Chapter
5
Shaila
My school started once again after our summer vacation. I was now in the eighth standard. That called for a lot of hard work at my studies. Very soon I was engrossed in them and forgot all about my efforts to get on to the stage.. until it was another Annual Day.
This time, our teacher wanted to perform a final act of a Marathi play. The play revolves around a young woman who is widowed a few days after her marriage. The entire play had three female characters. But the final act had just two – a vamp and the heroine.
There is a basic difference between the role of Shakuntala in the previous year and the role of Shaila this year. Shakuntala was a mythological person and no one would have seen her in flesh and blood. Shaila was so close to reality that I could be anyone sister.
Once again I needed Krishna’s help. I told Krishna about the background of the role I was playing. She had seen the entire play elsewhere so she was familiar with the character.
We brought out the old clothes from the previous year. When I tried to wear them, I found I had outgrown them. Once again the tape measure was brought out and I was measured. It turned out that I needed a bra of size 34 now. My arms were thicker too so the blouse would not have fit me. Also, I was sprouting small hair on my face as well as on my body. Krishna assured me that she would see to it that all hair on my body would be removed before the actual performance.
There was nothing new to be learned in respect of my playing a female character on stage. I simply needed to brush up on my mannerisms.
There were two things that I needed to practice really hard – one was tying up my hair in a knot, while not indecently exposing myself and two was pulling my pallu under my long hair with my right hand and onto my right shoulder so as to hide my blouse underneath.
The play revolves around the life of a woman – Shaila - who within a few days after her marriage, hears about the death of her husband – Vijay - in a bus accident. Shaila’s sister-in-law –Sandhya - who is not too fond of the new bride, now subjects Shaila to all sorts of torment. It so turns out that Vijay is not dead after all. He survives the accident but loses his memory. Consequently, he is roaming around from place to place searching for persons who could help him remember his past. During his travels, he returns to his own house, not knowing that in that house, his wife lives a widowed life.
The first act shows the love and affection between Vijay and Shaila. The first act ends with the news of Vijay’s death being told to Shaila. The second act shows the actions of the evil sister-in-law Sandhya. The act ends with Vijay’s return and the discovery of his suffering from Amnesia. The third act shows how Shaila helps Vijay regain his memory. It also exposes Sandhya for what she is.
We were to do the final scenes of the third act, where Vijay has just recoverd his memory but this fact is not known to anyone except Shaila.
The scene required Shaila to be first dressed as a widow – in all white. During the scene, Vijay asks her to go inside and wear something more colourful as he cannot bear to bring himself to see his own wife in a widow’s clothes. So she goes inside and comes dressed in a Kanjeevaram saree which Vijay had given to her at their wedding.
The scene itself was about 30 minutes but it required at least one change of clothes during the scene. I had to really get my saree wearing skills polished up.
I explained all this to Krishna on the first day. Krishna started off by making an inventory of all the clothes and other accessories I needed for the play.
For the scenes where I was a widow, I had to wear everything white – saree, blouse, bra and saree petticoat. There was to be no jewellery and practically no make up except extremely subtle colouring on my face.
In a space of just some two minutes – the dialogues were not going to run for too long. I had to get my lips redder, a bindi on my forehead, wear bangles while changing my blouse and saree.
We first decided that we would not have a very large white blouse for the widow’s scenes. The advantage would be that as a young widow, I would look somewhat sexy and vulnerable. This could easily explain the antagonism on the sister-in-law Sandhya’s part. The other advantage would be that I could wear the coloured blouse on top of the white blouse. That would save me a precious 30 seconds in a two minute slot.
The coloured saree would require significant amounts of colour on it to distinguish me from my preceding colourless outfit. We decided on a white saree but with very elaborate and brightly coloured pallu to signify colour. The advantage for such a colour would be to avoid change of a saree petticoat also.
I told Krishna that I depended on her to get my wardrobe ready. She was true to her word.
The next day, she had purchased a very delicate looking skimpy white bra of size 34C for me. I noticed that the bra was not made with cotton. I asked Krishna and she said, “Now bras of nylon are available. They are a little expensive but they are very comfortable.” She pointed to the hems of the bra which had elastic sewn into them. “This,” she said, “made the bra very comfortable to wear.” She also showed me the lower periphery of the cups which had something stiff. “This is the very latest,” she explained. “This sort of a bra is known as an underwired bra. It encloses the breast from below and tends to push up the breast to make it seem like the breast was bigger than it actually is. For women, it is important because Indian men like women to have larger breasts. But for you, I don’t know what benefit will be there. I just though I should give you the experience of wearing an underwired bra.”
