Each day in my house is a Five Act Play, I joke to my friends. I have not scripted it, am out by Act II, Scene II and reenter in Act IV, Scene V. It is a different play every day and I am the She - Hamlet pondering on the virtues of solitude and seclusion. I wonder if I am in a soliloquy or a monologue, as interestingly I am the only audience as well as the almost absentee protagonist.
My life at times gets crowded as does the home I live. There are times when many relatives visit and to help me manage I have an army of people – cook, domestic help, drivers, care givers - who with great camaraderie share the space I inhabit. As they do their chores and keep a track of what I am doing, where I am going, what my son is up to and when he has come home, they also catch up with each other cheerfully enquiring and exchanging gossips.
I leave my house for work, somewhere in the beginning of Act II, as my cook is chatting with the domestic help and I return back home in the evening, by the end of Act IV, to hear her talk loudly on the mobile phone. Just as I enter, she informs the person on the other end that I have returned. So the person at the other end enters the orbit of our shared existence because my cook begins narrating to me episodes from that person’s life.
