Beware the Ides of March

Beware the Ides of March

This famous line from Julius Caesar has a very important meaning for me. They remind me of horrible and good and funny incident of my life, which in hindsight taught me a lot. Read on... But Beware the Ides of March .

This incident happened in Nagpur when I was in the 12th standard. I was a student of Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan. They say "Bad habits are easy to acquire but very hard too leave....". How true! From my 4th till 10th I was in Bombay (Navi Mumbai to be accurate) where I was a decent enough student and basically a good guy. Life was cool (Basically life was basketball, TableTennis, Treks, Debates etc). Studies used to happen somehow or the other without too much effort. After my tenth we shifted to Jaipur where I got admission in a school which was considered to be the third best school of Jaipur. My first day in School was a cultural shock!! English in School - Nonexistant. Uniform - your Discretion. Attending Classes - you would be considered a freak if you attend all the classes of the day. Bunking School - Compulsorily once a week, preferably on Friday to see the latest movie release. Usage of Slangs in Speach - Are you nuts!! A sentence is not grammatically correct if it does not contain at least one slang. Well these were few of my observations. They say "When in Rome do as the Romans do". Within a week I became one of the crowd. Doing things as my classmates did. Buddies for life and Rowdies for ever!!

Circumstances forced us to shift to Nagpur, and that's where I was for my 12th. Very much in sync with my ways of Jaipur, I landed up for school in Nagpur. My first day in school was a cultural shock for the entire school! BVM (my school) is a very orthodox and methodical place. Everybody well behaved (well mostly), decency personified. And me!! I stood out like a sore thumb. Within a week I was infamous! I was in the bad books of every teacher. It took me a long time to make amends. Slowly I started behaving and carrying myself in a manner which was acceptable.

Months rolled on and soon it was annual day time. The whole place had a buzz. The annual day in BVM used to be a mega affair. A whole auditorium would be booked for three days. Day 1 - Dress Rehearsal, Day 2 - Annual Day for primary school and Day 3 - Annual Day for Secondary school. Our English teacher was planning a play, and for some reason she thought I should be a part of it. My interests lied somewhere else. I wanted to be the Compere for the show as the lady Compere was a person in whom I was very much interested. But what to do... the English teacher was hell bent upon having me in the play! When she told me that they were going to enact "Julius Caesar", I freaked out!!

Reading has been a passion for me right from childhood. I grew up on Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christe in my school days. My reading domain also constituted of some classics like Count of Monte Cristo (I had read the orignal 1400 pages version), Captains Courageous and likes. But Shakespeare was a big NO for me. With all due respect to the great man and all Shakespearians, he is good but not everybody can like him. I had tried to read Hamlet, I couldn't go beyond the first few pages. So knowing that the plan was to enact Julius Caesar and that too in pure Shakespearian language, it just wasn't my cup of tea. She asked me to just have an audition, and then the whole play committee would make the final decision. I saw my escape route. I would just have to mispronounce some words, stutter a bit and bingo! they would throw me out of the play. The next day I was given a script which had around 15 lines. I must have made atleast 20 mistakes while reading the script and stuttered many times. After having finished splendidly (as per my objective), I had a smirk on my face which said, you would be a fool to select me after that. I was totally dumbstruck when the teacher came to me and said that I would fit the bill perfectly for the role of "BRUTUS". Brutus!!!

Half knowledge is very dangerous

Brutus!!!. Things could have been worse. She could have selected me for the Role of Caesar!! That would be even worse. These were my thoughts as the inital shock wore off. My knowledge of Julius Caesar was pretty limited for reasons mentioned above. As far as Brutus was concerned all that I knew was that he killed Caesar, which was cool for me, and that made him the villain. My reasoning was simple, if I portray the villain it means that I won't have to mouth a lot of dialogs. At the same time my visibility would be pretty decent. Things were not so bad after all. So I gave my consent thinking that I might as well enjoy the whole thing!

