A Taste of Contaminated Love
- Peyali
- Aug 1, 2016
- 6 min read
Stage Play
Characters
HE
SHE
A Woman
Setting
A bare stage
[A chair, a woman is sitting holding a scrapbook in her hand. Silence, isolation,
recalling the past with ‘Him’]
Woman: Open scrapbook, succumbed into profound thought
[Lights shift. A Boy and Girl appear, sitting together enchanted and happy]
Girl: You’re so funny!
Boy: Looking, you mean!
Girl: Yes! Funny face!
[He touches her, they freeze, uncertainty. He lets her hand drop. Laughter]
Boy: I will miss you there. It will be difficult for me without you.
Girl: How long am I supposed to wait for you?
Boy: Not more then six months honey!
Girl: Even those six months will be like six long years.
[He holds her hand and planted a kiss on it, tears roll down her eyes]
Boy: Work baby! Will be back soon, wait for me.
Girl: Smiled! Woman: Turn pages. Scrapbook close
[Lights shift. She revels in her memory]
Huh! Those days! Those glorious days! Such hope! The state of mind which is
almost out of state! Anything was possible! Anything!
[Lights shift. Boy and Girl]
Girl: It’s perfect
Boy: You like?
Girl: It’s…amazing
Boy: Yup
Girl: Our own house.
Boy: Oh-huh! Dreaming?
Girl: Yah! Dreaming the dream of life [Pause] Our home, we’ll have children here,
in this place.
Boy: Children, yeah, may be, lots of sex, for sure.
Girl: You’re bad.
Boy: When it comes to you, always!
[They hug each other. Pause]
Girl: Are you sure this is what you want.
Boy: Pretty sure. I’ll put down a deposit.
Girl: No. I mean this, us, marriage.
[Pause]
[Lights flicker] Boy: Need. I need you. I do
Woman: Love! Love! The word is Love!
[The boy and girl kissed]
Girl: I need you too.
Woman: Scrapbook close.
[Lights shift. She dances wildly around the room]
One little hiccup! Otherwise brilliant! Brilliant! Those days not everyone has such
days! It’s something special! Some people never experience!
[She dances. Laughs. Sings. Stops. Silence]
Scrapbook open. Disenchantment
[Lights shift. Boy and girl]
[Girl…furious, raged, shouting on someone over phone]
Boy: What is it? To whom are you shouting like this and that to on my phone?
Girl: [with furry] that bitch called up again.
Boy: You cannot talk like this to anyone.
Girl: Yes I can! I could not bear what ‘she’ was saying about you.
[She threw his phone violently on bed]
[Lights shift. Woman nervous, lost]
Woman: When you trust a person more than your own self, when you believe in
Him/her even with your closed eyes at that time you are firm enough to ignore all
their flaws even if the whole world is against that person.
[Lights shift. The boy and Girl]
Boy: [Vigorously checking his last received call] you shouldn’t have done that. Girl: Why not?
Boy: Because. It was stupid
Girl: It was not. I was making things clear.
Boy: CLEAR? What is there to make it clear?
Girl: I was defending you!
Boy: You weren’t defending me.
Girl: I was!
Boy: From what?
Girl: From her! What she said!
[Lights shift. Woman: A third person, a lady, a phone call changes the entire
Ornamentation of relationship]
[Lights flicker]
Boy: No. You were mad. Your feelings were hurt. You threw a temper tantrum.
Girl: I could not just walk away- could I!?!
Boy: Why not?
Girl: People would have believed her!
Boy: So?
Girl: So! It isn’t true!
[Silence]
Is it?
Boy: Yup
Girl: all of it? Boy: Everything
[Paused]
Girl: Oh
[Paused]
I….I thought
[Paused]
I mean
[Silence]
You must think I’m really stupid.
Woman: Yes! Stupid! Naïve!
Boy: I don’t think that
Woman: He did! He knew!
Girl: Why her?
Woman: Stupid girl!
Boy: I don’t know. It just happened.
Girl: [confused, lost] you insisted her?
Boy: No, she insisted
[Pause]
Girl: Was she desperate with you?
Boy: What? No! Why would you think that?!
Girl: I don’t know
Boy: It’s none of you business what I did with her. Girl: What did you do? What exactly?
Boy: I’m not going to give you a play by play. It’s none of your business.
Girl: I think it is. It is my business.
Boy: I knew this would happen. That’s why I didn’t tell you.
Girl: You’ve been intentionally hiding this? Keeping it away from me?
Boy: You’re being really childish.
Girl: What else have you been hiding?
