CHHARIGANGA: A BISTAAR BY SOUMITRA CHATTOPADHYAY, THE MASTER OF THE STAGE

CHHARIGANGA: A BISTAAR BY SOUMITRA CHATTOPADHYAY, THE MASTER OF THE STAGE

Way back in 1981, I remember, Soumitra Chattopadhyay in conversation with yours truly had said that before stepping on to the stage to act out a character in front of his viewers, he studies the character and he thinks about it, and then like the bistaar in a kheyal rendition he gradually unfolds the character on the stage. His words resonated after these thirty years later the other day when I had gone to see, rather experience yet another sterling work of this master of the stage.

Sanstab presented Chhariganga as their latest production with Soumitra Chattopadhyay directing the play and doing the role of the protagonist. A couple of days before the day the show was staged at Tapan Memorial Theatre, or it would be correct to say that I had the opportunity to see the staging, the central government had announced that this year’s Dada Saheb Phalke awardee would be this thespian who had gifted innumerable scintillating performances since his first shot as Apu ushering in his newly-wed wife, Aparna to his dilapidated roof-top room beside the railway yard fifty three years back. A national award for acting had come his way for the first time just four years back and that, too, after fifty two years of our sheer disregard to choose and acknowledge a gem from the coloured glass beads. This shame has been somewhat lessened by this announcement of the award. But to many theatre-goers like me Soumitra Chattopadhyay is an outright stage person who also acts in films. Unfortunately we have not given him his dues for we have failed to gauge the immense depth of his capabilities on the stage.

    

Jointly written with Amit Ranjan Biswas, the play has those poetic qualities that are the benchmarks of a Soumitra play. It tells the story of a scientist who though having international recognition is out casted because of his shifting into the field of quasi-science world of alchemy to probe into the origin of the Creation. His eccentric pursuits had led to the death of his wife and for which his daughter who lives abroad comes to him in his many feats of hallucinations and holds him responsible. Driven out from the professional and the social worlds he lives secluded in his ancestral dilapidated mansion far away from the city and on the banks of the huge Chhariganga lagoon. A person who also has a past to hide visits him to help him out in his daily chores and, thereby, giving him company at least for some part of the day. Both the characters are like the backwaters of Chhariganga – isolated from the main stream. At the end his daughter comes to take him with her and thereby release him of his bondage from isolation and dejection.  

As a drama it has not much novelty to boast off, and that makes the production much more significant. But the presentation on the stage will make the production worthy of mention as a major event on the Bengali stage. The two characters or rather three as the character of the daughter portrayed by Poulomi Bose, the thespians daughter in his real life, has two appearances – one as the real daughter of the scientist and the other as the one who comes in his hallucinations – are entwined so perfectly in the body of the play that there is no difficulty in their perspectives as against the protagonist. The role of the person who gives company to the scientist is excellently executed by the elderly stage personality, Dwijen Bandopadhyay. This senior actor has been contributing immensely to the Bengali stage for quite a number of decades and has developed a particular style of his own and it was interesting to note that in this particular character he was bereft of that style.  That proved his versatility once again. Poulomi on the other hand was immaculate in rendering the daughter’s character both in the real and surreal forms. For both the actors it is needless to say that sharing the stage with the master is a real challenge and with the directorial support from the master, himself, the work becomes a finely tuned piece.

And as for Soumitra’s presentation of the character it was an experience for the viewers as is usual in his all other works. Here he was creating a character of a man of science with outstanding intelligence but who has lost his battle to get to the truth of something he believes is at the core of existence, and is living a castigated life of a recluse. His work can best be described taking his words in reference. As a viewer one experienced the bliss of listening to a master expressively interpreting each note of the raga in the bistaar of a kheyal. As such works of art can never be emulated nor can be repeated it remains an experience of a life-time for those who witnessed the performance at that point of time. In subsequent staging, it is natural that the master would render the same dialogues but the resonance that would be created in the viewers of that performance would be something different, something unique. And so the concept of stage performance gets a very different meaning, a different connotation when such masters are on the stage. Then to top it all there is a nuance, an overtone of poetic lyricism in the structuring of sequences or moments that carry the undoubted signature of the director. For the students of theatre such works unveil a thousand texts for them to imbibe.

The other aspects have been well handled. Soumik-Piyalis’ stage design has significantly contributed to create the ambience which did help in the run of the play. So did the light design by Badal Das as darkness and the lantern lights played important roles in creating the surreal effects. Dishari’s background score was kept to the minimum. The dress designs and their colours were very well thought out. The maroon robe and the staff in his hand gave the scientist’s appearance a medieval look which certainly brought out the perspective of the character. Though Md.Ali’s make-up was well done there seemed to be some sort of discomfort for the master thespian in a few instances. But that certainly did not hamper his act.                   

What did hamper the production is the constant disturbance of the ringing of the cell phones of the so-called culturally superior viewers of Kolkata most of whom sadly had gone to see ‘Soumitra’ rather than to appreciate and dunk in the awe-inspiring performance of this great master of stage.   

A TRIBUTE TO A POET WHO WROTE PLAYS: BADAL SIRCAR

A TRIBUTE TO A POET WHO WROTE PLAYS: BADAL SIRCAR

Very recently on a call from the organisers of a UGC-sponsored National Seminar entitled “Modern Indian Drama: Theory, Practice and Criticism” I contributed a paper on Badal Sircar. The title of the paper was A TRIBUTE TO A POET WHO WROTE PLAYS:  Badal Sircar. I am putting up a shorter article with excerpts from the paper for you to enjoy the poetry that Sircar created in his plays.

