A Joker Comes Calling.

                 

One day, when I was in the second standard, the Principal’s office suddenly announced that the school timings were being shortened by two periods. The students were ecstatic and started shouting in joy, while the announcement continued as to why the school was being released early. But from the fragments of announcement that I could manage to hear, I understood that a joker had come to the township and would be there for all to see at the pavilion-grounds. En route to the grounds, I left my school bag at home and told my mother that along with my school friends. I was headed to the pavillion to see a joker perform.
  

We school folks huddled and sat down on the ground just a few feet away from a long table laid down, for what I assumed was a walking platform for the joker’s performance. There were others too, our uncles and aunties from the township. These adults were talking about a film and I could not make any sense of it- I could not reason as to why these adults would talk about a film when we were here to see a joker’s antics. I knew that our outdoor theatre was just next to the pavilion where we were seated and may be these people were talking about some film there. Anyway, who cared when we were expecting to have lots of fun watching a joker come out anytime .

Soon enough, a group of elderly people came out walking from the pavilion accompanied with two or three ladies. There was no joker anywhere. I was quite disappointed. But our uncles and aunties were overwhelmed and behaved as if they were in the presence of some great personalities.

Of the people seated behind the long table, the smartest clad person was a pink-skinned gentleman, wearing a royal blue colored coat and dark goggles. From where I was seated, diagonally across from him, I could see he was sporting a pencil thin moustache and a very cherubic smile. I was interested.

Without any ado, someone handed him the mike and he started speaking in Hindi in a warm friendly voice. At the far end of the long table was seated a bald gentleman, also in a suit. The two, this goggled uncle and this bald man, kept on exchanging friendly smiles even as this Hindi speaking uncle continued addressing the audience.  I could not understand much till I heard him speak that all of them on his side of table were just like the rest of us in the audience and that they too had children like us attending school, saying this pointed in our direction where we school boys and girls were seated.  Now I started listening to him intently.

He further continued, saying that when he sang in the film people generally thought that it was he himself singing when in reality it was his friend at the other end of the table who lent his voice.

Saying so, he asked his friend to sing a few lines from a film so that the audience would believe that what he had just said was true.

The mike was passed on to the uncle seated at the end of the table; he got up, smiled and thanked the pink skinned uncle, and, sang in a mellifluous voice with a slightly nasal twang:

“Kehta Hai Joker, Sara Zamana, Aadhi Hakikat, Aadha Fasana…”

As the song ended, the audience was rapturous and the pink skinned uncle was all smiles. The ladies seated along with them were smiling too.

The audience was shouting, “once more, once more”…

It was later in the day that I realized that the pink skinned uncle whom I had come to adore was the legendary Mr. Raj Kapoor, and that he had come visiting along with the cast and crew of his latest film, ‘Mera Naam Joker’.

While my hopes of seeing a joker were certainly dashed, the memory of that day brightens up my face everytime this scene flashes past in my mind!