The tabla beats – two bass heavy sounds followed by a sharp tap – welcome us, the audience, into the theatre. We take our seats. The tabla makes it impossible for us to fidget or make small talk with each other. The empty stage with a single spotlight and the dhing-dhing-tap ensures we’re in a bubble.
A woman enters the spotlight. The volume of the beat reduces as an introduction to our performer. She’s wearing a yellow and green checked saree over a green blouse. She has red alta on her hands and is wearing what looks like a mask. On closure inspection we realize it is a mask because of the way the smile is painted on it.
The rhythm of the tabla beats change in preparation for the story she will be telling us today. It is a love story, but what kind we know not yet.
She starts slow, her movements are fluid almost lethargic as she tells us about her childhood, the love she had for the tree growing in her house, the way she embraced impossible dreams, not letting practicality put chains on how far she could fly.
The dance becomes broader, bigger, unsustainable as she progresses through her life story, adding more masks to the one she’s already wearing. We wonder how she’s able to bear the burden of it but since we cannot see her face, we find no answers.
The beats match her grandiose movements, making us sit up and pay attention. We know a break point is coming by the number of times she whirls, jumps and crawls across the stage. It’s as if she’s compelled to show us just how happy she is.
Her dance comes to a pause, her body in perfect alignment as she looks at her hands in a mudra above her head. Not even a hair is out of place but we can feel she’s breaking. The top-most mask has a crack, right where the smile has been growing impossibly bigger, bigger, bigger.
She may be at pause but the music is not. It swells, a cacophony of discordant tunes, shrill strings and sharp tabla taps. She starts to move again but is unable to find her previous rhythm. It feels like she is moving in a different spacetime from the music. We’re at the edge of our seats. We press our hands to our ears and close our eyes to escape. We know she is going to break and we cannot bear to witness it.
Then it happens. The top-most mask breaks with a loud crack. The spotlight switches off for a moment but it is marked in the audience’s gasp. As the spotlight comes back on, the music has stopped and she is on the floor, the two halves of the mask on her left and right, a poor mimicry of a smile.
The silence in the theatre is so absolute we can hear her breathe. It stutters as it goes in and whooshes as it comes out. We can tell she’s trying to get her bearings back and none of us move for fear of breaking her concentration.
It stretches, the quietude. We have nothing to distract ourselves, no spectacle to focus our discomfort on. Why isn’t she moving? Why isn’t the music helping her find her ground again?
Just when we feel we must do something to break the stifling vacuum, we hear the faint strains of the dhing-dhing-tap. We’re holding our breaths as the tabla changes to tap-tap-dhing before going back to its dhing-dhing-tap.
We breathe as we see our performer move, then straighten. The mask on her face does not have a smile this time or slits for the eyes to see through. But we feel no urge to help her. We know now that this is her story, and we’re only the spectators.
Her head cocks to one side, as she listens to the tabla beats. It is her hands that catch them first as they start to move. She stretches her legs out in a graceful swing and her ghunghroos twinkle in the spotlight. She stands and begins her dance again.
There is a difference in how she is moving now. It’s not as brash as it was in the beginning but the fact she cannot see is bothering her. The tabla beats are shrill, the various instruments still not in sync with our performer.
Finally, she puts her hands on the mask and pulls. The music immediately drops to a more soothing melody, a gentle encouragement. She pulls, and pulls and pulls and with a sucking sound, the mask comes off her face. She looks up and we get our first glimpse of her face.
There is a mirror to her right and she catches her eye, as the mask falls and shatters. She raises a hand to touch her face and smiles a small smile. A real smile. Her joy is infectious and we jump to our feet to give her a thunderous applause.
She dances, facing the mirror, facing herself and the dhing-dhing-tap of the tabla follow her rhythm, and the love she has discovered for herself.
She’s dancing still when we exit the theatre. The performance lives with us, as we try to find our own masks. It is underneath those masks that we not only find ourselves, but also the courage to love what we do find.
This post is a part of Remembering Love Blog Hop hosted by Sukaina Majeed and Manali Desai.
tales of Suchita 
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