I watched Sir Sir Sarla and did not leave the drama with opinions. What stayed instead was a quiet restlessness—the kind that asks to be sat with, not resolved. Later that evening, over tea, that restlessness took shape as a conversation.
There were three of us at the table. A woman (myself), and two men—both thoughtful, both differently inclined. A child sat with us too, more present than we initially realised.
I began without intending to begin. Romance, I said, seems to have been reduced far too easily to the physical act. The act itself takes moments; its aftertaste is often underwhelming. What alters one more deeply are encounters of another kind—when words, ideas, and ways of seeing align. I have always lived largely in my mind, and perhaps that is why such encounters feel enduring. They stay.
One of the men said that this was exactly what the play staged so well. The attraction in Sir Sir Sarla was not carnal; it was intellectual. The professor drew people not through desire, but through the way he inhabited thought. Conversation itself became intimacy.
The other man added that this was also what made the play uneasy. Ideas, once embodied in a person, begin to gather weight. Slowly, admiration shifts—from the ideas themselves to the individual who gives them voice. Insight becomes inseparable from presence. That is where confusion quietly enters.
I found myself thinking of Sarla and Shakuntala not merely as characters, but as positions. Their confusion was not emotional excess; it was dislocation. Both were trying to locate themselves in relation to a man whose deepest allegiance lay elsewhere. Not with people, but with his research. Every relationship refined his work. Others were altered; he remained continuous.
At this point, the child—who had been silent, absorbed in her own world—looked up and asked softly, “If he loved thinking so much, where did people go?”
The table fell quiet. One of the men finally said that some people do not intend to sideline others; they simply do not recognise the cost of their devotion. The child listened, frowned—not in confusion, but in recognition—and returned to her biscuit.
I then spoke more personally. Words, I said, have always felt safer than people. Books respond without demanding allegiance. They offer companionship without asking for surrender. That is why the play felt intimate to me—not because it mirrored my life, but because it articulated a risk I had long sensed but never fully named.
The conversation drifted to loneliness—particularly the loneliness of intellectually driven people. Admiration, one of the men observed, echoes; it does not answer back. Perhaps, I offered, such loneliness persists because they have not yet met another mind with equal—or greater—intellectual craving. Not superiority, but reciprocity. Someone who does not orbit, but pushes back.
By then the tea had gone cold. Cups were nudged aside. As we rose to leave, the child traced circles on the table and spoke again, without looking up: “If thinking is what you love most… how do you make sure people don’t disappear?”
No one answered. Not because the question was too difficult, but because it was now the right one to carry home.
Outside, the street resumed its noise. Inside, the question stayed.
This is not a critique of the play. It is a viewer’s meditation—on intellect, attraction, and the quiet responsibility that comes with being the centre of another’s attention.
Credit: Anthologised Conversation with AI-Assistant.
Itinerant Storyteller 