Onto the Stage - Slighted Souls and other stage and radio plays by BS Murthy (ebook reader web TXT) 📖

remain your pipedream forever.

Rajiv: But why?

Raju: They feel it’s like facilitating the delivery of a white elephant for my nursing.

Rajiv: Someone must be mad over there.

Raju: Well, to borrow from cricketer Mohinder Amarnath, they are a bunch of jokers anyway. Leave alone the mega term-loan for your proposed venture; they are dodgy about measly working capital to a profit-making unit!

Rajiv: How would that help me anyway?

Raju: Eureka! Why not I borrow from the prodding of the courts for out-of-court settlements?

Rajiv: Enough of borrowing my friend as the topic is about lending.

Raju: Oh, if only you are a little less impatient and our people have a little more alacrity. Of what avail is working capital once his unit becomes sick?

Rajiv: Is it your idea that I should wait to pick up that sick unit or what?

Raju: I’ve a much healthier mind than you may like to credit me with. What if you lay a pipeline to his oil unit with the margin money of your proposed venture for mutual benefit? Besides being sensible it sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Rajiv: You know I want to be an industrialist and not a money lender.

Raju: Be patient for once. What’s your problem if he takes you as a partner? Won’t that open the doors for some future projects of your own?

Rajiv: Instead, why not I take over the unit? Won’t your bank facilitate that?

Raju: But why should he sell it to you?

Rajiv: To follow suit, let me borrow from Casanova.

Raju: I suppose the topic is not about sexual exploits. Looks like you want to delve into it taking advantage of your wife’s absence.

Rajiv: Jokes apart, I tell you he had a better grasp of life being a playboy than you guys have of money being bankers.

Raju: Is it so?

Rajiv: During one of his sojourns, he had for co-lodgers a poor widow and her three daughters. Seeing him dole out money to all and sundry, when the hapless woman had gone to him to make up leeway, he sought as barter the charms of her eldest daughter.

Raju: What an indecent proposal!

Rajiv: Protest she did but to no avail. Why he was all logic, cold logic you may say. Whatever be his charity, he reasoned it out with her, it wouldn’t last forever and before long she would have to approach other men for succor. Well, their line would be no different from his and her response too could be the same. But for how long was the question. It was only time before she would lose hold on her daughters’ chastity. When push would come to shove at some future time, won’t she let them grant their final favour to someone or the other? That being the case, he said, why should he not be the lucky guy?

Raju: What an abominable fellow he was!

Rajiv: I don’t think so.

Raju: Well!

Rajiv: Lest she should mistake his character, he clarified that he wouldn’t have attached any strings if her daughters were plain looking.

Raju: Didn’t she spit on him thrice over in spite of that?

Rajiv: Well, she let him have her eldest one and he had the other two on his own.

Raju: Isn’t it an exploitation of the meanest kind!

Rajiv: Why, it’s life’s reality of the ironic kind. Logically seen, it’s very sound, but sentimentally approached, it’s all fury. Whatever, can’t you visualize the parallel?

Raju: I do see but as you know I won’t approve of it.

Rajiv: So be it. By the way, who’s the guy we were talking about?

Raju: He’s Sampath one of my valued clients.

Rajiv: What’s his background like?

Raju: Why bother about that when you are averse to my proposal?

Rajiv: How do you know he won’t be interested in my proposal?

Raju: Well who knows, ask Nayak who also happens to be his lawyer.

Rajiv: Whatever, don’t lose track of my application.

Raju: Don’t I owe it to my clients to pursue their cases. Now it’s time I attended to Rani’s errand. I will see your wife sometime later.

Ramya (voice over): Why don’t you come in Divya?

Divya (voice over): No, Ramya, Deva would have reached home by now. See you tomorrow, bye.

Ramya (voice over): Bye.

[Enter: Ramya.]

Ramya: Hi Raju garu, how is Rani?

Raju: She’s fine at my account and expense that is.

Ramya: Oh, all you men! Are you not worse for it when it comes to portraying the better-half as the worst-half?

Rajiv: But with the honourable exception of His Exalted Obedience.

Raju: Well, Her Exalted Eminence would be waiting for me, good night.

Ramya: Tell her Divya and I will soon catch up with her. Good night.

Rajiv: Good night.

[Exit: Raju as Rajiv sees him off. Ramya goes into the bedroom.]

[Curtains down.]

Scene - 2

 

[Curtains Up: The Rajivs’ drawing room and the adjacent bedroom.]

[Enter: An excited Rajiv into the drawing room yelling for Ramya. He drops his briefcase on the sofa and goes into the bedroom in search of her. Not finding her there, he goes backstage, yelling for her.]

Ramya (voice over): Why, what’s wrong with you?

Rajiv (voice over): That’s the problem with you middle-aged women.

Ramya (voice over): Okay baba, what has turned my old boy into a horny lad now? [Pause] Rajiv, don’t be mad.

[Rajiv, carrying a demure Ramya in his hands, comes out of the backstage and goes into the bedroom. He drops her in the bed and then draws her towards himself.]

Ramya: Wait until dark.

Rajiv: Is not sex the physical manifestation of emotional expression? Why, it’s the barrier-less bearer of man’s inner impulses.

[Lights are off as Rajiv cuddles with Ramya.]

[Lights are on as Ramya rearranges her dress.]

Ramya: If only we can turn the clock back?

Rajiv: What a thought when it’s time to leap frog in life.

Ramya: Beware of a fall dear.

Rajiv: Why not start a course in the art of pessimistic living. Just as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has his following, you’re sure to have your share of fame. Never mind my predicament as a celebrity’s husband.

