that is the fire would erupt.
A: And in the ending of this play, what was there?
S: Hope. And love.
A: A good ending?
S: I would question whether there was ever hope.
A: You have told me that you are an optimist.
S: I am a realist and a cynic.
A: You would question if there was love?
S: I am the lover and the poet. I am love. I am the god of love. How could I deny my own existence?
A: Well, it is well then that you watched a play about love on Valentine’s Day.
S: They often write of love. They often act of love. But the question is, do they love? And of that, there is no certainty.
diary of a lone man 