One of the weddings and a funeral took place during rehearsal today, both being Juliet’s. We had arranged for the rehearsal to start at 9, at Aparna’s suggestion; naturally enough, at nine there were just three of us there, By about 9.45, a few more had drifted in, but nothing like enough for us to do as we had intended, a stagger-through the entire play from beginning to end. Which led me to give the sort of talk I have delivered over and over down the years, addressed not to those who were there, to those who weren’t. But so as not to have a complete wash-out on my hands, I told them we would rehearse whatever scenes we could, in order, staring with the end of the initial fight scene, with the Police chief castigating them all. And soon after that, enough others had arrived to allow us to keep going, right to the end of the play, stumbling our way along.
Most remarkably, one of the people who arrived was a new Pujari, more often to be seen in the nearby dairy, serving me my yogurt. There was no time actually to rehearse him in his scenes, but at least I suppose it gave him some sort of insight into what he had to do, and how he fitted in to the story.
At the end of the rehearsal, we had one of those ridiculous debates about what and when we could rehearse from now on, with all sorts of suggestions being made and rejected, but since some vital characters would be missing the next day, I decided to call it as a rest day, and ask the Pujari to return later that day in order to rehearse at least some of his scenes.
Aparna and I had been invited to a wedding during the day, by Anu, who was some sort of close relative to the bride, or groom, or someone. So I dashed back to change and then we set off, with Sabitra, in a tuk-tuk. It was taking place in the grounds of a temple, but the whole thing appeared to me more like some sort of festival, with loads of people there, all milling around pretty aimlessly. There was some sort of ceremony with the bride and groom in one of the buildings, though they were not allowed to see each other, and it was all a bit impenetrable, rather than a Christian wedding, which is arranged for public display, with everyone there witnessing it. Here, although there were some people in attendance, with some sort of pujari reading out of a book, and spirited drumming from time to time, for the most part, the people ignored the whole thing, and got on with eating, socialising, whatever, And after a very short time, that was what we did too, taking ourselves off to the food tent, where Anu used her privileged position as a close relative to flagrantly queue-jump the huge queue, and get us all a plate of food. Which was much as expected, and all right, without being in any way special.
I was invited to briefly meet the groom, and gave him one of the tea-towels Val had brought out as supplementary presents – it seemed a sensible opportunity to get rid of one of them – and then we left.
The afternoon rehearsal failed to happen. There were only three people who were supposed to be there, the most important of whom was the Pujari, and as he failed to arrive, the rest of us waited for a bit, and then we left too. I just have to pray that the Pujari’s non-attendance does not mean that he too has jumped ship.
