True to its title, Bhor is a production in search of a new dawn. Kolkata’s reputed theatre troupe Rangakarmee’s latest and first multilingual production, it was recently staged at the Academy of Fine Arts. The veteran matriarch of Hindi plays in the culture capital Usha Ganguli has not only designed and directed this issue-based drama but has also scripted it. Set in a rehabilitation centre, the plot navigates and thickens around a bunch of young boys and their struggle against the slow-poisoning disease of addiction.

Citing various causes like poverty, unrequited love or a broken family, the storyline attempts to grope answers to the germ of crisis that sucks out the blood of youth like leeches and saps away the last bit of energy and exuberance from their bodies. They turn out to be a hollow skeletal frame of skin and bones with socketed eyes and hairless scalps. “Drug or liquor abuse or any other form of lethal addiction can drive a surge of youngsters into the valley of death. Dynamic, dashing young boys brimming with promise and potential to take the world in their grip are suddenly reduced to ashes, thanks to their unwarranted pernicious habits. They dig their own grave and fetter their own feet. Their fate seems doomed forever and their lives get thrown in a dismal disarray. At an age, when they are supposed to march forward, they clam up in lone corners and look desperate and dejected. You see, this is a product of an overtly commercial, consumerist society,” says Ganguli. However, it is not a mere play on addiction, she says. In the words of the playwright: “This play could have been set in a university campus or within the cramped four walls of a jailhouse cell. It is about the claustrophobia that the vivacious youngsters have to cope with in our contemporary society and their continuous struggle against it.”Bhor is about the dawn of this ceaseless crusade of the youth. “As a director, I have always tried to portray the socio-political scenario of the society we live in — particularly the section of the society that we try to keep away from the public eye,” she says. Incidentally, the exploitation of gave birth to a clutch of thought-provoking renditions namely, Rudali, Court Martial and Kashinama. “When I was working on Holi, I could feel the pangs of claustrophobia suppressed within the youth. I wanted to work on that as a subject and finally, in 1986, I wrote my first original script called Khoj, where the duality of the middle-class society was highlighted. Nonetheless, the youth was still restless all around and coining from Bob Dylan’s song, times were literally changing,” she says. Adding, “My incessant interaction with the young people further provided me an insight on addiction, victims of addiction and rehabs. In fact, the commoners were not comfortable talking about it. I personally visited the rehabilitation centres, spoke to the inmates. The parents were hesitant to talk about their children, sheltered in the rehab. All in all, it was a confused community to say the least!” she says.Having crossed a myriad miles for almost 35 years now, Ganguli has defied all the stumbling blocks she bumped into along her creative path and held fort with effortless élan. “Bhor as a subject is my second original script that emerged after the soul-stirring trilogy of Mantos and the realistic Khelagaadi hit the natya-manch. For the play under discussion, I wanted to work with the psychological aspect of the victims suffering in silence and nursing the wounds of their mental trauma. That’s why Bhor is very psychologically designed, rather than showcasing the lurid, gory sides of one’s physical destruction due to excessive addiction. Every scene tells you a new story. And every dialogue mouthed is a reverberation of the harsh reality happening around us,’ she says.The claustrophobia of the youth, the constant mood swings and the obsessive compulsive disorder were the main areas that the play has stressed upon. “Kolkata is the backdrop of the story, so the language demanded a mish-mash of diverse flavours. Hence, my characters spoke all the three languages — the vernacular Bengali, Hindi as well as English. The cast of Bhor is also huge and mostly comprises non-actors. I always want to work with non-actors because it helps me to mould them into the character that’s been sketched out on paper, sans the superfluous unwanted mannerisms,” she says.Two things were challenging while working on Bhor. Designing a basket ball on stage and a rally. “Designing a rally on stage or a procession was difficult within the limited, available space. But after dilly-dallying for a while, I finally shaped it within the given parameters. Bhor is very different and extremely unique in its own special way. Almost all the incidents shown are culled from real life. They are all stories based on what I’ve heard from drug addicts. The positive outcome in this case is that after healing, they all lead a safe life, turning over a new leaf. The play could have easily ended on a sombre note but as a director, I’m optimistic and try to culminate the climax on a hopeful note. So, welcoming Bhor was to awaken a new dawn after the blanket of darkness where ominous night has disappeared for good,” she says.

Pramita Bose