Tapping into one's past - Noushad from India, playing the SOLDIER in 'The Spirits Play' shares his childhood and growing up years

1st week of rehearsal - Moment, experience, recollection, stillness-to-analyse-myself, words-to-performative-thought and then body exploration with limited but complex set, struggles and conflicts between actor to character and vice versa. wha!!!....... Good, creative, relaxing and enjoying time with Heng Luen and our six GREAT 'Spirited' actors, including me.

Day by day, I am seeing Kerala (India) closer to me as i work through my text translation from English to my mother tongue, Malayalam. Really, my home village is also like the character MAN's village as mentioned in 'The Spirits Play'. There are big rice fields, canals, rivers, mountains, the landscape is full of greeneries. In my childhood, I helped a lot for farmers who were working in our rice field, such as bringing food from their homes to the fields on time, carrying the bundle of rice plants in the big cane baskets, washing the mud from the roots from one field to another.........planting, fertilizing, ploughing , storing water from the brooks to field ,shaping the borders of the field. When we go back home after the work from the field, I cleaned the bullock, buffalos and ploughing tools from the canal. And the smell of the sweet, happy working farmers, planting women in diffrent lines - their comments, the birds, cranes, crow,s mienas, pigeons..........the smell of the field, the touch of the rice plants, the smell and chemical action of the fertilizers (ammonia, uria, potash, ashes, cow dung etc.)

Wow.......its like re-opening up a can of memories again now through this play i am performing in.

My school days - I could see the Centrel Reserve Police Force (CRPF) doing excercises -running, marching and walking from 7 am every day . Their tall height and strong personality, their duty and their energy impressed me very much. Two time, I tried to join the CRPF in 1984 and1985. But my short height means I couldn't enter even the main gate of the camp; there was one measuring rope tied across the main gate of the camp whose height is about 1 meter 70 cm. Well, if you are in standing position and your head touches the rope , you will move onto the physical test. But I was unlucky. I prepared myself for the next year; running, jumping, chin up (hanging in tree) push up etc. But I was also unlucky the next year. Then I never tried again.
Two of my uncles were in militery those days. One was stationed in Punjab and another was in Kashmir. They discouraged me to join the police force when they came back for holidays. Because of their training, routine, duties and responsibilities, they shared thier loneliness and emotional experiences in the camp in front of my parents. My parants discouraged me further. I finally took all advice not to join the police force. But still I love those heroes who are fighting agianst terror and harsh weather.

JAI HO...........Now I am the man, playing the SOLDIER (I can finally tap into my childhood spirits as I rehearse this play in Signapore) and I am going to revisit all these old memories to re-create my long-lost CHARACTER.

Noushad, India, based in New Delhi, born and raised in Kerala