TAMASHA NA HUA, written and directed by Bhanu Bharti (the recipient of NSD’s best all-round student and the best director awards in his graduating year 1971) is a play within a play. A group is rehearsing a Tagore play, Muktadhara, to celebrate his 150th anniversary. The theme of the drama is man pitched against machine.
The King of Uttarakut has a dam built to keep the waters of the river Muktadhara from flowing down to the valley and thus subjugate the people living in the Shivaterai.
It has taken 25 years for the mechanic Yantraraj Vibhuti to build the machine with which he has finally succeeded in conquering the turbulent waters and dammed the river. The prince of Uttarakut disagrees with his father. He believes in the freedom of the spirit of nature and the will of God that the bounty of nature is for everyone not considering religion, or legal or political boundaries. Finally, he sacrifices his life as he destroys the machine and releases the waters of the river.
The rehearsal comes to a standstill when the actor playing Yantraraj (Teekam Joshi, the erstwhile mainstay of the NSD repertory) rebels against the dialogue he has to speak and raises the question of the relevance of this Tagore play so steeped in romanticism.
The director, who also plays the character Dhananjaya Vairagi (NSD alumnus Ravi Khaanwilkar), the philosophic voice in the king’s court, tries to bring reason in the ensuing argument in which almost all the actors pitch in.
Basically there are three voices in contention. The voice of Mahatma Gandhi is led by actor Danish Iqbal (NSD) where he speaks passionately and convincingly about Gandhi’s vision of independent India where no one was poor and all people lived together in peace and harmony irrespective of caste or creed.
The other teams are the Marxists, who speak of the rights of the tiller to the land and there are those who believe in a free economy. The argument touches upon the issues raised in the famous debate on freedom between Tagore and Gandhi and also upon the reality of today like the Farraka Barrage that has affected the agriculture and fisheries of Bangladesh and the Baglihar dam on the Chenab creating problems for the people in Pakistan.
And what about the uprooting of people in India in Singur for industrial purposes? Is progress right at the cost to human lives? How can we accept Gandhi’s concept the of handicrafts in this mechanical age? The chief debater on the side of the free market economy, the actress who plays the grieving mother of a son lost to the machine on the Muktadhara, is the lively Sharma (ex NSD Rep).
Besides discussions on the concept of individual freedom in today’s social, economic and political system, on how the electronic culture, the Internet and the mobile telephone has isolated people, there is an energetic exchange on romanticism versus realism.
Inescapably, whenever there is a gathering of sincere theatre people there is talk about the vicissitudes in theatre which depends on grants and other financial aid for its livelihood and how this play is only possible due to aid.
Most of the arguments remain unresolved at the end of the play, but it leaves the audience much more aware of the problems. As enacted by a cast of good actors including Rajesh Bakshi, Tilak Raj, Lakshya Goel, Shuarya Shankar, Amit Singh, Deepak Pandey and Sandeep Bharadwaj, the play was vigorous despite being wordy. The script by Bhanu is well written and well argued with each character clearly etched in the argument which is rare in a play that relies so completely on the spoken word. A neat production with a two tiered set was effectively lit by veteran lights man R.K. Dhingra.