Collection of Synopses of Indian Texts for other APB Members

 

 

Mahesh Elkunchuwar is an eminent Marathi playwright, thinker, actor and screenwriter. Amongst his most celebrated plays Wada Chirebandi or Old Stone Mansion (1982) stands out as a marked paradigm shift and stylistic departure from his earlier dramatic works and has come to acquire a canonical status in Marathi literary corpus.  A realistic play in the manner of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, it is set in an old stone mansion owned by Deshpandes, a landed Brahmin joint family in a village named Dharangaon, Maharashtra. The play is a commentary on the changing social, cultural and political milieu of the post independence India, shadows of feudal structures, the deep rooted sense of tradition and the disillusionment amongst its urban youth. First performed in 1985

 

Once proud aristocrats, the family members (Grandmother, Bhaskar, Vahini, Mother, Prabha, Ranju, Chandu and Parag) now survive by tilling their own land and selling family heirlooms. After the death of Bhaskar’s father, they are paid a visit by Sudhir, Bhaskar’s younger brother, and his wife Anjali from Mumbai. As four generations housed in the old mansion come to terms with a death in the family and the visit of two members of the family who have moved out of the ancestral home and relocated themselves in the metropolis, differences between urban and rural sensibilities and the vanity of Brahminism are evoked.

 

The very setting of the old stone mansion is witness to the slow process of history running parallel through traditionally defined relations. the disintegration of traditional social structures, value system and beliefs under the bitter strain of desperate struggle for survival is exposed in spaces marked for different generations within the traditional family terrain. Ancestral jewellery and the old family tractor bought in a half hearted bid to modernize both become motifs of tradition and the relentless process of decay that is endemic to a culture’s movement towards modernity. One of the several linking devices Elcunchuwar uses to convey the process of degeneration within the family, in relationships, in   community and in nature –is the dripping dust from the ceiling that falls on Grandmother.

 

 

 

Play Party (1972) appears to be an Indian corridor between Mumbai intellectuals, popular entertainers and serious artists, with the ego as the wounded bull. The ‘party’, as the name suggests is centered around a gathering of the echelons of the intellectual milieu, a metaphor for this social group itself, depicted with their pretensions, rivalries and frustrations. Meant as a celebration, the play progresses and exposes the decaying relationships behind glamour, consumerism, changing role of the artist/individual and the subsequent decadence of modern urban society. At one level the play is about the position of artists and intellectuals in a society half way between capitalism and feudalism, between nineteenth century and the twentieth, and still a society where literacy is privilege; at another level, it is also about the sense of failure that haunts a writer and the way he chooses to come to terms with it.      

 

Mahesh Elkunchuwar brings the characters to face reality and make choices

with the death of Amrit, the only one of the ‘party’ who chose to drop out of

the ‘set’ and join the marginalized tribals to fight for their rights. His absence presents itself again and again and forces out the banality and superficiality of the party. He brings the play to its potent resolution when Jogadand asks Bharat, seemingly the most idealistic of the lot, to go with him. Bharat, uneasy, excuses himself out of it. “My play begins rehearsals in a couple of days” , he tells him. Even Vrinda who was Amrit ’s lover at one time finds she is done with reality, having “drifted apart” from Amrit. She chooses to go home with the more successful capitalist, Agashe. It is the death of real values.

 

 

 

Andhayug or The Blind Age (1954) is based on a mythological episode from the epic tale Mahabharata. It begins on the last day of the bloody war fought on the battlefield of Kurukshetra between the two set of cousins competing to ascend to the royal throne of Hastinapur, taking over the reins of the kingdom from their father, the blind king Dritrashtra. Following the victory of Pandavas over Kauravas on the eighteenth day of the war, the destruction of the Kaurava city, overweening pride of the Pandavas, defeat of Duryodhan, the blind King and Queen’s retreat into the forest, the horrific episode of insatiable drive for revenge and destruction culminates in the death of Krishna.  

 

Bharati was deeply concerned about the perpetual problem of war becoming global and destroying humanity. Obliviously reflecting nuclear conflict, his play interrogated the received wisdom of Krishna’s assurances and shakes off all vestiges of rationality and faith. The use of only verse, as functional and discursive as prose reveals the hidden potentialities and weaknesses of human personality. It reveals the blindness of the senseless violence of our own age and touches the ethical, religious, social, spiritual, political and historical dilemmas basic to all humankind.