I also noticed that there was no need to adjust the should straps as the straps had built in elastic in them. The underwire and the shoulder strap elastic had two major fallouts which I explained to Krishna. The first was that the bra tended to rise upwards. And if the bra was worn tightly, the underwiring tended to enclose all the loose flesh on my breasts and filled it in the cups. Krishna in fact teased me that if I were to wear a 34A instead of a 34C, I would not need any padding!
Krishna now measured me with the bra on. These measurements were needed for the tailor to stitch my two blouses. She also measured me for the two saree petticoats – the length and the waist. Since almost all of my clothes in this role were going to be white, Krishna said that she was going to purchase only white saree petticoats for me. Krishna noticed that I was sprouting hair on my chest and midriff. She told me that I would need to remove it using Anne French Hair remover which she had used during our preparation for the Shakuntala role the previous year.
Our preparations for that ended with that. The next day, I noticed that the tailor was also present. I was asked to remove my shirt and vest and I wore the bra. Once again we used handkerchiefs for the padding. The tailor had brought a white blouse for a Trial and wanted to see for himself how the blouse fitted. In the previous year, it was not important to have really perfect fit, because it was thought that I would not be so good at playing Shakuntala. Now that I had proved my ability to play female characters on stage, it was important to have a personal tailor for me who could stitch all my female clothes.
The tailor was already sworn to secrecy. Thanks to our family’s influence in the city, we could guarantee that the tailor would remain silent. The tailor helped me wear the blouse. At once, he noticed that it needed a little bit of adjustment. I removed the blouse and handed it to the tailor. Within a few minutes, he was done and the blouse was handed to me once again. This time it fit me like a second skin – which is exactly the way a blouse should fit a woman.
The blouse also was not so large sized. It barely covered the bra and the sleeves were also a little shorter than usual. The tailor explained that this was necessary because I was going to wear another blouse on top of it and he could not take any chances with this white blouse being visible under that blouse. I thought the blouse was stitched very sexily.
Here I must explain a few things with what else was happening with me. I was going through my adolescence and was starting to notice that girls around me were beginning to develop breasts. Having worn a bra and blouse during the Shakuntala role, I was perfectly aware of how girls’ breasts would appear when covered with a bra. Frequently, I found such thoughts to be sexually stimulating. Wearing a bra and a blouse today was also sexually stimulating and I was hard pressed to effectively hide my erection.
I decided that I was going to use a technique which I found was used by Rajamani the previous year when he was playing the role of Sita. He had worn a Mundu which is a white cloth which is worn by men in South India. If a coloured cloth is worn similarly, then the cloth is called a Lungi. Rajamani had worn a Mundu inside his saree petticoat. Before wearing the petticoat, he had folded the lower edge upwards and knotted it tightly. The tight knot was positioned in such a way that it lay on his penis. Since the last few months, I had taken to wearing a Mundu at home and had learnt the art of knotting it at half mast as it were. I had on a couple of occasions used this to hide an erection which may have occurred at unexpected times.
So the next day when Krishna brought the two inner saree petticoats and the outer full saree petticoat, she was surprised to see me declining to remove my Mundu. I explained to her that I felt more comfortable with the Mundu inside rather than a pair of shorts. Now Krishna is two years older to me and at 15 was turning out to be a very shapely young girl. She was getting her quota of male attention and knew about male sexual signals. She asked me straight off as to whether I was getting sexually excited by wearing women’s clothes. I was in a quandary as to whether I should admit this or not. Finally, I decided that since Krishna and I were so close, I could be frank with her. (As it turned out, it was to be of great help in later years at the time of my engagement.)
I told Krishna that wearing women’s clothes were indeed a little sexually exciting. She asked me why. I told her, “The fact that I am dressed like a girl and no one knows is a sort of a little secret. That is exciting. Also, since I could pass off for a woman, I could even be privy to all your womanly secrets. That is exciting too!”
Krishna was not convinced. But I told her that if I was interested in hiding these thoughts from her, I could easily have denied any such thoughts. But I felt that my best refuge was in speaking the truth. So, that was what it was. Then, she was convinced. She asked me if I liked girls. I admitted I did like girls. She asked me if boys with a great physique turned me on. I told her that such a thing did not occur and that I got turned on only by girls.