Boy: Oh, c’mon.
Girl: I’m serious. What else?
Boy: Yeah! I made do. C’mon I told you it just happened. The moment slipped
from my hands.
Girl: How can you be so casual?
[Pause]
I…mean, how can you talk like this? And you don’t think I have a right to know the
details?
Boy: It’s none of your business what I did; I did when I was away from you!
[Pause]
Girl: No. It’s not. Not anymore.
Boy: What’s that supposed to mean?
Girl: I don’t know. I have no idea. I’m just talking. Saying words.
Boy: Are you breaking up with me?
Girl: May be. Why not? Boy: Over her?
Girl: I can’t believe you slept with someone else! That’s when I am already there
in your life.
Boy: That was just an incident!
Girl: But you are still bothering her and rude at the same time.
[The Girl cries. Pause]
Hey. Hey. Come here. Its okay
[He holds her]
It’s no big deal. Just I did it out of nothing. I lost the power to think, what is right
and wrong.
[Pause]
Girl: I thought, I was the only one.
Boy: You are, now the only woman in my life.
Girl: why couldn’t you have just waited?
[Silence]
Woman: scrapbook close.
[Lights shift. She broods. Silence]
One little thing!
[She thrashes about wildly. Bang her hand on the table]
One blemish! One impurity!
[She holds the pillow and threw it down harshly into the ground]
A clod of dirt! To be stepped on! [She hesitates]
So stupid. A waste
[Pause]
I wasn’t innocent myself
[She tears the pillow]
It was all your love.
[Silence. She stands motionless…in a deep thought]
Scrapbook open. Regret
Woman: The one who always ready to compromise.
[Lights shift. Boy and Girl]
Girl: We’re about to get married!
Boy: So?
Girl: I have a right to know!
Boy: I thought we were past this.
Girl: Well, We’re not!
Boy: If you really loved me, you’d forget about all this. You’d accept me for who I
am. You’d love me for it.
Girl: That’s not who you are.
Boy: Enough of it! It’s just baggage. I slept with few girls.
Girl: A few?
Boy: Yes, a few. So what?
Girl: How many? Boy: It doesn’t matter.
Girl: Not just her?
Boy: No. Not just her.
[Silence]
Girl: How I am supposed to walk around town? How am I supposed to look people
in the eyes? In the grocery store, in the beauty salon! Every gal I see, I’ll wander
if she’s seen you, been with you. I’ll picture you in bed with every stranger.
Touching them, pleasing them…
Boy: Why would you do that? Think something like that?
Girl: I can’t help it.
Boy: what’s wrong with you?
Girl: How many?
Boy: Stop!
Girl: How many have you fucked?
Boy: Don’t say that word.
Girl: Fucked!
Boy: It isn’t like you.
Girl: This whole thing is just an illusion! There’s nothing real here! It’s melting
away!
Boy: This is so stupid!
Woman: Stupid! Yes!
Boy: I can’t believe you are taking this so dam seriously. This is something very
usual at this age. Girl: Well, I was serious!
Woman: Idiot!
Boy: Had I not told you about my affairs before?
Woman: Never! Not once! He didn’t say!
Girl: No. I just thought.
Boy: You were wrong.
Girl: Yeah. I was wrong.
[He touches him]
Don’t touch me.
[Pause]
Boy: So…I’m not good enough for you now?
[Pause]
I’m not a good boy anymore?
[Silence]
Woman: [To the Girl] Say something! Say something!
[The woman wanted the girl to ask the boy about why he did that to her? Why
the hell he played with her emotions? Why he made a fool of her? She desperately
wanted all the answers]
Alas! She could not.
Scrapbook, woman, turn over the pages.
[The Boy and Girl freeze. The woman approaches. She stroke’s the boy’s face]
Woman: The word love! How can it be love? This is contaminated…dung…a shit!
[Pause]
It was me who had lost her sense of thinking, realizing.
[Silence. She turns away]
Woman: Closes the scrapbook.
[Lights Flicker]
[The Boy and Girl remain frozen]
[Pause]
[Lights fade on the Boy and Girl. Then the woman]
A woman gives her trust and it is thrown away like garbage…
“The words emitted from your vocal cord are like venom
A Snake you were, looking intensively into my eyes and soul
So delicately conspired your plan, to assassinate me from my deep inside
Skilfully you weaved your web in which I with blindfolded eyes got trapped
All which was open was my trust
You deceived, I believed
I embraced a love, which is contaminated in true sense
Life’s lesson to women”
Curtain falls…
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