Shortlisted at the 2023 International Literary Prize, Hammond House, UK.
Shortlisted at the Short + Sweet South India 2024 Theatre Festival for staging in Tamil in September at Prakriti Foundation, Chennai by Director Vyshali Jeevu.
Sudha – 32, stout, laidback, lazy, lower middleclass housewife.
Kavitha – 29, thin, fidgety, hyperactive, lower middleclass housewife.
Prakash – 38, stout. Car mechanic. Tired, overworked. Working class man.
Side characters – Sudha’s toddler, imaginary shop manager, imaginary police cops.
SETTING
Lower middle-class society/neighborhood of Coimbatore, Tamilnadu.
TIME
Over two days, two nights.
ACT I
Scene 1
Sudha’s balcony, Coimbatore, day
Coimbatore a district in Tamilnadu, India.
SOUNDS and SIGHTS of the morning: cars being washed, traffic jam on some streets, children rushing to school, officer-goers to work, collegians to college. Vendors with fresh carts of fruit. Maids rushing to work. Janitors and sweepers. Or projected footage on a screen in the b/g.
Scene 2
Sudha’s drawing room, Coimbatore, day
Sudha (32, obsessive) stretches and enjoys songs from the radio/TV. She sits un-ladylike and slurps her tea, scratches her armpit.
The house is quiet. Her husband and kids have gone to work & school. Her main door is unlatched.
Kavitha (29, fidgety) barges into Sudha’s house. They smile at each other knowingly.
Sudha nods.
They rush in to –
Scene 3
Sudha’s bedroom, Coimbatore, day
Sudha and Kavitha tiptoe in. Sudha’s toddler baby sleeps in the cot.
Sudha opens her cupboard and brings out the loot.
A pair of gold jhumkha earrings – exotic
diamond-encrusted, glinting peacock-green in the sunlight.
Kavitha and Sudha admire it, stunned.
KAVITHA
Who could craft such divine beauty? Why are beautiful things always expensive? Why not free like the sun, moon, and stars?
SUDHA
If I went out wearing these, my tongue would be tied! Everyone knows Prakash is just an appliance mechanic. At least yours has a new scooter.
KAVITHA
Let me try them on?
SUDHA
Eh, these are mine.
KAVITHA
Yeah… but last time you took the bra?
SUDHA
But I let you try on the corset na?
KAVITHA
And those high heels with the shining gold buckle… those too went to you.
Sudha hesitantly gives in. Kavitha clasps the earrings to her ear lobes. She looks dazzling in them.
KAVITHA
How much did you say?
Sudha gathers dry laundry from the master bed and begins folding them.
SUDHA
(whispers) Thirty-five thousand!!
KAVITHA
Tell me, really. The plan was mine. I spotted them. So many rounds I made to check on their well-being.
SUDHA
Oh-ho, who tells you of every discount, every bargain, eh? The plan to hook them off was mine! More intelligence required!
KAVITHA
At this rate when am I going to get anything?
SUDHA
Array, you can always come here and hire it from me, no. Have I ever said no to you? You know when there are no trial rooms how difficult it is to get anything from under those hawk’s noses?
The toddler stirs and begins crying. Sudha rushes to it, carries it, and coos it.
KAVITHA
I don’t know if you noticed, but there were eyes!
Sudha squints.
KAVITHA
Didn’t you see the CCTV camera?
SUDHA
Where? Was there any? What are you saying?
KAVITHA
You know how these things are. Cameras keeping an eye on everything. What if they caught us and a recording is handed over to the police?
SUDHA
No…
KAVITHA
With a thing that expensive…. I feel guilty now.
Kavitha marches around the bedroom.
SUDHA
What are you doing?
KAVITHA
Where are the newspapers kept?
SUDHA
Outside.
Scene 4
SUDHA’S drawing room, Coimbatore, Day
Sudha follows Kavitha with her toddler on her waist and a bowl of puree.
Kavitha rummages through the newspaper old pile stacked in corner, and fishes out one or two and finds the third one… and opens its third page.
Sudha spoonfeeds the toddler.
KAVITHA
Here! They talk of a case just like… ours. The woman thought she was safe after picking lingerie off a shelf
…till the police knock on her door. Read it.
Sudha grabs the newspaper to read the article.
KAVITHA
SUDHA
Imagine the constables digging their dirty fingers into our arms, taking us away.
The whole neighborhood complex watching us as we are shoved into a van.
KAVITHA
Just outside our society gates…
SUDHA
Every passerby worth his salt staring, laughing on and spitting at us.
KAVITHA
And Subodh and Prakash coming home to know their wives are stealers going to jail.
SUDHA
Oh God! Why didn’t it strike me? I was so mesmerized by these. But maybe the camera angle wasn’t right? Maybe it didn’t see us?
KAVITHA
You might want to wait and see what the police have to say in a day or 2. But till then what? Live in fear?
Will you be able to wear them without guilt?
Sudha sets the toddler into its play ring.