The next day the scripts were handed over to us and final castings were decided. Two items and two more shocks for me. The smaller of the shock was that the role of Portia, wife of Brutus, was to be played by a girl with whom I had had a spat early on in the year and we were not at all on talking terms. When her name was annonced for the role of Portia, I burst out complaining to my teacher. I was properly castigated by my teacher and the stare that I got from that girl!!
The bigger shock was the script itself. Brutus was everywhere in the script! Brutus had more dialogs than the great Caesar himself. And there was a big speech in the final act. Half of the words in that speech didn't make sense to me! The whole world was crashing around me. There had to be some mistake. I mean if Brutus had so much to speak, then the play would be called BRUTUS and not Julius Caesar. When I took this matter up with my teacher, she looked at me as if I was from Mars! She asked me hadn't I ever read Julius Caesar? Didn't I know that the story continued much after Caesar's death. I was cursing myself. Half knowledge is dangerous. I should have got my facts right before commiting anything.

Miserable hours were spent in learning those toungue twisting lines. The rehearsals were even worse. One scene involved Portia on her knees saying something to Brutus after which he has to lift her, look into her eyes and say a dialog. That used to be really awkward. We hated each other like anything, and on top of that to enact a scene like this! The speech was another tough thing to master. I mean simple english would have been still ok, but that shakespearian language was really tough. Somehow days rolled on and with each passing day, Julius Caesar was less of a pain.

As I said the annual day was a three day affair. On friday we had the Dress Rehearsal in the auditorium and on sunday was the play. At the same time inter-school cricket matches were also going on. On Friday our school had a match. I was a part of the team. Now don't get this wrong. I am not much of a cricket player, but the team captain was my bench mate. So after lot of pleading and coercing I forced him to take me in the playing eleven. My time on the field was miserable. We batted first, I scored 2 runs before being bowled out. During our fielding I dropped a catch and misfielded couple of times. For some unexplainable reason the ball had fallen in love with me. Whereever my captain tried to hide me on the field, the ball managed to find me, but my hands never seemed to find the ball. Our coach was pulling his hair and I am sure whenever the ball came towards my direction, he would be taking gods name a hundred times per second. During the drinks break I got the firing of my life. My captain tried to substitue me, but the umpire obviously enjoying my fiascos refused my substitution saying lousy fielding did not qualify as valid reason for substitution. The only highpoint of the match was when a ball was hit towards me, the batsmen were so confident that I would misfield, they were walking while taking the run. I somehow managed to field properly, and by some divine intervention my throw hit the stumps. The batsman who was run-out just couldn't believe his bad luck. Inspite of me, we won the match. Our celebrations were short as most of us were also part of the annual day, and had to rush off to the auditorium.

My first action on reaching the auditorium was to pour a jar of cold water on my head. I had to wash away the agonies of the day. It felt good. We were supposed to go on stage at around 6.00 pm. We had put on the dress and were sitting, watching the other items being performed. Somehow I was not feeling very comfortable. I was feeling very cold and started shivering. Now this was unusual. So I went to get a cup of coffee. When I told my friends that I was feeling very cold, one of them touched my forehead and then shouted Madam! Saurabh has got high fever. She stared at me and said that this was not the time for playing pranks. She came over and checked, indeed I had fever (On checking at the doctor's place it was actually 103 C). I was rushed off to the doctor (who happened to be my cousin). When I told him about my foolishness of pouring cold water after a day out in the sun and then rushing into an AC room, he first scolded me, then gave a few pills and asked me to take complete rest. I went back to my granny's place, and the entire Caesar crew was there. Panic had set in. If Brutus can't make it then who will kill Caesar? The optimists in the crew believed that having one whole day in hand I would recover and be able to take part in the play. The pessimists decided to start practising with the prompter as Brutus, as he was the person who had almost the entire script mugged up. On hearing this the prompter got cold feet. My teacher had totally lost her nerve. On seeing all this pandemonium my granny freaked out. I was the center of attraction. Portia my wife of the play, who hadn't talked to me for most part of the year, was sitting beside my bed and mopping my head with cold water. This attention continued through to the next two days. By Sunday afternoon I was feeling much better and was able to move around. A car was sent to pick me up. After dressing up, I was made to sit quitely in a corner. Around three glasses of Glucose were given to me in a period of half an hour before the play. The play went of well. I did not make any goof-ups. There was a general relief all around. Except me. I was in misery! Remember the three glasses of Glucose before the play. All through the play I was fighting the urge to rush to the restroom!

The Roman ruler, Julius Caesar, was assassinated on the Ides of March, but for me the play was one of the most interesting incidents of my life.

On retrospection this incidence has taught me a lot. Since then I don't commit to anything unless and until I have all the facts cause "Half knowledge is really dangerous"!!

Until next week

Cherio