Watching Begum Ka Takia again at the NSD was like going back to a time when the NSD Rep. Co. had actors like Uttara Baokar, Pankaj Kapoor, K.K. Raina, Raghuvir Yadav, Vijay Kashyap, Rajesh Vivek and many others whose names glitter on the marquee in cinemas, TV and theatre. It came as a breath of fresh air when the play was staged in 1977in the open-air Meghdoot Theatre. The lack of performable scripts was a problem then and is a problem now. It is not unusual to see theatre based on novels, poems, pure improvisations today. But 25 years ago, this was a rarity. Begum ka Takia was one of the first novels to be successfully transformed for the stage.
Written by Pandit Anand Kumar, the dramatisation is by Ranjit Kapoor who has directed both versions and maintained the same design and interpretation. The brothers Meera and Peera, are as unlike as chalk and cheese. The elder, Meera finds a buried treasure and leaves to make his fortune. He returns to the village with a woman who puts on airs of nobility is but a dancing girl. She commands Meera to build a palace for her on the takia. However, they do not count Peera in their schemes. As per his promise to fakir Darya, Peera ensures nothing comes up on his ‘takia’.
Peera refuses to work on the palace and he also refuses to charge rent from an outsider. Darya, who stops as a PG in his home, ensures that Peera’s kitchen fires keep burning by paying his gentle wife Amina a day’s wages. The fakir Darya is the key figure in the play. He defines the power of goodness in Peera the innocent who would rather starve than take the money left in trust by his fakir Darya Shah. Yet he is always laughing. It is not the laughter of a simpleton, but that of a human being who lives a life of honesty and truth. Here is a man of a sublime disposition untouched by any malice, hatred or spite, an incorrupt man in a corrupt society. It is this reality, which is the essence of the play; a reality that neither the director nor the actor, Sunil, could articulate.
The tendency of the actors to shout their dialogues, the lack of modulation marred this and an earlier play directed by Ranjit Kapoor in Bahumanch. Screaming is no substitute for energy! The music by Zafar Sanjari and the costumes by Anila Singh Khosla were good.
TIE’s sensitive changeling. NSD’s Theatre in Education (TIE), staged the highly regarded Swedish Poet, novelist and playwright, Goren Tunstrom’s play, The Changeling, as Adal Badal in Hindi at the Abhimanch last week. The story is simple. A Troll living in a forest comes across a child accidentally dropped by his mother during a storm. When the mother comes looking for her son she finds him replaced by a Troll child. The parents are aghast and decide to look for their child further inside the forest. Unsuccessful in their search they are returning home when they hear a child crying. It is the Troll baby. The father wants to leave, but the mother cannot bring it upon herself to leave a hungry crying child alone in the forest. On their departure, the troll mother, who has been spying on them, brings the human child home.
The director, Heggodu (Karnataka) based, K.G. Krishnamurthy, displays an imaginative touch as he transforms the dolls into human figures mewling and crying as they roll away behind their mothers respectively. Raising a troll child is fraught with difficulties. The behaviour, the tantrums the child throws, and the food he wants to eat upset the mother. She is ostracised by society. The distance between a once loving couple grows to estrangement. Twice the husband tries to kill the troll child and twice the mother saves the child.
Adal Badal is one of the best TIE productions I have seen. Director Krishnamurthy, who belongs to a traditional Yakshagana family, does an excellent job and the actors, particularly Barnali Medhi as mother, are consistent and good. The play is brilliantly designed with moving painted panels to depict the forest. There is a symbolic set to depict the household. Awatar Sahni superbly lighted the action on the sets. Kirandeep Sharma’s colourful costumes and Ajit Chowdhury’s music added to the show.