I read the FountainHead a while back and wanted to desperately write a review of the book… But as luck had it, When I was interested I did not get the time and when I got the time the mood was out of the window. Anyway before I start to explain what the subject line means I feel its important to give a short review of the book.

The moment I started reading The FountainHead I realized this book is going to be special. The first 100 pages were just addictive, I feel that among all the characters Peter Keating was the only one who was life like. Everyone else seemed too pretentious to my taste… It reminds me of movies with a clear cut difference between the good, manipulative and bad. The good cant be anything but good and the bad cant be anything but bad. Dominique was the only character I felt for actually… lot of people who read the book told me that they could not get why she did those things but I was least surprised when I read the book. Howard Roark… What do I say about the hero of the book? I hated him from the word go… I just could not get why someone would do things that he did in a way that he did, at least until last week.

To understand the rest of this post you will probably should have read the book. In case you haven’t please do, it might just be the best book ever.

It all started when I was writing the scripts for the play we are going to present at the class. I have written two plays and both are being performed, one under my direction itself :) The play being directed by me is based on one of the short stories I had written in college. The adaptation was stressful… Stories to me are like pent up energy, the only way I get to release it is by putting it down on paper and once its out I hardly ever think about the story or characters. I had to take things into consideration while writing the play, things like thoughts and emotion… I earlier had the convinence of writing a thought, this info would have not reached other characters but would have reached the audience(readers), this is not very easy in a play.

It took me a week to finish the play… It was as perfect as I could get it. Then was the time for the reading… I can safely say after the first reading nobody got the script… Fortunately my second play(a comedy) was read first… its response was unanimous they loved it. I guess it was the belief in them that there was something here that we are not getting, that drove them to not dismiss this immediately. But the moment of truth was about to come… There were suggestions for the script.

There I stood, unable to comprehend someone else touching my work. For the first time in my life I was ready to stand up and say ‘Its going to be done the way it was written or not at all’… I chose to keep my emotions under check and said that I would consider the changes… Deep down drawing lines like ‘one line here or there but nothing else’.

Ironically I was more than happy for accepting changes to the comedy play. I think the difference was that the comedy was written from my mind and the serious one from my heart.

Call me stubborn, narrow minded or ego driven I dont care. All that mattered was that that play must be acted without changes even if it meant I would not get the credit for it or even if it received ridicule as a response. That is what I meant when I said ‘my Howard Roark moment’.

I am currently directing the script with a great cast… I mean, I love these guys, they are more adamant than me not to go off the script. I once said something like ‘If you feel its a little difficult to say that line, just say this instead…’ and they jump at me saying ‘The script is right… we will stick to it’. Yesterday one of my cast members in the middle of a scene(when we were getting emotions and voice worked on) said out of the blue(looking at the script) ‘This… this is very good’. We all are first timers so please cross your fingers that things will work out well :)

I now truly understand what Howard Roark did in the book.

PS: Just for the record I don’t think I am the best play writer in the world… not even close, I am probably close to the worst :P