Part 2 - A 'moving' performance at Garrick

I doubt that I will ever become a 'theatre personality'. But I do enjoy a play or so once in three years. But what I know for sure is that I am most likely to have been banned for life from the Garrick theatre at the Westend in London.

Having taken the connecting flight from Paris & having had my first encounter with the French language - I blanked out in front of the security officer when she let loose a barrage of sounds at me & later I pretended to move my lips to make the sound 'bonjhuuuur' the 'r' kind of fading into oblivion with a flourish - all I wanted to was what any sane man would wish on arriving in a foreign country - sleep. But unfortunately, my contribution to this trip started & ended at carrying the heavy stuff & so all my talking tough amounted to nothing. I suspect that men ceased to be the dominant sex the day women started to wear pants - in the house & everywhere else.

So I shrugged off my sleep & off we went - on the London Underground. Here I first got a sign of what compensation litigation can do to the social fabric of a country. At every other station there was an announcement - "Mind the Gap between the train & the platform" - no doubt put in place after a drunk guy lost his shoe between the train & the platform & went on to sue the underground for a million quid ! (All slang used in this article are country specific). The closest Indian railway annoucement that I could think of was "Women passengers should avoid sitting near open windows with easy access to chain snatchers" or "Avoid taking biscuits from strangers, they may be drugged".

After walking through Regent street, Trafalagar Square etc we finally reached the west end. On the way we asked 6 different folks for directions & got answers in six different languages all amounting to 'got no clue, mate'. It was here that I realised I had walked straight into a carefully laid trap, what with my partner having booked very expensive tickets for a Westend performance - 'One flew over the cuckoos nest'. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the bird folk would come back to haunt me after I had told their side of the story a few weeks back. It was starring Christian Slater, so it cant be that bad I thought. And then the performance began.

The first thing I noticed was that Christian Slater is actually quite short. The next thing I remember is waking up just in time to prevent headbutting the English gentleman sitting next to me. For the next half an hour I swayed from side to side, from front to back, almost fell off the chair & was rudely woken up a couple of times by laughter. The harder I tried to keep my eyes open, the deeper I sank. It would later turn out to be one of my most expensive moments of slumber. And just as I noticed that Christian Slater was actually quite short, the lights went out & I stood up to clap. My wife pulled me down just in time as apparently it was only halfway done.

I felt that the story was well told to its conclusion. Either way to prevent further embarassment, she agreed to leave. So like all the English folk, we got up as if to get a glass of wine & promptly slipped out of the theatre.

Till date, I have failed in giving a satisfactory explanation to my conduct.