‘Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’

In his comedy As You Like It Shakespeare, as is his wont, gave us one of his long declamations, waxing eloquent about Man’s seven ages. I am talking about the ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech. From the newborn baby puking all over the place to the spavined geriatric whose every faculty was being threatened with extinction. In between these two extremes, I am painfully reminded of the whining school boy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. The play was part of my school syllabus and I am stuck with it. For a comedy, I frankly did not find As You Like It all that funny. Not enough punch lines. At my age I would rather not dwell on intimations of mortality. Perhaps the Bard of Avon intended the play to be a light-hearted romp, portraying his heroines Rosalind and Celia having the time of their lives with the male leads Orlando and Jaques, besides a strong supporting cast. However, old habits die hard and the Bard felt terribly upset when everyone told him tragedies like Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and similar are more his line of country and where his strengths as a playwright lay.

All this traipsing about in the Forest of Arden with funny man Touchstone clowning around mouthing his PJs was not quite cutting it for me.  ‘A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own. A poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will.’ I mean, when the man himself admits to his humour being poor, I have no wish to rub salt into the wound. Which forced Shakespeare to change his tack for As You Like It. He got one of his main characters, the aforementioned Jaques to keep droning on lugubriously about how if you lived long enough you will need to visit a dentist for a complete change of dentures, undergo cataract surgery, be on a permanent diet of bland food and book a slot at your undertakers as the end is near. Or nigh, as the playwright might have had it. As I said, not exactly laugh-out-loud stuff, but the melancholy Jaques’ monologue is ranked among Shakespeare’s top hits, along with ‘To be, or not to be,’ ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen,’ ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ and ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me?’ Shakespeare was big on monologues. And soliloquys. So brilliant were they that the audience at the famed Globe theatre at times screamed for an encore! They brought the house down. So, who am I to cavil?

You may very well wonder, dear reader, where I am going with all this Shakespeare guff. A red herring it is not, I assure you. The fact is, given that I am not enjoying the first flush of youth, I am partial to a spot of self-indulgent soliloquizing myself, standing in front of the mirror when nobody is around and holding forth, affecting a Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton timbre. The subject of my speech usually being my state of health. I dive into the deep end. The eyes and the ears have not been pulling their weight for some time now. However, the teeth are in fine fettle, that’s a plus. A couple of extractions and implants, and they are as good as new. Thankfully the same can now be said of my eyes. Cataract surgery has taken care of my sight, what with the state-of-the-art lenses. You can present me with a copy of As You Like It (though I won’t thank you for it), printed in 6 point type and I shan’t bat an eyelid, though I would much prefer Uncle Fred in the Springtime. Why opticians insist, while testing your eyes, that you must read inane stuff like ‘The cat bit the rat that sat on the mat’ in varying type heights is beyond my comprehension. Why not cull out of our reverberating Bard’s sonnet, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ Nevertheless, these were not facilities that the pensive Jaques had at his disposal. Dentists, ENT specialists and eye surgeons, I mean. Books he must have had aplenty – Shakespeare’s Complete Works, for a start. Or ‘books in the running brooks.’ When I tell you that in those bygone days, they employed leeches as the preferred mode of treatment for sucking out infected blood from patients, you can well imagine their plight and Jaques’ dark mood.

Hence the great playwright’s deep contemplation on man’s advancing age, its inevitable depredations and generally negative attitude towards life. Coming back to my health issues, as I said, the teeth are kosher, ditto the eyes. It is the hearing part that I am not quite sure where I stand. I think I can hear perfectly well, but my wife puts a different spin on it. ‘Deaf as a post,’ being a favourite expression of hers, delivered through clenched teeth (her teeth are in mint condition, by the way). That said, I fear she is guilty of making a mountain out of a molehill. I also suspect she deliberately speaks sotto voce to me such that even a person with perfectly sound hearing capability is likely to keep saying, ‘Pardon?’ or ‘Excuse me?’ or a simple, monosyllabic ‘Sorry?’ Not an ‘I am sorry,’ sorry but an ‘I didn’t quite catch that’ sorry. If you are still with me.

It occurs to me, at this point, that deaf people, or should I be sensitive and say ‘the aurally challenged,’ invariably never admit to their handicap. A deaf person, on being asked if he is deaf, is likely to confidently respond by insisting that he is not dead. ‘Very much alive, as you can see, or are you blind?’ I could issue a curt riposte by letting him know that I can see perfectly well having just had my cataract surgically removed, but I worry that he might counter my assurance by saying that he is glad to know my singing contract has been renewed. Unintended non sequiturs frequently slip into the dialogue with those afflicted with impaired hearing. The conversation tends to screech to an abrupt halt after that.

I must make abundantly clear that there is a difference between being stone deaf and being hard of hearing. The former puts you in the ‘no hoper’ category while the latter still gives you a chance to get by and even pretend that you can hear perfectly well. Writers often exploit situations involving deaf people to provide comic relief. Like this example from one of Wodehouse’s gags. Stop me if you’ve heard it before.  “Chap goes up to deaf chap outside the exhibition and says, ‘Is this Wembley?’ ‘Hey?’ says deaf chap. ‘Is this Wembley?’ says chap. ‘Hey?’ says deaf chap. ‘Is this Wembley?’ says chap. ‘No, Thursday,’ says deaf chap.” Whether you think that is funny or not depends entirely on how hard of hearing you are and how fond you are of Wodehouse. Or not. Incidentally, as an aside, from most of my acquaintances who have opted for hearing aids, the verdict is that one is much better off without them than with.

I am fully conscious that we live in extremely sensitive times. People possess very thin skins and are apt to take offence at the merest of slights – real or imagined. One must perforce be constantly tip-toeing on egg shells. Making jokes about folks with handicaps will be taken amiss and you could find yourself debarred from your circle of acquaintances. All because you asked a nice lady you met for the first time at a late evening party if that gentleman wearing dark glasses standing at the other end of the room was making a fashion statement. When she responds that he is not, he is blind and that he is her husband, you hope the floor would cave in and swallow you up.

I had my ears tested recently. The results were inconclusive and the ENT man refused to declare me as certifiably deaf. Bully for me. He asked me to concentrate deeply when someone was addressing me and to preferably look at the person who was talking to me. He did not actually say it but I think he meant, ‘Read my lips.’ I felt cautiously happy about the consult. As I got into the car and drove off with my wife I said, ‘There you are. It’s all good. The doctor just gave me a clean chit and the de-waxing helped.’ As I was expecting a response, I turned to look at her and read her lips as instructed. A dangerous thing to do while driving. Still, I think she said, ‘Bill chef for the bladder and book eight for dinner.’ Then again, it might quite easily have been, ‘Still deaf as an adder and look straight while driving.’ Thanks to all the traffic noise, I couldn’t hear a thing. Shakespeare was remiss in not adding ‘sans ears’ to the quote headlining this piece.