A mixed bag

GOWRI RAMNARAYAN looks at two plays from the summer theatre festival of the National School of Drama which concluded in New Delhi recently.

THE annual summer theatre festival of the National School of Drama, New Delhi (March 16 - April 8) showcases plays from all over India. Not all are good, or even watchable. Some never get off the routine rut. With 75 shows at five venues in three weeks, there is no stringent screening for merit. The priority is to ensure multilingual and multi-regional representation.

Nor is selection confined to the new. Mahesh Dattani's "Final Solutions" has been staged in the capital many times before, as also the old Ratan Thiyyam classic "Chakravyuh". Satish Alekar's "Mahanirvan" has crossed 25 years in performance. However, Bhasa's "Karnabharam" (Sanskrit) directed by doyen K. N. Panikker, grabs the eye with filmstar Mohanlal in the title role. There are some premieres, like "Aur Kitne Tukde" (Aaranjan, Delhi), a dramatisation of Urvashi Butalia's "The Other Side of Silence" on the Partition.

Among the newer productions, "Navlakha" (Vivadi, Delhi) fascinated me with its cerebral and emotional charge. The basic theme has been beaten to death - the exhilaration of parents at having a male child. Born after eight daughters, Navlakha turns "runaway wastrel", refusing to fulfil family expectations. Instead of achieving worldly success and affluence, he opts to become an artist, with father's comrade Shifu, pugilist-dancer- craftsman for guru.

But the treatment! There is powerful music (Vidya Rao) of thumri, bhajan and qawwali; arresting imagery (Nilima Sheikh) which juxtaposes a fabulous medley - from huge painted panel unfolding to show the eight daughters (husbands in reverse), to golden crocodiles dragged across the stage. Not all the concrete images are intrinsic to the show, others clutter and distract. Some do add meanings unreachable by sound, as when you see the boy's dreams in a scene packed with objects - from sailing ships, to a pair of giant wings. He wears those wings in a gesture of soaring above shackling pragmatism.

But director Anuradha Kapur does not allow these parallel texts to drown the play. She has brought magnetism by the canny device of converting each sequence into a ritual - inverted, turned inside out - evoking murky shadows and menacing ring. A superb example is at the labour room, where you see the mother's legs alone, now crossed in triumph at having produced a male offspring.

The "ritual noire" is on from the start - of mother bathing the child; sister making the rakhi; in scenes detracting soulless science; games in the akhada; in the deification of the son, when the family performs the rites of worshipful adornment as to the temple god, in getting him ready for the examination hall. (An aarti song from Brindavan goes with it). You get asphyxiation in the guise of love. And strangulation in the name of the honour that society accords the male child. The play explores the concept of masculinity from many angles, not only as millstone for the boy, but as warm comradeship between men. The recollection of their youthful sparring in the akhada by Shifu and the father makes a heart-tugging sequence. It rises to exhilaration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's voice adding a paradox of its own, of the feminine jeevatma addressing the masculine Oversoul. No wonder thespian Rudraprasad Sengupta (Nandiker, Kolkata) was the first viewer to applaud. The intellectualism is heavygoing in parts as Kapur creates composite theatre, an audio- visual montage that acknowledges the downward pull of rajas (exploitative ambition) and tamas (escapist torpor) in individual and society. But the spirit wants to evade the monstrous crocodile and the lumpen swine, images of the rotting flesh. At the end, Navlakha tries to soar to freedom (satva), even though his wings may prove to be as flimsy as those of Icarus.

* * *

"How many things we women hide in order to save troubles in our families!" exclaims Sakubai, the domestic help in a Mumbai home. The hour and a half long solo performance by Sarita Joshi enables Bai to unburden her problems and pains, make trenchant comments on society and the individuals she has encountered, her family and friends, as she shares laughter and tears with the audience. We are spellbound by her multi-mood narration which does not spare even the gods. Playwright-director Nadira Babbar (Ekjute, Mumbai) brings epic dimensions to the simple tale of the servant woman, uprooted from the village to join the work force in the megapolis.

The script waves no flag or slogan; but it converts scathing social critique into human drama. The characterisation is brilliant. Joshi's Sakubai is a woman of flesh and blood whom we meet everyday in our homes. She has the naivete of the uneducated, the shrewdness of experience, the gutsiness of the survivor. Her sarcastic take-offs on her upper class employers, whether in the daily round or at parties, are masterly.

Joshi uses song, dance and hearty mimicry, to shape a range of persons, the rich old rake, the pushy film star, her saheb's girlfriend, husband's mistress, her boss' kids, her Muslim friend who exchanges meekness for efficiency to handle husband's business after his death. She also brings her own family to life, the weak father, the strong mother of whom she is inordinately proud, the runaway sister doomed to prostitution, and the husband who dies of AIDS. She has loved them all deeply and warmheartedly.

Babbar also depicts whole scenes with Sakubai - the rape of the girl by her uncle, father's death, the blind bard in Shirdi, the police station where the family learns of the sister's suicide, of the morgue where the attenders throw the body out with coarse jokes, but only after finishing their game of cards. Amazingly, nothing is overdone. Humour maintains the emotional balance from start to finish. Its stark realism does not stall the play in defeatism. The hope is not maudlin, the trust is no mirage. The daughter graduates with a first class, wins an award for her poetry. Sakubai's delight is as much for those achievements as for the girl's pride in her mother. The monologue ends with the poem where the daughter exhorts the mother to forget the pains, forgive the past, and find new joys.

The standing ovation was led by Shabana Azmi, among the star cast of actors, playwrights, directors, scholars, theatre activists, and students of drama in the audience.

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