The Fifth Row

The air in Dhwani Theatre’s courtyard was thick with the scent of cutting chai and damp bougainvillea. It had rained earlier, one of those October showers in Mumbai that arrived uninvited, rinsing the city in melancholy. Aarti Joshi, 42, adjusted the dupatta of her indigo khadi kurta and scanned the crowd. She hadn’t been here in years. She had long left theatre and dedicated herself to a charity organisation.

The invitation had come unexpectedly — a tribute to Raghav Mehta, the legendary theatre director who had once ruled Mumbai’s experimental stage had recently passed away. Aarti had been his student, muse, and something else she wondered — something harder to name.

She walked past the posters of past productions: "Dharavi", "Waiting for Godot in Goregaon", "Panchali’s Trial". His genius had always been in translation — not just of language, but of pain.

Inside the black box theatre, the lights were dimmed. A slideshow played: Raghav in rehearsal, Raghav smoking by the sea, Raghav with his arm around a young actor. Aarti felt her stomach tighten. She remembered that arm. The weight of it. The warmth. The control.

She had met him at twenty-three, fresh out of FTII, full of fire and theory. He was in his mid forties then, already a legend. His voice was gravel and silk. His eyes missed nothing.

“You have a face that holds silence,” he’d said during her audition for Kamala. “Don’t waste it on television.”

She hadn’t. She’d followed him into the world of bare stages and brutal truths. She’d played women who were raped, erased, resurrected. He’d directed her with a tenderness that felt like possession.

Outside the theatre, the rain began again—soft, persistent. Aarti stepped into the foyer, where old colleagues mingled. Renu, now a casting director for OTT shows, hugged her.

“Did you hear? They’re naming the rehearsal hall after him.”

Aarti smiled. “Fitting. He spent more days there than at home.”

Renu lowered her voice. “And nights. Did you ever… you know…?”

Aarti looked away. “We rehearsed. That’s all.”

But she remembered the night he asked her to pose for a series of photographs. “For a character study,” he’d said. She’d stood in his flat in Bandra, wearing just a white cotton sari on her skin, wet from sweat, her arms holding the firewood on her head. He’d looked at her deeply, adjusted the light, touched her shoulder, said nothing.

She hadn’t told anyone. Not then. Not now.

The tribute began. Actors read monologues from his plays. A young girl performed a scene from Shanta Bai, her voice trembling. Aarti watched from the fifth row, where Raghav used to sit during rehearsals, whispering notes like incantations.

In the theatre, the tribute had ended, but the courtyard of Dhwani, the theatre buzzed with lingering voices and the clink of tea glasses. Aarti stood near the bougainvillea, its petals bruised by the rain, when Renu approached.

“God, it’s surreal,” Renu said, brushing raindrops off her dupatta. “Feels like he’ll walk in any minute and tell us we’re all miscast.”

Aarti smiled faintly. “He’d say the lighting’s wrong. Or the audience is too middle-class.”

Renu laughed, then suddenly became serious and angst. She paused. “You know, I was twenty when I joined his workshop. He told me I had the kind of face that could make silence uncomfortable.”

Aarti’s breath caught. She thought, “He said something similar to me too.”

Renu continued. “He asked me to rehearse a monologue from Panchali’s Trial. Alone. In his flat. Said the acoustics were better.”

Aarti looked away. “Did you go?”

“I did. I was flattered. He watched me for an hour. Gave no notes. Just said, ‘You’re almost ready to be broken.’ I thought it was profound. Now I think it was... something else. His gaze was all over me. Never in my life did I feel so uncomfortable.”

Aarti felt a wave of nausea rise. She remembered the silence in his Bandra flat, the way he adjusted the light below her face, then neck and touched her before photographing her.

Renu touched her arm. “I never told anyone. I thought maybe I’d misunderstood. But who’d believe me then. I kept quiet.”

After the performance, Pranjal, one of Raghav’s protégés, approached her. He was older now, his beard flecked with grey, his voice softer.

“Hey Aarti, Raghav’s favourite actor! Good to see you after so many years.” he said.

After the small talk he said, “You know, I used to compete with you to get his attention? He talked about you even last year.”

Aarti smiled. “He talked about many others.”

Pranjal hesitated. “Some say he crossed lines. With students. With actresses.”

Aarti’s voice was steady. “He crossed into places others were afraid to go.”

Pranjal looked at her with a steady gaze and nodded, unsure. “Still. It’s complicated.”

On their way out, they had reached the staircase.

“You were luminous in Kamala,” he said admiringly. “He used to say you carried grief like a second skin.”

Aarti nodded. “He had a way with metaphors.”

