Voices

“Oh don’t mind me. . .  I’ll just be. . . lying here. . . minding my business. . . Oh boy, you want to use that pan. . . I’ll just slither away into that other corner. . . maybe catch a bug.” He punctuated each ellipsis, with a reptilian tongue movement as he rehearsed in front of the mirror in that dressing room. Yes, he was going to include the lizard impression in the act tonight.

He’d always been good at doing voices. And over the years, his face retained the elasticity to help complement the voices with appropriate expressions. He had those recurring caricatures he’d been rehearsing since college – the disgruntled mixer-grinder craving for the owner’s attention, a popular starlet whose catch-phrase at a chat show, auto-tuned and dub-stepped to death, was the line that kept his regular audience in splits, and then there was Bandra Girl. “Oh my Gawd, I’d like. . . quit my job if they like. . . move my office to Andheri. . . East. . .  oooh let’s go to Candies.” followed by an impression of those ubiquitous morons who prefixed their names with their designations – usually RJs and DJs he’d never heard of. He constantly caricatured the city he loved in his regular acts – the ones he’d performed at the local cafe in the very same city, where the crowds always poured in for a hearty meal and a good laugh. But never before had he been featured on this stage. The scale and magnitude of the life-event had just sunk in as he walked through the corridor, lined by life-sized cut-outs of comedians who’d performed within these walls. Men (and a couple of women) who’d been his heroes. Perhaps sat, right here, in front of the mirror flanked by those blinding bulbs, rehearsing the act before the big night.

His mind drifted to how, in the years to come, he’d speak of these walls having sired him. And the impressions he’d mastered over the years – or the impressions he’d never be able to do (Heath Ledger’s Joker came to mind). Perhaps he’d break character during the live act but a good-natured audience would continue to cheer him on. He pulled himself back and kept himself grounded for the next thirty odd minutes – going over his lines for the monologue.

The opening act was the popular female comic who was also anchoring for the night. And she’d asked him to submit a few words for his introduction. He’d shyly sent in a humourous self-depricating 100 words he’d hoped she would think were funny. It was odd how being witty was such serious business. And when put in the spot sometimes, it was a lot of pressure to come up with something funny to say. He had decided that for his first act at this special venue, he would not perform as himself at all – he’d perform as the Italian alter-ego Luca, the good-natured chef who liked to take breaks from the kitchen to do impressions.

“For tonight’s act, we have our busboy filling in for us because the guy we hired cancelled. But he tells us that he was the number one comic impressionist in Italy in 1985.” This part invited a loud ‘woo-hoo’ from the crowds. “So people, give a loud, warm welcome to Luca Videcci.”

He felt as if he didn’t so much as emerge out of the red curtains as he tumbled out. And the angry spotlight darkened his vision. But recovery took less than a few seconds. And even through the blinding spotlight he never broke character, smiling oafishly at his audience as they cheered “Luca” as if it was all they’d been waiting for, their entire lives.

He began with the regular rambling of Italian words mixed with gibberish – some of which was recognisable words like “impressions” (pronounced as im-pre-see-on with a soft ‘n’) and Indeeyah. And the voices started pouring out of him  –  as they always naturally did when his hands clasped a microphone. The legends were paid tribute to that night – Samuel L. Jackson’s old testament rant, Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Alan Alda’s Hawkeye – he could have been an exaggerated version of anyone that night.

But suddenly, he wasn’t focusing on the cheers that were egging him on. The good-natured Luca was picking up a certain disgruntled voice from the audience. There was a good deal of warmth and genuinely positive reception in the air but there was that voice, from a faceless source, that could have easily died in the din. But it didn’t. It pierced right through him. “Oh ya. . . This is knockin me out”, it rang out crudely, steeped in derision. Different variants of those words punctuated that cheer from the crowds.

And then, right in the middle of his Clint Eastwood piece, it said (no, commanded) starkly, “Do something current.”

Luca, without breaking character, paused. And repeated in the accent, “Cur-rent. . . you want. . . ummm. . . Al Pacino? Si?” And the voice barked back, “YEAH. . Do Al Pacino. . . Do the one . . . Do the one where . . .”

“Si . . .Si. . . ” Luca looked down, laughed nervously (as was his nature) and prepared himself. He took some time to melt further into the character demanded, while that voice continued to bark requests of specific bits from Godfather (“which was perhaps the only Al Pacino film it was familiar with”, he thought with that exasperation he was accustomed to, when dealing with an uneducated audience).

That’s when Al Pacino took over and fiercely told the voice to “Shut your f*&#ing face!”

The cheering and the screeching grew louder.

But this time, the mocking voice was silent.

Al Pacino continued, “Turn your face off” gesturing with a swirling motion of his hand.

No response, save for the helpless laughter that filled the auditorium.

But the voice was gone.

No more derision, no more sarcastic, faceless ‘yeah’s and nobody dictating Luca directions for his act.

And Luca’s thousand-watt smile was back. He was again playing the much-beloved Italian chef, who took time off from the kitchen and revelled in being a mimic for a well-meaning audience.