Khaali Pretensions.

A cool February evening. Scrap metal gods riding in on cycles. Tall plastic pyramids rising over the art deco buildings. Mobile toilets the city carries on its feet, railway tracks and pavements. Centre stage: a smorgasboard of culture to tingle your senses. Books, plays, films, art, dance and more. A riot of color. A heady mix of pavements, people, pretensions and paisa.

Amidst this cacophony that was the Kala Ghoda Festival, seated on a wooden pedestal was an urban hermit. A grubby beard that ended in colorful rubberbands adorned his rather emaciated face. A Jansport backpack carried the burden of his worldly possessions. His hair was bundled up on the top of his head in a bun. A few stray matted locks hung over his forehead. When he jumped off his pedestal, his pants precariously hung on somewhere in between his waist and feet. He bore a sign. He was giving away something. FREE! The moment I walked up to him he opened his spindly arms in a warm embrace and greeted me with the most cheerful smile I'd seen in weeks.

I din't know him. He din't know me.
I was free hug number 61.
Those were the most honest three seconds of my evening.
It drowned the din of all the pretensions that floated arounded me.

Pinter Prattle.

Harold Pinter’s plays are metaphors for experiences of our own modern, desiccated lives. His plays are like ticking bombs, which pulsate with resonant silences and pound with booming pauses. Typically set in a tiny room of a middle class household, all his plays have ordinary people for protagonists. They are often tormented, troubled and wearied by their existence. His characters cringe, whisper, bark and bellow at each other. But they never talk to each other. Yet conversation is the corner stone of his plays. If conversation ceases, the characters too would cease. Malevolent and sinister, there is often an unknown threat lurking somewhere which is never understood or explained. His characters, almost like dangerous predators struggle for identity and survival. Language morphs into a dangerous weapon and beneath the words there is palpable silence of wrath, fear and power. This style, classic to Pinter is what has today come to be described as ‘Pinteresque’.

This is the legacy Harold Pinter left when he finally succumbed to cancer on 24th December 2008. Born to Jewish parents in London, on 10th October 1930, Pinter was multifaceted; an actor, poet, playwright, director and political activist all rolled into one. He wrote his first play The Room in 1957. The Birthday Party (1957), The Dumb Waiter (1957), The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming ( 1964), No Man’s Land ( 1974) and Mountain Language (1988) are the most popular among his output of over thirty plays. He is also remembered for the screenplay for films like The Quiller Memorandum (1965) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). Pinter was not just a playwright who wrote to entertain. His career was chequered with controversy. An obvious left sentiment often shows through in most of his works. In later years Pinter became more overtly political and a bitter critic of American policies and acts of war. Pinter’s Nobel Speech of 2005 registers his dissent in clear words, “I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever.”

Pinter, one of the greatest comic writers of recent years, took his comedy very seriously. His plays sometimes abrupt, sometimes funny, often inexplicable unravel the absurdities of our own time by forcing entry into oppressive, closed rooms and indulging in precious little prattle. The result, powerful plays loaded with pauses and exploding with silences. It is little wonder then that Harold Pinter will be best remembered for giving us the ‘Pinteresque’ mode of life and plays.