Kabaddi Kabaddi Kabaddi by Satinder Chohan Kabaddi Kabaddi Kabaddi Copyright © Satinder Chohan 2012 Satinder Chohan is hereby identified as the author of this work in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Writer has asserted her moral rights to be identified as the author of the work PLEASE NOTE: All rights for the performance of this play are strictly reserved. No public performance on any scale live or in any digital medium may be given without the express permission of the author in the form of a performance licence which must be requested in advance from the author c/o Kali Theatre. This includes using extracts for auditions, in compilation productions and or in teaching classes. You may not copy, duplicate, distribute or disseminate this publication (or any part of it) in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Kali Theatre. This includes using extracts or quotations in essays, books or teaching material. First performed by Kali Theatre and co-produced with Pursued By A Bear Theatre Co.at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester on November 8 2012. Published by Kali Theatre Ltd The Albany Douglas way London SE8 4AG [email protected] Front image by Luke Wakeman 2 CHARACTERS 2012/1936 ESHWAR – Punjabi illegal immigrant in his late 20s SHERA – British Punjabi businessman in his late 20s AZADEH – Punjabi illegal immigrant in her late 20s FAUJI – Punjabi kabaddi player in his late 20s PAVAN - Punjabi kabaddi player in his late 20s AZADEH - Punjabi freedom fighter/kabaddi player in her late 20s Characters double as follows: FAUJI/ESHWAR PAVAN/SHERA AZADEH/AZADEH 3 ACT 1 SCENE 1 LONDON 2012 Rooftop Day 1, Friday, Late Afternoon A large cloud of dust dances on the slanted roof of a tall, detached suburban house, then slowly clears. The dissipating dust reveals a maze of structures, scaffolding and makeshift platforms, through which the gargantuan structure of the Olympic Stadium dominates the skyline. ESHWAR saws a plank of wood and occasionally stops to blow off the dust. He wears a Union Jack T-shirt, jeans, trainers and workman gloves. SHERA wears casual clothes and exercises with random tools, flexing his tattooed arm muscles back and forth in time with the sawing. SHERA stops and tries to distract ESHWAR. SHERA: Kabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddi… ESHWAR drowns out SHERA with workman noise. SHERA: Two days. Only two days Eshie - ESHWAR [stopping work]: Ho nay Shera. Give me more time than that - SHERA: Til my Olympics bhudoo! Til I win gold, like my Pardada did. Club UK vs Club India! ESHWAR [resuming work]: Hain, hain, only two days to the Mela… SHERA continues trying to distract ESHWAR, chanting loudly in his ear. SHERA: Kabaddikabaddimadiphudi! KabaddiKabaddimadiluchi! KabaddiKabadditerigandikachi…! - ESHWAR [pushing SHERA away]: Oh baas kaar yaar. SHERA: Aaja, let’s see who can hold their kabaddis the longest. ESHWAR: Mine dropped a long time ago. You’ll win easy. SHERA: I know I’ll win. Just want to see how badly you lose. ESHWAR: Shera Veera, let me leave on time today. You’ve hit me with so much overtime lately, I’ve been arriving just as I’m leaving – SHERA: Quick kabaddi game - just words, no moves - ESHWAR: No words, no moves - SHERA: Ek, doh - ESHWAR: Ho tera palla - SHERA: - tehn, challo! SHERA/ESHWAR: Kabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddi… ESHWAR runs out of breath. SHERA: Kabaddi! Balle balle! I win! 4 SHERA bhangra dances around the rooftop. SHERA [turning]: Best of three - ek, doh, tehn, challo! SHERA/ESHWAR: Kabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddikabaddi… ESHWAR runs out of breath. SHERA: Kabaddi! I win again! Ek, doh, tehn - ESHWAR [raises his hand]: No need for a decider. You won. SHERA: London dust choking your pendu lungs? ESHWAR [resumes work]: Can’t breathe like I used to. SHERA: Shallow city Freshie Breathie. Learn to breathe kabaddi deep again. ESHWAR: It’s become a foreign boli to me. SHERA: Then join our Club UK Dream Team. ESHWAR: Yaar, this isn’t Punjab, where even after a hard day in the fields, we had enough left over for kabaddi. Who wants to play after a cold, wet day on a building site? SHERA [flexing his muscles]: I’ve always got plenty left over. ESHWAR: You’re your own boss. SHERA: Still have to run my empire. ESHWAR: Ask that girl to join your team. SHERA: Which girl? ESHWAR: The one who came to see you, last week. SHERA: Asthma? Ashtray? ESHWAR: Azadeh? That’s her name isn’t it? She mentioned she used to play. SHERA [checking his watch.] I’d be lucky if Musla girl even turned up for a try out, seeing how late she is. ESHWAR: She’s meant to be here? SHERA: An hour ago - and I’ve got to go, finalise stuff for the match. ESHWAR: If she needs those papers, she’ll turn up. SHERA: Musla girl best not be bluffing. ESHWAR: Why would she? SHERA: Cos that’s what you Freshies do - cheat, fleece whoever tries to help you. ESHWAR: We’re not all like that Shera - 5 SHERA: Not a bad idea having her in my Dream Team though. ESHWAR: She’s got a strong physique. SHERA: Yeah, she’d look good in a super tight pair of kabaddi shorts. The boys would love holding her, grappling with her, opponents would get distracted by her - ESHWAR: I didn’t mean like that. ESHWAR resumes work. SHERA: I saw how you were looking at her. ESHWAR: I thought I recognised her. SHERA: From where? You never go anywhere except here and the Freshie shed. ESHWAR: She looked familiar, that’s all. SHERA: You were staring at her just a few ek-ment-three-skents too long… ESHWAR reaches into his pocket to show SHERA a photograph from his wallet. ESHWAR: Gindo waits for my calls, wherever she goes. SHERA: She can’t see what you do through the cell waves – ESHWAR: I’ve a first-born on the way – SHERA: He’ll do the same when he’s a man. ESHWAR: I came here for kham, not khel - work, not play. SHERA: You even know how much paise Punjabis throw at kabaddi these days? ESHWAR: My kabaddi days are dusted and done. SHERA: Other way. ESHWAR: Hai? SHERA: Done and dusted. Pause. SHERA: Eshie, don’t you miss it? ESHWAR [stops working]: When I saw through wood, blow off the dust, see it dance in the air…Or see the dust hang heavy over the city...Hain. I miss kicking up kabaddi dust in the Akhara. SHERA: Wish I’d learnt back in the Akhara. All that training’s lost on you. ESHWAR: I captained the village and district teams, played for Punjab state. Almost made the Indian team. SHERA: Acha? World ain’t built for almosts. ESHWAR: Got muscled out by a player on steroids. Vowed never to play again. 6 SHERA: Steroids, betting, match-fixing - Kabaddi’s a proper sport these days. Can see why it’s easier to jab a needle in the arm. ESHWAR: Veera, that’s not the kabaddi way. SHERA: Oh Kabaddi Guru, what is the kabaddi way? ESHWAR: When we chant it, ‘Ka…baddi’ tells us to fight a noble fight, live a noble life. SHERA: So that’s why you ditched your noble life, smuggled your illegal eagle ass over here? [Pause.] With all your Akhara training, I’d have made the national and Olympic team - if there’d been one. ESHWAR resumes working. SHERA walks to the edge of the roof looking towards the Olympic Stadium. SHERA: All those joke sports at the Olympics – goray on their koray, shooting plastic arrows, paddling toy boats – but no place for the greatest Indian sport of all? Buddha played it, Hindu Gods and Sikh Gurus played it, Maharajas and princes – still, it’s a joke. Even the British Army plays it. But the Olympics? No. [Pause.] Eshie, what do you think it’d be like to win gold in a stadium like that? ESHWAR: We’ll never know. SHERA: I will. At the Mela. ESHWAR: Mela’s no Olympics. SHERA: Gold is gold wherever you win it. ESHWAR [stops]: I used to love sitting in the Akhara, next to your Pardada’s statue, polishing my medals, dreaming of more glory to come… SHERA: When I went back this time, I sat by his statue too, polishing his gold medal - ESHWAR: You have it? You have his medal? SHERA: Yeah…[uneasily] but it’s a bit pagal how I found it. ESHWAR: Tell me. SHERA: So, I went back to supervise our new kothi in the village. Six storeys with a swimming pool on top! Just wait til it’s done. Anyway, I went to see the statue in the Akhara – Pardada moving like the wind [mimics the statue ‘kabaddi wind’ pose], when I noticed this old guy sitting on the edge. Long beard. Arms with ripped scars where he said bullet holes had been. Hands with no fingernails. Just spongy flesh. You know him? ESHWAR shakes his head. SHERA: He said Pardada buried a medal in the Akhara. I didn’t believe him but thought, ‘Why not look?’ So I dug up that whole blasted pit with my hands. ESHWAR: You dug up the Akhara? SHERA: Well, paid some pendu lackeys to do it. First, we found nothing. But we kept digging, digging, digging, til I found – ESHWAR: - the medal? 7 SHERA: Bones…wrapped in an Indian flag. ESHWAR: The Akhara used to be an old cremation ground. SHERA: That’s what the guy told me. ESHWAR: Coach always said Despur’s kabaddi players were strengthened by the souls of the dead.