Chapter 11: The Director's Card

The applause had died away, but Kaurav remained on stage, holding Ishit's card between his fingers. The weight of it surprised him—such a small thing, yet it felt substantial, like a token of some understanding he had not quite grasped.

"Ronida is looking for you," Siddharthada called from the wings.

"Coming," Kaurav replied, but he did not move. Instead, he slipped the card into his wallet, beside the small photograph of his grandmother that he carried everywhere. Two touchstones now, two different kinds of inheritance.

The stage was already being dismantled around him. The technicians worked with the methodical efficiency of men who had done this countless times—lights coming down from the flies, cables being coiled, the elaborate set reduced to its component parts. Pintu struggled with the props, as always uncertain which items belonged in which bag. The sight stirred something in Kaurav. Not so long ago, this had been Vismaya's domain, and he had worked under him, learning the careful choreography of theater's end.

He sat on one of the wooden blocks that had served as furniture in the final scene and pulled out his checklist. Each item had to be accounted for. One missing prop could cripple the next performance, and they had learned this lesson too often. But as he worked through the list, his mind wandered to other inventories—the accumulation of experience, the slow collection of insights that had brought him to this moment.

"Will we get paid in Kolkata," Pintu asked, "or after Mysore?"

The question brought Kaurav back to the immediate world. He had learned, through theater, how different their struggles were. His own financial security had always been assumed, never questioned. But for Pintu and others like him, each payment was a calculation, each tour a risk. Yet Kaurav understood that his privilege, rather than freeing him, had in some ways constrained him. It had placed a distance between him and a vast section of human experience—a distance that no amount of goodwill could entirely bridge.

He shook his head at Pintu's question. The payment would come later, as it always did.

At dinner, he watched the troupe queue at the buffet with their usual cheerful disorder. Plates filled with improbable combinations—roasted chicken beside idli curry, sweets mixed with savories. He thought of Dharmaraj's recommendations for simple evening meals and smiled. Theory and practice, as always, existed in separate worlds.

He took only a masala dosa and chutney, avoiding the sambhar he had never liked. The taste brought back a memory of his mother, cooking dosas at Ruby's house and bringing them home for him. He had criticized the meal then, finding some perverse satisfaction in disappointing her. Now, months into this tour, he realized he had not returned any of her calls, had spoken to his grandmother only twice.

The dosa grew cold on his plate as he remembered another rehearsal, years earlier. They had been working on "Karna-Kunti Samvad," that impossible scene from the Mahabharata where a mother pleads with the son she had abandoned. Ishit played Karna, Pornadi was Kunti, and Kaurav had sat watching from the shadows.

Under the harsh rehearsal lights, he had seen something that went beyond the text. Not just the tragedy of war, but the uncertainty that lived at the heart of all human connection. Pornadi's performance had stirred memories of his own mother—not biological, but no less essential for that. And when Ishit had spoken Karna's lines about glory and heroism, Kaurav had found himself murmuring words that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than conscious thought:

"The sun sets in the evening, only to rise anew at dawn. But we can only return to lost time in our imagination, in moments of unguarded thought."

He had not realized he was crying until Ronida's gentle voice reached him: "This is why you are named Kaurav." Then the rehearsal had continued, but Kaurav had stepped outside, unable to bear the weight of recognition.

Now, staring at his untouched dinner, he felt nauseous. Siddharthada blamed the coconut oil in the cooking; Ronida suggested acidity. Neither understood that his sickness came from a different source entirely.

He thought of his younger brother Neer, twelve years his junior, living safely at home with their parents. His mother had chosen the name herself this time, without consulting their grandfather. Some small assertion of independence, perhaps.

The bus journey through the night felt endless. At 4:30 AM, Kaurav pressed his face to the window and watched the driver splash water on the windshield. Ishit slept against the opposite window, his face peaceful in the dim light. Kaurav wanted to step outside, to feel the night air on his face, but there was no stopping now.

Two years ago, fresh from graduation, he had wanted freedom from all systems—academic, social, professional. He had imagined a kind of moksha through withdrawal, through stepping away from the machinery of ambition and expectation. Instead, he had entered theater, which was perhaps the most demanding system of all—one that kneaded human emotion like dough, shaping it with relentless intensity.

Sometimes he thought he should have become a hippie, dropping out entirely. He had loved women once—he remembered Sohini clearly—but had never felt that complete surrender that seemed necessary for true partnership. Perhaps the capacity had simply never been there.

The two buses carrying them south cut through his thoughts as efficiently as they cut through the darkness.

Later, in Ronida's room, Kaurav found himself in the middle of a senior members' meeting. Ronida gestured for him to sit.

"The troupe is planning a festival in September," Ronida said without preamble. "We want your creative debut to premiere there."

Kaurav felt something shift inside him, like a door opening onto a room he had not known existed.

"A play I wrote?" he asked.

"A play you direct."

Epilogue

Five years later, during the manuscript discussions at Humphara Publishers following that year's Lok Sabha elections, the publisher Apurba asked with curious interest: "So which play did you finally direct?"

Kaurav replied without hesitation: "Dr. Faustus."

The answer contained everything and nothing. Like all the important moments in his life, it was both an ending and a beginning, a door closing and another opening onto possibilities he had not yet learned to name.