KAVITHA
We can be more careful next time, but this time just return them…
SUDHA
Think one last time. If the cameras have not caught us, we would be fools to give them up.
KAVITHA
If we kept them, whose would they be?
SUDHA
Yours, baba! You spotted them first. But now these will dangle at our ears like swords. But remember henceforth whatever I like first would be mine. Now let’s return these before anything happens.
Kavitha grazes her fingers over the earrings, sadly.
KAVITHA
All I ever had was artificial junk or these tiny gold studs my mother gave me. How would we do it? What would we say?
SUDHA
…that we found it in our shopping bags when we returned home. Someone put them there by mistake. Maybe a shop girl…
KAVITHA
And would they believe us?
SUDHA
When we are returning it anyway, what do you think? Would they care?
The wall clock CHIMES. 1 o’clock.
SUHDA
Dhiti will be home any minute.
Sudha ushers Kavitha out of the door.
SUHDA
First thing tomorrow! Meet me at the gates. Come well dressed. We will hand them these in front of all in the shop. Let them see how honest we are.
KAVITHA
Can I keep them with me for the last time tonight?
SUDHA
They are safer with me.
Kavitha sadly leaves the earrings with Sudha.
Scene 5
Building staircase, Coimbatore, Day
Sudha rushes out to remind Kavitha, as she descends the stairs.
SUDHA
Play it out in your head, okay? Remember all the plays you enacted in school. Make it seem real. I will revise all my drama classes. I don’t want the shop to say we stole them and now we’re returning them out of fear of the police. They should believe us. If possible, also reward us for our bravery. Meet me at the gates tomorrow at 10 am!
Kavitha nods her head and leaves.
ACT 2
Scene 6
Sudha’s kitchen, Coimbatore, night
Sudha makes dosai winding and winding a little bowl on the pan, absentmindedly.
She stops and mimes the return of the earrings. A stoic, honest look comes on her face.
Scene 7
Kavitha’s bedroom mirror, Coimbatore, night
Kavitha too mimes that she won’t accept a reward for her honesty. Tcha! This was her duty to return what is not hers.
Her young kids run in the b/g, creating a ruckus.
Scene 8
Sudha’s bedroom, Coimbatore, night
Prakash (38, stout) sleeps and snores near Sudha.
Wide-awake Sudha waves out to the imaginary crowd who are clapping for her over her honesty, celebrating her. She is being interviewed by a newspaper reporter.
INSET on screen behind – NEWSPAPER HEADLINES
Freshly printed newspapers spin to show Kavitha’s and Sudha’s photographs with headlines –
(THE TWO HONEST WOMEN OF COIMBATORE) (THE TWO MOST HONEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD)
Scene 9
Kavitha’s balcony, Coimbatore, night
Kavitha answers an imaginary TV interviewee. SOUNDS of canned audience and applause.
She tilts her proud head, widens her eyes and smiles.
Ramp walks with graceful gait, posture, and poise as she poses in front of adulating photographers.
ACT 3
Scene 10
Sudha’s building gates, Coimbatore, 10 am
The morning unfurls. Vendors with fresh carts of fruit arrive. Maids rush by.
No sight of Kavitha and Sudha at the gates. Peaceful, BLANK morning.
Scene 11
Sudha’s balcony, Coimbatore, morning
The wall clock says 11 am.
Sudha and Kavitha – both serene – sit on chairs sipping coffee, staring into the distance.
KAVITHA
I dreamed of the store manager. And guess what he said? He was maha-grateful. He looked at us with pride – Never mind that he was fat, bald, and quite ugly.
SUDHA
No! No! He was thin, pimpled, and bespectacled.
KAVITHA
In my dream he wasn’t.
SUDHA
My dream was true-er…! What gratitude and thankfulness
he had on his face.
KAVITHA
He had a mole on his left cheek closer to his chin.
Sudha clasps her ears shut.
SUDHA
And the building people who had never ever praised us, were clapping so hard for us.
KAVITHA
I got interviewed on TV. The audience went mad with inspiration.
SUDHA
Sudha carefully opens her handbag and brings out the earrings wrapped in gift-wrapping paper, and places them on the table.
Amazing how pleased they all were with us. How wonderful it is to feel appreciated, na?
KAVITHA
And forgiven.
Sudha delicately clasps the earrings onto her earlobes.
KAVITHA
(smiles)
Beautiful, my Quin Elizaaabath.
The morning passes by.
Rochelle Potkar is a prize-winning poet, author, and screenwriter based in Mumbai. Author of Four Degrees of Separation (poetry), Paper Asylum (haibun) – shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2020, and Bombay Hangovers (short stories), she is an alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2015) and a Charles Wallace Writer’s fellow, Stirling (2017).
She conducts poetry workshops at the Himalayan Writing Retreat and has taught at Iowa’s IWP programs: Summer Institute 2019, Between the Lines 2022, 2023, 2024.
‘Coins in Rivers’ (Hachette India) is her latest book.
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