Roy Abraham – my classmate and raconteur nonpareil

Krsssh!!! Dijgeeyaon..... Dijgeeyaon..... Dijgeeyaon.... maraa wo...... (in slight malayaali accent). If u heard these words in our class in 1976/77/78, it would most likely be a Friday and the protagonist would be none other than Roy Abraham.... One could unfailingly catch him recounting the story of the previous night's movie in Nausena Bagh open air theatre.

Roy loved to tell us stories from the movies he saw the previous night. It gave him undiluted pleasure and made us feel as if he would watch the movie only to narrate it the next day to us. Every frame, every movement, every flicker of an expression would be captured by him and recounted vividly and often graphically with sound effects to boot.

Roy was a nice person at heart and also a great looking guy: fair with fine golden downy hair on his face and handsome features almost like a Greek sculpture. His boyish looks, a nice straight jaw-line and if memory serves right, a clefted chin made up for his short frame. Don’t remember Roy ever wearing trousers (full pants as they were called) but only shorts, which were always very tight and made him look like a proud male model showing of his glutinaceous tissues. He wore bright white shirts sewn from high quality cloth that his Navy father must have got him from distant shores. He could make girls swoon with his looks if he ever wanted but was too shy to admit his interest in girls, and even to that one particularly special one that always gave him respiratory problems each time she walked into the room. Roy’s philosophy in life was something akin to what Kajol would sing several years later in a Hindi movie classic….. “yeh dil ki baath apni, dil mey dabaake rakhna….”

Roy loved movies..... Hindi movies..... and especially action movies. When the whole world (the World we saw and knew as kids growing up in a C category town like vizag) was being swept away with the lover-boy cum teary sentimentality of Rajesh Khanna and the angelic beauty of Sharmila Tagore or the fast emerging era of the quintessential angry young man, Roy was lost in his own world of Jeetu and Shatru action flicks. Not that he had a choice......'cos even with the privileges the Armed Forces enjoyed or would be extended, it would not have been possible to get A-grade and Super A-grade movie to be procured for special screenings in those dark but halcyon days of pre-cable television. Getting even a moderate hit movie that was less than 3 years old for a special screening would have been impossible, even for the Navy.

It was a privilege to be his deskmate in school, something I never had, but made it up by virtually begging his deskmates – was it Viswanath or Srikumar or Bidyut (?) – to move and sit elsewhere for a few minutes for me be able to sit next to Roy and “listen” to the movie. With a very strict “one movie a month” rule at home, the only way I could catch many movies was through these vicarious ways with Roy as my surrogate. Delay in the arrival of a teacher, gaps between class periods, or a free class period were gainfully utilised especially on a Friday. I would run up to Roy as would several others including guys in the desk in front of Roy’s (who would simply turn around as much as they could) to “catch” all the action. And the story would start to unfold again after the brief unwelcome interlude that was the class period. Roy would start precisely where he had left off in the previous installment. He would show almost a selfless purposefulness as he moved systematically from sequence to sequence, patiently unfolding the plot as he held his listeners captivated.

Roy’s uniqueness lay in his breathless and effervescent rendition of scenes and in flawless sequencing. He would enact Ajith, Pran or Prem Chopra to the finest detail like a good voice-over artist and bring them to life in those classrooms between “periods”. He would get so immersed in the narrative of a car chase….. that he would do complete justice to the sound effects….. screeeeeeeech (braking)……..krssh……. Heeeeeeeeee (careening)…….. uhnnnnn (cruise)…….. and paint a visual picture using the palms of his two hands to represent the cars involved in the chase. In all this excitement, he would often forget to swallow the frothy saliva that would collect in the corners of his mouth from his staccato recitation. The result would be a “yukky” drool onto the desk which he would himself quickly wipe off with his off-white cotton hanky and would continue as if nothing ever happened and without missing a beat, till the car chase was well over and the villains have been either killed or apprehended. And the best part is, in all this, Roy would remain oblivious to our reactions – glary or grumpy expressions or the laughter sometimes even at the narrator. It was an experience unmatched in content, effects and detail and, I daresay, sometimes better than the original (movie)!!

How we miss those heady days of waiting with bated breath for the next opportunity to run and listen to Roy Abraham, the raconteur extraordinaire………
By Sreeram S (1980)