 

Written immediately after independence and the following partition of the indian subcontinent, the play is a profound meditation on the politics of violence and aggressive selfhood. it was first staged by Satyadev Dubey in Mumbai in 1962 and later by Ebrahim Alkazi with the National School of Drama in New Delhi in 1966. The latter production was staged at the Ferozshah Kotla Ruins in Delhi for a 1,000-strong audience that roared "Krishna Maharaj ki jai" (Hail to the King Krishna!) when a desolate, blind queen Gandhari cast her terrible curse on a tragic, stoic Krishna.

 

 

 

Written in the backdrop of growing communalism in India, just preceding the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992, Girish Karnad’s Kannada play Taledanda or Death by Beheading (1989) draws a parallel between the socio-religious, political and economic conditions of the existing times and those of southern India in 12th century A.D. In the city of Kalyan, Karnataka, a man called Basavanna, assembled a congregation of poets, mystics, social revolutionaries and philosophers, unmatched for their creativity and social commitment. They opposed idolatry, rejected temple worship, upheld equality of sexes, and condemned the caste system. In opposition to this is another center of power- the palace of king Bijjala, confronting Basavanna as the official protector of the ancient caste-system. As events take a violent turn in the weeks following the marriage of a Brahmin girl to a 'low caste' boy, a vibrant and prosperous society is plunged into anarchy and terror.

The interesting aspect of this play is, it does not have one centre of significance. Bijjala’s history is totally different from Basavanna’s. The king, bragging about his low birth and lack of culture, becomes humble and disarmed in the presence of Basawanna. But at the same time he secretly feels that his political shrewdness and competence are of equal value.

The play was first produced by Ebrahim Alkazi in Hindi as Rakt-Kalyan in 1992 for National School of Drama Repertory Company and remarkable production by Arvind Gaur for Asmita Theater which ran from 1995-2008. 

 

Sakharam Binder (1972) is the modern Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar’s most intensely naturalistic play. The play revolves around the central character Sakharam, a book- binder, who though a Brahmin, is the antithesis of the general idealized conception of a member of that caste. Sakharam, though apparently crude, aggressive and violent, has his own laws of personal morality and honesty. The openness of his personality becomes in itself a critique of the hypocrisy of the middle class. Sakharam does not believe in the institution of marriage and arranges contractual cohabitation based on convenience with single women who have been deserted by their husbands or have walked out on them. Tendulkar weaves a matrix of intricate interrelationships by introducing Laxmi and Champa, both diametrically different from one another, complicating Sakharam’s beliefs, indicating religious and domesticated tendencies in him when in contact with Laxmi, eventually turning her out of his house and bringing in Champa, undergoing a psychological turmoil resulting in his temporary impotence and finally murdering Champa in a fit of anger and frustration. On the one hand Champa, the gross, sensuous, brazen on the surface shows strange kindness and generosity when she convinces Sakharam to give shelter to Laxmi who, for all she knows, turns out to be her rival. Laxmi, on the other hand, is the seemingly docile, meek and a stereotypical embodiment of the ideal Indian woman who shows greater ruthlessness and presence of mind in covering up for Champa’s murder, as Sakharam is totally bewildered by what he has done.

 

Considered a harsh critique of the institutions of Caste and Marriage, laid with blatant violence, abusive language and explicit sexuality Sakharam Binder was banned by the Maharashtra state Censor Board after it was first produced in 1972 by Director Kamlakar Sarang. 

 

 

 

 

Penned by the Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar in 1961, and produced and directed by Sreeram Lagoo for the Marathi theatre group theatre Unit in 1970 Gidhade or The Vultures underlines the astonishing range of Tendulkar’s dramatic genius. The publication of Vultures finally in 1971 associated its dramatist with sensationalism, sex, and violence. There ensued a long war with the censors who condemned the play as obscene and in bad taste. Conservative sections of Maharashtrian society were stunned by the open display of illicit sexual relations and scenes of violence that constituted the plot.

 

The play is ruthless dissection of human nature revealing it’s inherent tendencies of violence, avarice, selfishness, sensuality, and sheer wickedness. The decadence and degeneration of human individuals belonging to a middle class milieu is exposed through the interactions among the members of a family: the two brothers’ Ramakanth and Umakanth’s greed and viciousness, their father Hari Pitale’s degenerate nature, their sister Manik’s gross sensuality –all add up to naturalistic depiction of those baser aspects of human that one would like to shut one’s eyes to. The beating up of the father by his own children, the two brothers forcible abortion of their sister’s child, the mutual hatred among the members of the family, underline the fundamental evil inherent in human character.

