Rehearsal Time

Rehearsing a group song

After many false starts, preparations for the Club’s Annual Day function gathered momentum today. Tentatively, the date fixed is September 3 (a Saturday) and the venue, as usual, is the Garden’s China Hut.
Like last year, the programme for the evening is being conceived as a convivial get-together for member’s families and friends. Packed dinner would be served; but prior to that, there would be a two-hour session of variety entertainment, showcasing the hidden talents of our members in the performing arts.
In effect, there would be songs and dances,

Jyoti distributes 'orange barfi' from Nagpur

including solo numbers, duets and chorus singing, antaakshari and children’s dance (by member’s kids). Unlike last year, we would also have a 15-minute skit in which most (if not all) members will get to demonstrate their acting skills.
Inspired by a real life incident involving us in the Garden, the skit has been scripted as a comic whodunit with inputs from the members/ actors themselves. In that sense, it is an absolute original. But more importantly, it would employ the classical Brechtian devices of demolishing

Rehearsals for the skit in progress

the distance between audience and performer with a surprise element at every turn. This has become necessary given the constraints of space in the China Hut.
As things stand, this 15-minute skit has already captured everybody’s imagination and even Santosh Tyagi and Nahid Khan are conjuring the most original and hilarious lines imaginable. When it was Shekhawat’s turn to play a blundering cop probing the loss of a gold necklace, he was completely true to character. Sample this:
“Where do you live,” Shekhawat accosts a suspect (Manisha Kolhe).
The lady gives an address.
“Who stays with you,” he probes further.
“My husband,” she says truthfully.
Now Shekhawat is stumped. Pauses. "At what time does he leave home?” he blurts out giggling, instantly triggering a volley of laughter all around. Unable to hold herself, Nahid nearly falls off her chair.
If this is the line of investigation Shekhawat pursues, he could possibly lose his job oops! role. But then, who cares, so long as everybody is having a jolly good time.