Ramya: Be serious, your obsession to advance has become a drag on my life.

Rajiv: Relax Ramya; I’ve got a grip on the lifeline to success, almost that is.

Ramya: Looks like you are riding a bigger horse than ever.

Rajiv: It could as well be a carriage of four for the empress of my heart.

Ramya: And our Ravi the heir apparent to your industrial empire in the making. Why not summon him back from the States leaving his course in M.S. mid-course. Oh, my dream merchant, you give me nightmares really.

Rajiv: Let Nayak come to set your mind at rest.

Ramya: Why talk in circles?

[Rajiv leads her into the drawing room, opens the briefcase and pulls out a document and gives it to her.]

Ramya: What’s this?

Rajiv: Game changer.

[Ramya goes through the document.]

Ramya: Who is this Mr. Sampath by the way?

Rajiv: He’s a technocrat, a good one I may say, but with very little business sense.

Ramya: So he has put his unit up for sale, is it?

Rajiv: Well, not yet. It’s my idea to make him do that.

Ramya: But how!

Rajiv [pointing to the document]: By signing on the dotted line.

Ramya: Why should he sell his hatta katta unit to you? What wishful thinking!

Rajiv: It was nothing short of a miracle that he came thus far, in spite of the banker’s lending hand that is. He’s hard up for funds to run the unit and the financial stress is bound to make him wind up the show any time now. Won’t I grab that and proceed.

Ramya: Enough of this wild goose chase, I long to go back to our laid back times. You know I’m getting sick of you and your devious ways for quick bucks. Haven’t you inherited enough to last our lifetime and more? You’re not doing any badly either at your business. What could be a better setting for leading a contented life? Why this urge for more and more of the moolah?

Rajiv: Don’t you see this could be the document of our destiny?

Ramya: Or a pathway for frustration.

Rajiv: Wonder why you always sing a sluggish tune forgetting there is a woman behind every successful man?

Ramya: Maybe, to push him into the cesspool of greed only to find him dragging her along.

Rajiv: Isn’t it silly to dub the hard-nosed as greedy?

Ramya: Why, eying what is not your due is plain greedy, isn’t it?

Rajiv: The world doesn’t care how you make your money but weighs you with the moolah you have. Well, it’s the credo of the dull to deride success one way or the other.

Ramya: God save you, if you have one.

Rajiv: Don’t you know God helps those who help themselves.

Ramya: Isn’t it also said that those whom Gods want to destroy they make mad.

Rajiv: Besides your beauty nothing makes me madder than your madness.

Ramya: Don’t you know I’m mad with you because I love you?

[Enter: Nayak ushered in by Rangaiah. Rangaiah goes backstage.]

[Nayak greets Rajiv and Ramya, they greet him in turn.]

Rajiv: I thought you would bring Mr. Samapath along with you.

Nayak: I’ll come to that later. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting for too long. Blame it upon the hazards of our haphazard traffic.

Ramya: Don’t we, Hyderabadies learn to live with the pregnant traffic ever?

Rajiv [winks at Ramya]: Of what avail is an ever pregnant wife, what do you say?

Ramya: Is it a plea for bigamy? [Turns to Nayak] What do you say lawyer garu?

Nayak: I recall a limerick about the trial of a man who had three wives. When the judge had asked him, why three, the guy said, one is impossible, bigamy, sir, is a crime.’

Ramya [to Nayak]: What about having on hand my plaint for divorce?

Nayak: Won’t my conflict of interest rule that out.

Ramya: That is in spite of the notorious double tongue.

Nayak: Isn’t it a professional hazard? But I can put you to Rau.

Rajiv: You mean my class fellow Rau! Is he still going round the courts in his worn-out black coat?

Nayak: Soon he’s going to be sworn in as a judge of the Delhi High Court.

Rajiv: What, Rau, a high court judge, are you joking.

Nayak: Why, even as he was growing intellectually all the while, you got stuck in your belief that you had outgrown him.

Rajiv: Why didn’t you tell me before?

Nayak: Is your role model of success a low profile lawyer on the right side of justice?

[Rangaiah brings some tea for them.]

Rajiv: If it’s all merit well and good but if it’s a case of political pull God help mother justice. Rangaiah, don’t you recall my friend Rau who was always in our house, now he’s going to be a high court judge.

Rangaiah: Don’t I know you were closest to each other. Oh how you used to gossip in the name of combined study. I’m sure he remembers me too. Why don’t you invite him home?

Rajiv: Who knows he might put on airs now. Well, we will see. [Turns to Nayak] Have you got Mr. Sampath around? I’ve readied the agreement to be signed and sealed.

[Rajiv shows the document to Nayak who keeps it aside without going through the same.]

Nayak: Honestly, I didn’t have the heart to tell him to sell his unit to you. Don’t I know what he had to endure to realize his dream? But why did you raise the bar?

Rajiv: To lower the risk.

Nayak: What risk do you run by the way?

Rajiv: I don’t see the partnership on offer working out for me in the long run.

Nayak: Why it’s a win win deal for you in the short as well as the long run. I wonder why you fail to see it that way and wish I had the money myself.

Ramya: Why any doubt! It’s all fair and square whichever way one may look at it.

Nayak: Rajiv, it pays for man to go by the wifely instincts, won’t it?

Rajiv: But its no romantic matter is it? Why talk about a distant future in an uncertain life. If it comes to bargaining, it’s ten percent over its fair market value and I’ll let him keep his job by doubling his salary. What can be a better incentive than that?

Nayak: No denying if it were to be a