She then told me something which till date makes me bless the stars the day I was born as her brother. She told me, “Listen Radha. You are my little brother. I know you will be my little brother all the time. When you told me you like girls, it tells me that you are perfectly normal. I have read somewhere about men being sexually aroused by other men, but it seems that you are not like that. You told me that you are sexually aroused by girls and women – so you are like any other typical man. Your sexual arousal by wearing women’s clothes is just a fetish.”
“What’s a fetish?” I asked her.
“Let me explain. In this world, there are people who who are sexually aroused by various objects. Some like feet, some like ears and some like eyes. Your fetish seems to be women’s clothes,” she said.
“Just a minute, what do you like?” I asked her.
“Me?” Krishna asked me.
“Yes. Considering you seem to know so much about the subject, surely you have a fetish of some sort too – isn’t it?” I persisted.
“Will you promise not to tell anyone?” Krishna asked me.
“Well, if you promise not to tell anyone about my getting turned on by wearing women’s clothes, then I promise not to tell anyone about your fetish,” I replied.
“I like bearded men.” She told and immediately blushed furiously.
(I can understand that now, because Krishna is married to a man who sports a properly trimmed beard.)
“Hmmm.. Interesting.” I said.
After this conversation, Krishna and I grew really close. There were occasions when I would catch Krishna look at bearded men in an assessing sort of way and I would tease Krishna about it.
Well I did wear the Mundu inside the petticoats that day. The only change was that I had slightly larger hips. That did not matter because I was small hipped naturally like all men.
Krishna now had me practice wearing a saree without help. We even had a stop watch to time my efforts. The first time it took me some five minutes. That was no good. I had to reduce that to 90 seconds leaving me 30 seconds for wearing a blouse, bangles, lipstick and bindi.
I was also starting to like the shape I was getting. The 34C bra gave me a very feminine look. The nylon cups of the bra were also very nice to caress. I could not however over fill the cups because the handkerchiefs tended to fall from under the lower hem as they were elastic bands.
A few days later, the tailor brought my plain white blouse. During the rehearsals in the afternoon, I wore the blouse and a white saree. Krishna wanted me to practice pulling my pallu under my hair and over my right shoulder. I was wearing the wig and hairpiece which I had used the previous year for the Shakuntala role. Within a few attempts, I was easily able to pull my pallu without any problems without exposing my right breast while doing so. I really felt like a woman then!
A second typically feminine action which Krishna wanted me to practice was having my pallu over my hair like a demure woman. For that I first had to pull the pallu over my hair and then toss it over my hair. I found that it was difficult to do that with a stiff starched saree – like the plain white saree I was wearing in the widowed scenes – than with a silk saree which was more pliable and softer.
Another typically feminine action which Krishna wanted me to adopt was the wrapping of a saree corner around my left index finger. This is very typical of women who are under some sort of stress. Women tend to wrap the saree on their left index finger, then unwrap it, then re-wrap it and keep on wrapping and unwrapping it on their index finger. This was considerably easy.
There is a reason behind my going into so much detail about all these little incidents. As an accomplished actor who specialized in female roles on stage, I have been interviewed by the print media on many occasions.
One of the questions that is asked is how I developed so many of the highly feminine gestures. Given the time constraints of an interview, it is almost always impossible to give a complete and honest answer. I have normally said that I learnt it all in the Yakshagana Mandali. The truth of the matter is that although I learnt my first lessons in female impersonation in the Yakshagana Mandali, most of the credit for the realistic portrayal of female characters on stage should go to my sister Krishna. Radha would not have been female were it not for Krishna.
Yakshagana portrayal of female characters is highly exaggerated while stage demands a more closer to real life portrayal of female characters. Both have their reasons for such portrayals. Yakshagana is performed traditionally in fields. There are no microphones for amplified sound delivery. The light is mostly the flames of a torch. So to convey every small expression, it is necessary to exaggerate the makeup. The eyebrows are thick – no woman would be seen dead with such thick eyebrows. The lipstick is a bright red, the eyeliner is applied with thick coats – as explained by an Odissi dancer (Sonal Mansingh?) in a television interview, “In dance the facial make up is highly exaggerated because ‘this’ when performed on stage should appear ‘this’ when viewed even by the person sitting in the last row.”
On the other hand, stage plays are a lot closer to reality. When a character blushes, the blushes have to be realistic, not overdone. When a woman walks, she has to walk like a woman. The only way I could have picked up all the nuances of feminine mannerisms was being taught by a girl – and Krishna was a great tutor.