STORYTIME TAPESTRY

Deepak Morris??™s Weekly Column

 East Meets West

June 23, 2005

To continue with my vision of a world tapestry of love and understanding of cultural values throughout the world, every Thursday we will be graced by the artistic vision of Mr. Deepak Morris, a wonderful playwright and friend from Prune, India. 

His plays have been preformed in front of audiences in Toronto, Canada

Letter to the Prime Minister

By Deepak Morris

Copyright ?© Deepak Morris, 2004

(The office of a minor bureaucrat in New Delhi. There is a shabby table with one chair behind it and a bench to the side of it. There are files all over, some spilling off the table. Files are also piled on the bureaucrat??™s chair. There is a phone hidden among the files on the desk. There is a wastebasket a little away from the desk. Enter the Bureaucrat. He is holding a letter. He looks at the chair piled with files, then puts the letter between his teeth, picks up the files from one chair and puts them on the other. He sits, opens the letter, reads it silently, smiles and picks up the phone. He dials)

BUREAUCRAT (into the phone)

Hi, it??™s me. Got a good one today. Want to hear it? ??¦ okay, listen: (starts reading the letter aloud)

From K. Venkaiah, at post Puttapaka, Andhra Pradesh. To the honourable Prime Ministerji, PMO, New Delhi.  Dear Prime Ministerji, I am the village teacher of Puttapaka village, Andhra Pradesh. I am writing to you on behalf of the headman of Puttapaka. He said that since India is shining, a letter written to you in English will get immediate attention. Therefore he begs your forgiveness for not writing to you himself, since he doesn??™t know English.

Prime Ministerji, we are facing a big crisis in Puttapaka. We have run out of talcum powder. You see Sirji, from January to June every year there is no water in our village, so we cannot do any farming. Many years ago, the headman introduced all the men in the village to carom, since otherwise the population was increasing at an alarming rate. Hence from January to June we play carom.

We cannot get Boric Acid powder for the carom boards and so we started using talcum powder. This is also best since sometimes children steal the powder to put on their faces and it would be dangerous if we used boric acid powder. The children want to be fair like the models they see on the TV, which your party donated to our village. Therefore talcum powder is safest.

We also use the empty talcum powder tins to repair the walls and roofs of our huts, so talcum powder is very important to us.

However, due to election campaigns by some politicians, we have run out of talcum powder. The supporters of the politicians took all our talcum powder, used it liberally, emptied our cans and left. We do not have money to buy more talcum powder.

We therefore request you to please send us talcum powder, otherwise the population of the village will start rising again.

Thanking you in anticipation,

I remain,

Yours faithfully,

K. Venkaiah

(The Bureaucrat laughs)

Do you have any???¦. no???¦ Maybe tomorrow then??¦ okay ???bye

(He puts the phone down, crumples the letter and throws it towards the waste basket)

END

Deepak Morris

rhapword@yahoo.com

* * *

Founder of Rhapsody Theatre, author, playwright,
actor and director Deepak Morris has been
associated with Theatre and Communication all
his life. A Master of Commerce from Pune
University, Master's Diploma holder in
Management from The Institute of Management
Development and Research (IMDR), Pune, and
Diploma holder in Computer Studies from the
National Computing Centre, UK, Deepak
combines a passion for theatre with professional management techniques
to deliver consistently well staged theatrical
performances. An accomplished actor himself,
Deepak has won numerous awards for acting and
debating, including the "Best Actor" award at
the International Year of the Youth Drama
Festival in Pune and the "Best Male Newcomer
Award" in 1997 in Dubai, U.A.E. Having acted
in numerous productions in India and Dubai,
Deepak began writing and directing his own
plays on a regular basis in March 2001. To
date, he has written several one-act plays
and skits and his group, Rhapsody Theatre,
has staged no less than 13 plays in three
years, a record of sorts.