Pranjal hesitated. “I don’t know why but I need to tell this to someone just to take the guilt off my heart. You know, he was weird in some ways. He once asked me to write a scene where a woman undresses slowly, not for seduction, but for surrender. The woman wears nothing but just a white saree and carries firewood gathered from the forest. He told me that the light should be such that only her eyes get highlighted and the body blurs. Now I think how can this be shown in a drama? Then, I was just twenty-five waiting for the big break. I didn’t know how to say no.”

“You wrote it?”

“I did. Later, he cast a girl from Nagpur. She cried after every rehearsal. He said it was ‘method.’ He asked me that as a writer I have to convince her. And I thought I was helping her grow. Now I wonder if I was complicit. Each time I think about it, I feel disgusted with myself.”

Aarti felt her throat tighten. “Did she ever speak about it?”

“She left theatre. The drama never got made. She teaches English now. I met her last year. She said she still gets nightmares of that scene.”

He spoke as though he knew and was confessing and unloading a huge guilt off his heart. They stood in silence, then parted, the rain softening around them.

She walked out into the courtyard, where the rain had stopped. The bougainvillea glistened. She remembered rehearsing Nathpanthi, barefoot on wet concrete, Raghav watching, saying, “Pain is posture. Don’t fake it.”

She had loved him. Or something like love. Admiration braided with fear. Seeking validation. She had never slept with him. She knew others were not so lucky. But she had let him shape her and control her.

She remembered some years ago, at home in Dadar, her husband had once opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. Inside were the photographs — her in the white sari, her eyes defiant, her body blurred. She had kept them all these years.

Her husband, Vikram, was a successful name in the state’s construction industry. He had asked, “Is that you? Why do you keep those?” The disgust in his voice was apparent.

She’d said, “They remind me of who I almost became.” She then tore those pictures.

He hadn’t understood. He came from a conservative family in Pune, where art was hobby, not hunger. They had married late, after her theatre years. He respected her past, but had never entered it.

Some days later she was visiting Mumbai again. She decided to visit Smita Gaikwad who had asked her to visit her gallery in Kala Ghoda.

“Ah! At last you found time. Thank you so much for visiting.” Smita was very happy to receive Aarti.

Smita led Aarti through the exhibit. The walls were lined with photographs of women in urban spaces—train stations, rooftops, alleys.

The walls were lined with photographs of women in urban spaces—train stations, rooftops, alleys.

“I wanted to show how we occupy space,” Smita said. “Not just physically, but emotionally.”

Aarti paused before a photo of a woman standing in a doorway, her shadow stretching behind her like a second self.

“Someone once said that shadows are the soul’s rehearsal,” Aarti murmured.

Smita turned. “Oh! I’ve heard it before. Raghav Mehta?”

Aarti was surprised and nodded.

Smita’s voice lowered. “I met him once. At a seminar in Pune. I was nineteen. He told me my writing had ‘the hunger of the lower castes.’ I didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.”

Aarti winced. “He said things like that.”

“He offered to mentor me. Said I needed to ‘unlearn my village and embrace the open world.’ But his eyes... the way he tried to hold me… it was very uncomfortable. I declined. He never spoke to me again. He shouted at me saying I was making a mistake.”

Aarti felt the nausea return—slow, creeping. She thought of all the women who had been told they were special, only to be shaped, controlled, silenced, or discarded.

Smita touched her arm. “You gave me courage. Watching you on stage made me believe I could write my own lines.”

Aarti smiled, but it trembled. “I didn’t know I was being written.”

They walked through the exhibit—photographs of women in urban spaces, their bodies framed by shadows and scaffolding. Aarti paused before one black and white image: a drenched woman standing in a rain-soaked alley, her face half-lit.

“She looks like she’s waiting for permission,” Aarti said.

Smita replied, “Or forgiveness.”

That night, Aarti sat in her favourite spot on her large balcony, watching the city flicker. She thought of Raghav’s voice, his hands, his hunger. She thought of caste — his fixation of upper-caste entitlement, her own ambiguous privilege. She had been chosen, yes. But also used.

She picked up her phone and typed a message to Pranjal: "He gave me roles. He gave me silence. I’m still deciding which mattered more."

She didn’t send it.

Instead, she opened her journal and wrote: Art is not consent. Direction is not devotion. He gave us metaphors. We gave him silence. He called it art. We called it devotion. But it was hunger. His hunger.

The rain returned, harder this time. She stood up and stepped outside in the rain, barefoot in the lavish balcony, letting it soak her and feel the cold raindrops seep through her clothes engulfing her body. She looked at the city from her place feeling secure. But somewhere in the city, a rehearsal was beginning. Somewhere a director was telling a naïve girl that she had a face that holds silence. And the enamoured girl believing it all.

Aarti looked up to the sky, closed her eyes and for one final time said, “Cut it.”