Do Carrots Prevent Cataract?

DO CARROTS PREVENT CATARACT?

[one scene plays enacted in your spare den]

[A Gandharva raja Presentation]

Gandharva raja

[In a small den, about 10’ by 10’, Maria and Martin are seated across a bistro table. On the table are: a plate of sliced bread and cheese, a bottle of red wine, circles of carrots and two forks on another plate. The rectangular desk behind them is piled with books – in no particular order. Martin is a physician; his wife Maria, a teacher. The books represent their varied interests. Martin picks a carrot on a fork and is about to put it in his mouth.]

Martin: All I do is work and…
Maria: and eat…
Martin: [munching a carrot slice with gusto] and sleep…
Maria: at work… Don’t chew so hard, dear. You could crack…
Martin: Crack! I have no use for it…
Maria: Why! You are useful.
Martin: I exist to be used.
Maria: an existential existence
Martin: I read Camus after finishing college, when I eventually began to indulge in serious reading! Camus said, “Hell is… other people.”
Maria: That would be Sartre. He existed, too.
Martin: I exist. You exist. We all exist.
Maria: Exist, then exit.
Martin: The inevitable exit makes existing meaningless.
Maria: A mean existence…

Martin stands up, then abruptly sits down.

Martin: A mean, meager, meaningless existence – note the alliteration – unless [pauses] one’s political pals permit pillage and plunder.
Maria: Three to five…Work for Countrywide and ponder by the pond.
Martin: Ponder and wonder – wander in a circle, each man bound by his own radius of connections. NO EXIT from your circle. Try to stretch the radius and it snaps…you snap and shrink back to your own restricted circumferential boundary.
Maria: shrink back to your private shrink…
Martin: who cheats on his tax.
Maria: You tax yourself needlessly, dear. The radius and its elasticity are mere scientific curiosities.
Martin: Life is easier for a scientist…taxing questions to answer but not much tax to pay…find the answer to one question at a time…such as [munching audibly on another slice of carrot and then loudly] …Do carrots prevent cataract?
Maria: The key to universal vision!
Martin: A vision of the universe – one answer at a time.

Maria rises from her chair. She waits.

Martin continues, his voice harsh but low.

Martin: How painfully obscure life is…
Maria: And death no less.
Martin: I see my patients get ill, suffer, then suffer no more… and close their eyes forever. Does the play end after the curtain falls on Broadway?
Maria: [In a soothing voice] There is always next season, Martin.
Martin: Painfully. Slowly. You come to know much you need not know. You never get to know what you desperately seek to know. Perhaps that is why death is so painless.
Maria: Less painful if you ask me.
Martin: If you never ask! Never ask questions that have no answer. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. No answers. No pain. No answers…only darkness.

Maria walks across the den.

Martin, watching her, shifts to her vacant chair.

Maria switches off the light and returns to occupy his empty chair.

Only two silhouetted figures are now visible to the audience.

Maria: Darkness…no light…and yet we exist…