Kanyadaan - The drama

Just back from a drama called Kanyadaan. Phew!! Blew my brains out!! It was a Lillette Dubey directed drama which was written by ...Vijay Tendulkar (had to look up his name, which should probably teach us the power of celebrity names!) and Lilette dubey also plays one of the protagonists. It was the first play probably after campus where the play has held me rivetted from start to finish!! It tore me apart at spots and if I was to describe it in one word, it would be INTENSE!

Now before i really go into MY dissection of the play, the basic story is this.

The main pair are a freedom fighter socialist husband ( the year is 1981) who has always fought for equality for Dalits all his life ( he makes speeches at political rallies on a daily basis as a member of the Socialist Party! )and an equally socially committed wife who is the Women's wing equivalent. Their daughter announces that she is planning to marry a poet and a writer who happens to be a dalit. Even though the first meet with the future son-in-law clearly shows that he is from a very different world from this brahmin family ( in his language, in his culture, in his financial abject poverty, in his tendency to be violent with his future wife, everything!) the father is enthusiastic bcos he believes that this is the first opportunity he has got to practice what he preaches! So he and his daughter overcome the objects of his wife and his son and get her married. However, slowly things go from bad to worse until they find that their daughter is pregnant and is still being beaten by her husband ( who they begin to see is not really interested in getting a job but is interested only in drinking her money and beating her for it!) and later when the son-in-law publishes a wonderful and touching autobiography ( which is a total lie from start to finish) he comes and asks his famous speech making father in law to chair a meeting and discussion on his book! When the father in law who is sick of his daughter's ill treatment and is also a very principled man refuses, the SIL indirectly threatens to further torture his daughter!! The FIL against his entire life's principles delivers the laudatory speech ( though it breaks him in the process) and the drama ends with the daughter coming and shouting at him stating that the very reason she has not come out of the relationship she is in is bcos HE has taught her to live by her principles, to never back out of any fight in life and to never give in to circumstances and she is shocked to see him break his own values so easily!! This accusation of the daughter breaks the father's heart and the play ends with the father weeping in a chair!!

Disclaimer: This is a pathetic representation of the story and misses out ALL the nuances, the emotion, the depth that was in the play. However, short of seeing the play ( or maybe writing a novella in my blog) i can't give more than this gist.

NOW for my take on the play:

The play ran on three levels, one was the family drama which was unfolding on stage, the other was the societal issues reflected through the family's thoughts and arguments, the third was the reflection of the various facets of human nature.

The family issues raised ranged from the father's fight between his commitment to his ideals and his family's welfare, the son's lack of belief in his dad's ideologies to his inner love and respect for him all the same, the same with the wife who is torn between being the mom and the wife and finally the daughter, who is torn between self preservation and living to save her love from his self destructive tendencies, her sense of helplessness clashing with her strong pride and sense of independence.

The societal issues range from the torment that the Dalits have gone through over the ages, the guilt that the upper class feels for the same, the inadequacy of the solution they try to give, the limitations of the caste itself, how little people around us really care and so on.

And finally the human conflict which starts with the intense conflict within the Dalit Son-in-law, who writes such sublime idealistic poetry ( reading which the girl falls in love with him) to his strong sense of inferiority ( to the extent where he is not even comfortable just standing in a "big" house) to his self destructive tendencies which range from his drinking to his abuse of his wife to beating her and which swings from extreme rage to extreme horror at himself for what he is doing! His education clashing with his genes, his knowledge clashing with his atavistic tendencies and his losing battle with the animal within! The conflict in the later stages shifts to the father and daughter duo, each in their own fight!! The father torn with guilt for having encouraged his daughter in getting married!! His fight between his ideals and the practical requirement of the day ( which is to save his daughter from further torture!) and the daughter's conflict between taking her parent's help and living on her own, between hating the animal in her husband to loving the intellectual in him, between her moments of strength when she refuses to leave her drunken husband to moments of intense self pity.

The things I really loved about the play was, it didn't try to give a solution ( even after one hour of pondering, i find none to the issues raised in the play). But it raked up various emotions, from intense grief ( which you cannot but share with the father who realises that HIS beliefs and morals [ or rather their interpretation by his daughter] have led his daughter to this hell which she is living, to shock at the realisation of how different the lives of the lower caste is from the upper, to a strong conviction that some solution has to be sought for this fundamental difference that is the life of the upper caste and the lower!!

The mind ranges from a strong sense of guilt/pity/horror for what the dalit's must've gone through to become the way they are today, to a sense of outrage at the manner in which they misinterpret the best and noble intentions of the upper class, to a sense of helplessness at being unable to find a solution for it!!

All in all, an unforgettable play!!

The world of the ninetanks

A paraphrase of shakespeare would read " The world is a mental asylum and all of us are mad men". So the purpose of this blog is to explore that insane, politically incorrect, idealistic, cruel, selfish, desperate, scared, angry-young-man,crazy sides of me!! This is NOT for any of your liking. If you are sent a link ( or have somehow found out), you have already been privileged. "Ceasar is generous to a fault". You may comment on what I write here, you are free to like it or not. But you are NOT free to censor what I write, to tell me how to do it, to change the way it looks, it feels, it talks, it shares or ANYTHING else. You already do it to me in the real world ( along with the rest of the world). But here in blogland, I truly am FREE!! I can wear my underwear outside my pants!! I have the power to fearlessly voice my opinion and I will NOT brook interference!!

ALL HAIL THE PROPHET OF TRUTH!! ( Or atleast his side of it!! )


Aaaah, now that i've put in MY style of a legal disclaimer, let's get down to the long, boring, disinterested soliloquys. :)) The biggest kick that i get from a blog is that the blog doesn't talk back!! ( Or atleast, so far it hasn't!!) I can say EXACTLY what i like and it nods in muted acquiscence. I rant and rave and it shares my agony, I cry and it empathises with my pain, I shout in ecstasy and it shares a whoop with me!! And all this in my first blog!! Maaaan!! Am I a sucker for blogs or what!!

VA