AGONY OF AKSHAT DRAMA GROUP

A group of performing artists suffers from lack of personality. It can take the form of a cloud about to burst or a bee about to sting, at the drop of a hat or by demand of a client.

This business may not have a real personality but it has a life. It struggles to breathe, sometimes. Not when its stomach is too full with work but from lack of oxygen.

The halls are empty because they are lifeless. 

I struggle to pump oxygen in it. Every day, every moment I am free, I look for opportunities. I guess that is what being an entrepreneur means, what being a patriarch/matriarch should mean.

Keeping afloat for others. Not for yourself, but for others. I haven’t met all these others but I know them.

Others – Vendors, Small photographers who operate from their dilapidated government provided square homes, gift makers, sticker makers, roadshow artists, actors etc etc…

Like a child who learns to walk or like a cripple, Akshat (Akshat Drama Group, a creative and marketing events and production house) too was trying to get up using bed stand, using tables, using anything, small roadside workshops, street plays, theatre classes…

Akshat Drama Group

After years of being the patriarch, it is now on the ventilator, in its youth, struggling to breathe. The bed is paid for by its younger brother, Flatandflatmates India.

When the lockdown was removed and the world celebrated it like a landmark deliverance of justice by the government, the artists had taken up other odd jobs or were hungry. 

The national level company had scattered, like so many others. 

A company is like a family related by money. An entrepreneur is the oldest son of the family. If he does not find work by the end of the day, others will ask him. On social media, in calls and messages, or just by bumping into him, everywhere he turns, others expect work.

Others are the nameless, faceless members of the family, who he has not seen eye to eye or had a heart to heart, but pays them. 

An entrepreneur works for others.

He knows there are others out there like him, but like humans in a universe without aliens, he feels alone.

So, in the spirit of my filial duty towards others, I kept looking for opportunities. 

More than 85 shows were canceled, 100+ workers went unpaid.

Except festivals and shopping events, every planned gathering was being stopped by new municipality SOPs, which rocketed up and down like stock market. 

After 653 days of mining, I finally came across gold.

Pavilions were being installed in Vibrant Gujarat 2022, a global summit and the various participants needed us. So after two quick meetings, a new sheen of life and shine came in my others and because of them, in me. 

As we sat discussing, I was drinking tea. But in my mind, I was dancing to the tune of time of my life like Baby. 

I activated others.

For 5 days, none of us slept. We ran about, made choices and changes, and again changes and choices, drove the length and breadth of the city, all in hopes of getting the golden days back.

5th Jan, 2022 midnight

Call it an entrepreneur’s intuition, but something stopped me from placing the final orders. Every vendor, every agency and every artist was waiting for my one word to begin processing the orders.

6th Jan, 2022 morning

Vibrant Gujarat 2022 was postponed. 

6th Jan, 2022 noon

How best can I express my tears for the agony of Akshat? How does a new mother feel about her diseased, restless baby? Like that. I just don’t care what it puts me through. I cannot let it die.