Socho! Jab Sab Ulta Ho, a play for children, is the latest offering from the NSD’s second year students. Inspired by the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, the author is NSD alumnus Prasanna who lives in the village Heggodu in Karnataka, where he has set up weaving centre. The play, an elaborate and complex tale

, is mostly improvised by the cast and crew with guidance from Prasanna and help from some NSD staff.
The action begins with the appearance of Ganesh ji. He is ridiculed in a song sung by school children. Enter Ved Vyas (Prateek Shrivastava) the author of the Mahabharata. He begins to dictate Pippi’s story to Ganesh, who takes on the identity of Pippi. The young girl delightfully played by Amanjeet Proch on opening night, is a spirited combination of canniness and candour. With her friends the monkey named Hanuman Pillai, the donkey named Ghodheshwar Prasad Chhallang to which the donkey objects declaring his pride in donkeyhood, and a ghost named Bhoot ji Ateet, Pippi is truthful and honest. The three actors plying these roles — Thoudam Victor Singh, Himanshu Kohli and Anupam Datta — are characteristically able.
Her life as described by the two friends — Bhoot ji has opted to tell the latter part of Pippi’s story reveals that her father was an outlaw in the Chambal ravines. And immediately we are transported to a credible Sholay-like scenario where grown men weep over Pippi leaving them.
They sing a duet with the girl where she assures them that she is quite capable of looking after herself. Pippi’s arrival at Thakur Villa, a deserted house at the edge of town, attracts the attention of two school children, Rinku (Bharti) and Tinku (Mrigendra Narayan Konwar).
The children have great fun in the villa, cooking up storms in the kitchen where Pippi cooks them laddus and omelette’s with great élan. Each scene is accompanied by simply worded clever songs. Whoever wrote the songs deserves special kudos. Almost spoken dialogue the lyrics are direct and Gaurang Chowdhary’s music fits the bill perfectly. The other plus point was a true assimilation of the words by a multi-tongued cast. The diction training by Vandana Vashisht paid dividends.
Well what about Mr Vyas? While Pippi is collecting waste, mostly plastic stuff, Ved Vyas has been buried in waste by the people. When discovered in a waste heap by Pippi he curses her to remain a “things finder” all her life. The friends want the curse to be lifted. To which end Bhoot ji makes the school children disappear. This episode is preceded by the police attempting to get Pippi into a remand home. Pippi shrewdly ties up the police in knots and also dumfounds the school teacher into submission before enticing the children away from school.
The anxious parents come to look for their children and sing a song asking them to return. Pippi s not happy at the method adopted to get rid of the curse. She declares if a wrong method is used to get anything, even if it is right, is wrong. They sing about how difficult it is to persuade adults to give up spewing industrial waste into the earth. As long s there is waste on this earth, the need for “thing finders” will remain.
The play is very entertainingly put together and fun for kids and adults alike. More shows at the NSD’s Bahumukh Hall 1,2 and 3 April at 3.30 and 6.30 each evening.