Pseudo-experience!

It is not good to live in others’ shoes. It’s worse to re-live their worst experiences.  Especially if the incident had turned out to be a dreaded event.  I cannot really say I got a chance, since it wasn’t really a chance, but I had to do a little enactment of an incident.

4^th March, 2011

CNN IBN Studio

Reconstruction of Aruna’s tale

I never understood why news channels did it.  Reconstructing a story that had either spoilt someone’s life or led someone’s life through hell.  But I wanted to find out.  And I certainly did.

I was asked to be a part of the reconstruction of Aruna Shanbaug’s story while interning at CNN IBN.  I thought it was just a sidey part, but when given the costume, I realized I had to be Aruna.  That was when I realized what mind-clogging means.

After I changed, I was told the script.  There were only 4-5 shots.  Aruna enters the nurse station.  Starts to fiddle with her things.  The ward boy enters.  Starts to strangle her with a dog chain and a tussle ensues.  She falls down, he tightens the noose and she passes out.

As we started enacting, it became scarier.  I could visualize the real nurse-station, the gloomy darkness, and the bare cold walls.  I was forgetting it was the studio.  I knew I was supposed to just act, be in her character, but ‘act’.  Even then it was becoming difficult. 

During the shot of the tussle, I barely remember things.  All I knew or thought was that here is a woman who is suffering the worst nightmare anybody could ever have.  I was jostled in a scripted manner.  It was all an enactment, I kept chanting. 

The guy who enacted the rapist got little cuts by the end of the shoot.  He had my sympathies.  After all it wasn’t his fault that I got so engrossed.  But I had the most animalistic feeling of hatred towards the real guy.

I was relieved when it ended.  With a coffee in hand, I sat down to do the contemplations.  The first thought that struck me was that it has never ended for the real lady.