It was like seeing a play in colour after having seen it in black and white many years ago. I have memories of Sudhha Chopra and T.P. Jain as the old man in the production stage by Abhiyan.
It was performed somewhere in the early 70s when the play, originally written in Bengali, had just been translated in Hindi by Pratibha Agarwal.
Badal Sircar’s Saari Raat was staged at the Sammukh Studio theatre by the Aakaar Kala Sangam. It was a production with stage properties galore and a very young cast. I can still recall the images of Chopra and Jain in a tight embrace and the old man’s mystical presence in a cottage. But, I do not really remember who played Sudha’s husband; it could have been Shyam Arora.
In this particular play, a man and a woman lose their way on a stormy night and take refuge in a lonely house. The inhabitant of the house is an old man, who is not quite normal. Unable to find their way back on the flooded path, they accept the invitation of the old man to stay the night. The husband and wife are concerned about the strange man who lives all alone in the wilderness. The wife is soon drawn to the man, who speaks philosophically and talks knowingly of her married life.
She comes to the old mystic after the husband has gone to sleep. They talk…Their intimacy grows and they make love. At least that is what one understood from the gestures and stylised movements of the two during the episode. The husband discovers the two in a compromising position later. In the morning, when it is time to leave, the couple leave together, but in altered circumstances.
Will the marriage work better, now that the husband is aware of his wife’s dissatisfaction with her life with him? What will the woman do, now that she knows that her husband is aware about her feelings for a friend of theirs, whom she is reminded of after meeting the old man. The play is reasonably well directed by Daksha Sharma; her husband and extraordinary actor Suman Vaidya plays the old man. Unfortunately, the couple, played by Anshu Parwar and Neelesh Kumar Deepak, were not that effective. Kiran Kumar Sharma’s lighting was well-balanced though and somewhat on the dark side.
Mahesh Dattani’s play 30 days in September was staged by Asmita during their summer festival. The play is directed by Arvind Gaur with his usual intensity and disregard for the aesthetics of stage craft. The sets of a sitting room have badly shopworn cubes of wood painted black. It was an eyesore. I do not know why Arvind does not make any effort to think about these essentials of theatre.
The play is a tough one. It concerns incest and the effects on the young child, who grows up to be a woman completely confused about sex and unable to lead a normal life. There were two actresses playing the protagonist, Mala, a child is sitting in one corner with her head between her knees, weeping as she records her life for a counsellor; the other Mala is a 32-year-old and a successful copywriter in an ad agency, who has decided that she will not be ashamed of what has happened to her and will live with her identity intact. If anyone wants to run from public gaze, let it be the one, who did it to her, she believes.
Mala and her mother share bad vibes with each other as she thinks that the mother is responsible for her uncle repeatedly molesting and raping her from the age of seven.
Even when she is with Deepak, the man who really loves and wants to marry her, the scene of her rape keeps playing in her mind. This was well portrayed by Amita Walia, in the other corner of the stage as she is with Deepak (Rahul Khanna). The uncle, played with sophisticated ease by Bajrang Bali Singh, stands in the background, repeating all the things he said to her including to repeat the rhyme “30 days has September, April June and November”. Mala is further seduced by her cousin at the behest of her uncle. This continues until she is 13 years old.
The role of younger Mala, played by Shilpi Marwah, consisted mostly of weeping and repetitious dialogue. Thirty two-year-old Mala decides to take the 30 days as her cue for the affairs she has with different men. The list is very long, according to Mala junior. This promiscuity is disliked by Mala herself, but she cannot help it. In one scene, she meets Aman on the dance floor and is all over him in a minute. She manages to upset his fiancé, who breaks off the engagement.
In the end it is revealed that Mala’s mother was also a victim of her brother for 13 years, which is why she had become cold to her husband, who left them when Mala was a child. Finally, it is this confession that brings the mother (portrayed by Samina Sheikh) and daughter together.
The play also had a discussion after the show; for some people it was unthinkable to have an uncle, do that to his niece. It was suggested that the uncle could have been a step brother of the mother.
A gynaecologist’s statements about how 13 year olds come to her for abortions after being raped by some male in the house, also made everyone think harder. While it was felt that children needed to be exposed to such plays, Arvind said that no school was willing to host them. Finally, it was felt that families, particularly mothers, should be made aware of their duty to the child. A sad reality of our lives was exposed to the public through the play.