The drama of the domestics

Every ordinary day unfolds with it's performing players, the cook , the maid , the delivery boy.Meet the actors of I Nagar, a little woody nook in a busy, angry, cyber city.

THE EXTRA: An important player in every crowd scene
Babita , the cook cycles furiously down the road, with her lunch and her hanky clanging and fluttering against the handle bars . The reason why she is an extra in this everyday drama is because you will never actually catch her playing her part. Capturing Babita in any kitchen for more that 5 mins is an improbability. Before you can blink, she is gone. She is a unique professional. In this BPO city she likes to charge by the number of dishes she messes up every day. A little disaster package,a mini-caterer on wheels, whose only known ingrediants are chilies and karri putta. If you want to loose weight hire Babita.

THE ORDINARY MAN:A player who is the recipient of the chain of events launched by the protaganist
Every scene needs an ordinary man who cant quite wrap his head around the plot.
Door bells often ring with 'Sahadev-The Boy From Chapra'. A year back, this lad of the oily locks , used to peer out from behind his unruly fringe and gasp for joy when someone promised to pay him Rs 300 for washing cars. Then Sahadev was hired by a 'visiting fitness freak from international waters'. Instead of washing cars, the 3 footer's new job was to run behind the madum from 4 to 6 in the morning across 5 kms of granite city, carrying her water, fruits and possibly also offering a notional vestige of protection. Needless to say 'The Boy From Chapra' now sports sexy sneakers, designer tracks , a baseball cap , 2 mobile phones and a ear-ing. His madum has changed his style and aspiration quotient forever. Maybe one day when she leaves, young Sahedev will open a gymn and become Shay-The Fitness Guru.

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC:The comic element who lightens up the play
Uma, the neighbourhood charwoman fulfills this role with great aplomb. Uma is convinced that she should be in hospital. Uma has recently discovered that if one complains of exhaustion one can be admitted to nursing homes and be put on drip. This notion of the drip coincides with all the death bed scenes that Uma has viewed in Kannada cinema and as she glides across rooms barely touching the floor with her broom, she plays the role of the tragic heroine, who is breathing her last , exempt from the drip. Oh Poor Uma!

THE HERO:Important , because he sells the tickets
Bappan , a guard is one such hero. He is a cut above the other guards who loll around in their blue and bluer uniforms staring at the surrounding houses. Bappan does not wear uniform. He differentiates himself by holding a day job with a medical laboratory. He is a fair , smiley, helpful lad who has successfully positioned himself with the building dwellers as a Man Friday and not a guard. He picks up a quick buck here and there by moonlighting as a house agent, a delivery boy, an electrician, a payer of bills. Bappan owns a swanky phone which belts out the latest tracks..and yes, sometimes he listens to Inglis music. The maids all swash just a bit more , giggle and chat an octave louder ,when they pass by the house which Bappan deigns to monitor.

THE OHER ACTORS: Important players who complicate the plot on several layers , lending the audiance unanswered questions to take home , and hence feel intellectually challenged!
The other actors in the drama of the domestics are the delivery boy , the drivers, the man with the Iron and of course the people who live in their little EMI castles.
The delivery boy is a lean, mean, efficient machine. He belongs to a shop called,' Top In Town', and is something of an ATM with plenty of ready change bursting from his pockets.
The drivers play cards and compete with each others on cutting edge petrol pumps, with the best bloated bills.
The Iron Man, trundles with bags of overflowing clothes ,which he burns, singes and spoils.
He nurses great contempt for the owners of the apparel, a miserable bunch of people whom he believes, have no right to complain about his work, if they are too lazy to do it themselves.
The people.. Who are the other people who inhabit this world? You catch snippets of them rushing off in the morning to their jobs and rushing off for weekend getaways when the week is done. Otherwise they remain a faceless, nameless, transient population..with little to show of their existence . If it werent for all the main actors, who service their world..who would know of their presence?
Except the squirrels on the trees, and the autumn leaves which are sometimes brushed away by an unknown hand, the pot with the wilting plant which is watered occasionally, and once the crow espied an arm flicking a cigarette over the balcony sill. Poof....
The play can carry on with or without them..