The Last Leaf…

RANGA SHANKARA is holding a theatre festival called Ranga-Shankrathi as a part of their New Year and Pongal celebrations. I’d heard a lot about this theatre but this is the first time I went there. Myself and a friend of mine somehow managed to creep into the theatre by 7.20 as we knew they’d close the doors by 7.30 and won’t let anyone in after that. I’d never seen a theatre so well organized, the strict timings, the neat seating arrangements, making people switch off their cell phones and all that.
I went there for a play called Last Leaf, a story by O’ Henry.

The Story revolves around 3 main characters, Johnsy, Sue and Berman. Johnsy and Sue were friends and were living in the same house. They had similar interests in art and had a studio for themselves. Mr Berman is an old painter who used to live in the ground floor of the same building. He is a big boozard and always talks about some masterpiece which he is intending to do.

In the cold winter of November, Johnsy is attacked with Pneumonia and it gets so severe that the doctor tells Sue about the chances of Johnsy’s survival are one in ten and that one chance is her want-to-live. When Sue gets back to the room, she finds Johnsy counting something looking at the window. When Sue asks her as to what she was doing, Johnsy replies telling she is counting the leaves in the Ivy vine on the brick wall outside the window and she is sure she’d die by the time the last leaf falls from the vine. Sue gets very irritated to hear this but feels very helpless at the state of her dear friend on whom even the doctors had lost hope.

Sue comes to Mr Berman's house to ask him to pose for some of her painting which she was supposed to do for an advertising agency. She finds Berman stinking strongly with his gin, and one corner lay his white canvas which is waiting since years to receive his masterpiece. Berman learns from Sue about Johnsy’s pneumonia and the story of her last leaf of the Ivy vine and laughs at it. That night, Sue makes Berman pose like a hermit for her painting but finds the gusting wind and a fierceful rain which makes Berman head back home.

The next day Johnsy wakes up with a sure thought that the last leaf in the vine would have fallen coz of the rain which had poured all night, but for her surprise finds it clinging to its vine strongly. The same story repeats for another two days and Johnsy starts sensing that something has made the last leaf stay strong at its stem, which may be giving her a message that she was wrong looking forward to die. And this sudden realization, the want to live, makes her overcome her fears and she starts recovering from her disease.

The next day, they learn that Mr Berman died out of Pneumonia. He was found with a lantern, a ladder, some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it. The reason for the last leaf seen from the window, which was unshaken by the winds and was never fluttered by the rain was coz, it was a painting of Berman, his Masterpiece, which he painted the night when the last leaf fell…

The story was so very touching… I was almost into tears when I heard the last dialogue telling it’s the masterpiece of Berman… through out the play there was a song telling ‘Life is to Love, Life is to Live…’
How very true it is, Most of the times we are trying to be Johnsys just fearing about the last leafs, we often forget to LOVE the LIFE, being bermans is quite not possible for everyone, but atleast we can LIVE our life by not just waiting for that Last Leaf…

O Henry….^:)^