About Godot…

A couple of days ago, Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett was playing at KLPac. It was said to be one with an interesting twist. I really wished I had caught it but for some reasons, I didn’t.

I studied Waiting for Godot the same year I studied Jane Eyre. I found it to be really absurd…Basically, it’s about 2 characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for someone name Godot, who never appeared nor were they sure of who Godot is. In fact, Godot has been the subject of many interpretations. Some said he is a metaphor, some said he is a real person. Some said that the whole play is a political satire.

The play itself, has been debated on numerous accounts through the decades, with no conclusion on what the play is actually all about. While waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon engaged themselves in a conversation that caused so many misunderstandings between themselves. They quarreled, they laughed, they agreed and disagreed on different subject matters. Basically, both of them were off tangent to each other during the conversation in which they were talking to each other. That’s how absurd I found this play to be.

However, this point now,  I came to realise that there were many Vladimirs and Estragons around and someone like myself is either one of them. To the extend, I am beginning to think that the play is not as complex or absurd as how I used to find them.

Everyone at some point or the other is ‘waiting for Godot’. We don’t know who or what Godot is, but we are waiting for it/him/her to fulfill something in our lives, or to give ourselves reasons to move on or to live. Some Vladimirs/Estragons within us just don’t move on, but continue to ‘wait for Godot’ while as the same time engaging in ‘parallel conversations/relationships’ with those around us, which sometimes don’t make sense at all. We may not be on the same page as them, but because we too, are waiting for our Godot and they are waiting for their Godot, we wait together and coexist side by side, without realizing how absurd the situation, if seen from the outside is.

The Godot in Beckett’s never did turn up for Vladimir and Estragon. But unlike Beckett’s Godot, sometimes mine does. And when it does, I would suddenly snap awake and realise  how absurd my coexistence with ‘Vladimir’ is if I am ‘Estragon’ at that point. Or vice versa…