 

The characters of Rama, Ramakanth’s wife and her half brother-in-law Rajninath, Pitale’s illegitimate son are in sharp contrast to the others. Their illicit relationship is the single most genuine and humane relationship in the context of the whole play. Tendulkar makes Rajaninath recite three poems, during the play that expresses sympathy and compassion for the victims of human viciousness.

 

 

 

Written by the Delhi-based playwright Manjula Padmanabhan in 1984, Lights Out! presents the tragic spectacle of daily abuse of women watched at a distance by middle class characters. The daily mystery of heart-rending and pain-filled screams of a woman coming from a neighboring building, never seen but heard every night, destroys the fabric of domesticity of a middle-class couple, divided in their response to her anguish. While Leela is anguished by the cries for help and persists her husband Bhaskar to report it to the police , the latter quiets his conscience by arguing that the victim is after all only a prostitute and not ‘decent and respectable’ woman. 

 

Padmabhan’s characters oscillate between unnoticed silences and palpable, horrifying screams. It is no coincidence then that Frieda, the maid in the household is visible in the background mostly attending to household chores, at other times simply drifting about in the kitchen. There is a telling moment in the play when Bhaskar gets the bright idea of throwing acid on the perpetrators being prodded into some action by his wife Leela. Frieda is more than willing to get the acid for the purpose, even before Leela can instruct her to fetch it. She wants to stop it too but is powerless to even express her want and must only act upon her employer’s instructions.

 

Based on a real-life incidence in Mumbai, the play highlights the issue of anonymity and isolation in modern urban lives, marginalization of women, domestic violence and its moral, ethical and social implications for civic society.

 

 

Widely recognized as Tagore’s finest dramatic work, Muktadhara or The River Unbound (1922) highlights Tagore’s critique of nationalism and colonial exploitation, his problematic interactions with science and the emergence of his cosmopolitan outlook. Set in an imaginary location Chitrakoot, the play revolves around the hostilities between the citizens of the two areas Chitrakoot and Shiv-tarai and the non-violent resistance to the dictatorial ruler Ranajit by the enigmatic singer and sanyasi, Dhananjoy Bairagi. Lurking in the background is the gigantic machine, the dam across the river Muktadhara built by the royal engineer Bibhuti that towers above the temple of Bhairava (Shiva). the dam is built by Ranajit as a means of exercising control over people by denying them access to water. The adopted heir to the throne Abhijit, who champions the cause of the defeated people nurtures a deep association with the free flowing Muktadhara. His love for the freedom of the waterfall and his refusal to allow the King to exploit the people of Shiv-tarai, prompts him finally to demolish the machine and let loose the force of the waterfall, in the process getting swept away.

 

Tagore’s use of folk Baul music in the form of songs sung by the protagonist poet Dhananjoy serve as a conscious dramaturgical strategy in opposition to the realist five-act structure of Western drama and underlines Tagore’s own belief in the potency of folk music to bind estranged communities together.  

The political theme is being expressed through a machine across the waterfall in order to prevent the flow of water to the vanquished country and the people’s resistance to it, has clear resonances with the anti-colonial struggle, particularly with Gandhi’s non-violent non-cooperation movement gaining momentum at the time. The play is symbolic of the broad binary between the forces of nature and machine and the latter’s potential for human emancipation, ideals of humanism and global co-operation as professed in Tagore’s art and politics.

 

 

 

 

 

Avinash (), written by eminent theatre scholar and critic, Shanta Gokhale, is an intense naturalistic family drama  that deals with the archetypal middle class Indian family  torn between sentiments, family obligations and real concerns of money. Avinash, a depressive alcoholic even though invisible throughout, is the central presence in the play generating levels of oppressive tensions in the family’s social interactions. The family members have to ‘save face’ by making excuses for his absence, excluded from all family discussion, ostracized because of the social stigma attached to alcoholism  and clinical mental illness. Treatment is expensive and would consume Tatya’s entire savings, who would prefer to use his money to support his half brother Avinash, the son of his father’s mistress. While Tatya sees himself in the role of the provider to Avinash, despite his dislike for him, it is the women of the household who carry on their roles as nurturers. Avinash’s mysterious death triggers off harsh inter-personal conflicts in the rest of the family.

 

The play unfolds with a raw energy of anger, frustration and a certain overhanging despair over Avinash’s fate and Tatya’s relentless outpourings of frustration and disappointment. It is this blanket of darkness that pervades all of modern lifestyles that makes Avinash an important play.