My First Brush with IP

I was an onion. Well, that was the role I was rehearsing for in a children’s play.

Some classmates and I were rehearsing for it with great enthusiasm. We had made cardboard masks for each vegetable. “GP miss” was in charge. I got the only copy of the book for one day to write down my dialogues. As I took the book home and prepared to write, a notice in the book caught my eye. It said that anyone who stages the play should pay the author a princely sum of twenty-five paise as royalty!

I proceeded to write things down but this notice nagged me. Where do we get twenty-five paise? How do we send it to the author? I pointed out the notice to my classmates and fellow actors and they just dismissed it. I took the book to GP miss and she brushed it off too.

I did not like the whole thing. I took the royalty business seriously and everyone was just brushing it aside. I asked my father if one could send a coin by post. He told me that one cannot. I had no idea about money order. I told myself that I will somehow solve the problem and continued to rehearse.

The fateful day of the school annual day arrived. We were all getting ready. Makeup consisted of wearing predetermined clothes and wearing the masks. Someone was a bottle gourd and the mask was long. In the green room, someone bumped into Mr. Gourd and the mask broke. There was a desperate attempt to repair the mask and it got worse.

Some other mishap occurred and GP miss flew into a rage. It didn’t help that she was suffering from severe bout of migraine. She berated all of us heartily. And in one slash of her frail but energetic hand, she declared that we were not going to stage the play and stomped off the green room which looked quite grey, right then. Students ran after her to plead and cajole her to no avail.

A couple of us, in our own frustration, crumpled and threw away our masks forever ditching any chance of going on stage. When my own disappointment had subsided, I felt relieved.

After all, I didn’t have to send the twenty-five paise to the author. My conscience was clear.

That was my first brush with IP. Of course, I didn’t know that term. Nor the term copyright. I couldn’t have dreamt that one day, I would be an IP professional, assuming that I knew the word professional then!