Answering to a question in a programme on the National Television channel, long time back, he had very explicitly said that he disliked poetry. Then how is it that such wonderful poems glitter his dramas? Sircar said those he had to write for the sake of the plays he wrote and nothing more. Such was this giant intellectual who preferred to keep a low profile and abhorred ‘show off’s. This was evident from his works which spanned from full length plays to skits. He was aware that his works might not get the treatment with all its fairness that they ought to. He also knew that the people around may even fail to comprehend what he was trying to tell. And as a matter of fact he did fall a prisoner of his own choice in his own kingdom. But he was least bothered. He was honest to himself and kept to his unflinching integrity till his death last year at the age of eighty six.

This was a person who liked to tread the path that differed from the usual. He was always the ‘outsider’, very akin to his most memorable character Indrajit. He very knowingly suppressed his identity of that of a poet and regally stepped into the world of play-writing. After a few comedies he had stopped writing and then there was Ebong Indrajit, the play that started the New Wave movement in Indian theatre. These two worlds of poetry and plays merged in him so intimately that one would experience the beauty of poetries in his plays. But restless as he was he would soon go into the world of play-direction and then turn into an ardent theatre-activist. It is needless to say that the Bengali drama world was impoverished the day Sircar stopped writing his signature plays and concentrated on street skits for his third theatre. But his sudden transitions from one art to another were always spontaneous and were undertaken when he was at the pinnacle in that specific field of creativity he was leaving. This spontaneity is apparent in his different plays and, perhaps, this naturalness has placed him as the most important playwright in the post-Tagore period. His plays necessarily speak of the human values and are essentially optimistic in character. But it is poetry that exudes once the play is read or the drama enacted.

His dramas did not carry any slogans as basically he was a poet. What he did was simply portray that section of the society about which he had a first-hand familiarity. He had done a very delicate dissection of the educated middle-class, and depicted their plights and their drudgery for a mediocre life that had no variety and their innate naivety that indulges escapism. But what made Sircar’s works unique was the music that he could imbibe in his lines, however mundane the contents are. But his works were misinterpreted and were tried very sparingly, as the general audience lacked the imagination, sensibility and patience that is required to read his ‘poetries’. Way back in 1989, in a review article on his play Shes Nei, I had written, “Keeping in mind the immense contribution of Badal Sircar in enriching the Bengali theatre and his unique form of dramaturgy, one sadly notes a certain lack of interest in recent years in his work. Based on strong socio-political themes, all his plays have ample scope for creative improvisation.” [The Telegraph, 10 November, 1989] 

His full-length serious plays have an innate lyricism in them. This gives his plays a quality which insists that the players as well as the viewers exercise their cerebral faculties to do justice to their individual roles. The lyrical qualities of his plays are so daintily woven in the body of the plays that a serious reading puts the reader in a trance, as it were.

A dissertation on this particular aspect in one of his plays, Sararattir (The Whole Night), would give the reader an idea, perhaps.

Sararattir was written in 1963 during July to August when Sircar was staying somewhere in the eastern part of France. This full-length play has three characters with two drops in between. Debotosh Ghosh, the senior most thespian in the Bengali theatre world today recalls in a conversation with this author that Badal Sircar after returning from France read out the play to Shombhu Mitra. Ghosh who was the only other person present that day at that reading session remembers that Mitra after listening Sircar’s reading was very enthused and had wanted to stage the play. But it did not materialise and till date this play has never been attempted on the stage except for a few amateurish ones in the early seventies. A few excerpts from the play inaptly translated by the author might give a hint of the lyrical qualities of the drama. 

The stage opens to a very shabbily arranged, very poorly lit room in a house with a dilapidated look in some sequestered place, and is stacked with paraphernalia of a typical household. A couple takes shelter in the room from the torrential rains outside. Apparently there was no one in the room but they find a few of the words they utter echoing back to them. And then there emerges an old man from the shadows and welcome them to the house and informs them that he stays there all alone. He arranges all possible comforts for them. And then he baffles them by correctly telling their age and the number of years they are married from a theory he has developed taking seven as a unit. The husband, established in life and contented with the mundane life, is materialistic in his outlook and goes to sleep in a bed prepared by the old man for the couple. The sensuously emotional wife spends a sleepless night and ultimately opens up to this old man to bare all her pains and longings.

The uniqueness of this play is the poetic qualities that the dramatist has provided in the surreal character of the old man and his interactions with the young wife. In order to accentuate this quality he has made the husband a total failure. Thus, the three characters have three different structural qualities. Apart from these three characters there is another character that unlike the others is not presented on the stage. The three main characters that are seen on the stage have not been given any names but the character that is referred to by the woman as her ‘paramour’ has a name. The name given to this character is ‘Ranjan’. This particular name has a very strong romantic presence in the Bengali dramaturgy. In Tagore’s Raktakarabi or The Red Oleander the dramatist introduces this character in absentia but the viewer feels his strong presence mainly through the eulogising dialogues of the protagonist Nandini who describes him as the champion of life who can tame the turbulent waters of the unruly river by his sheer strength. So ‘Ranjan’ has thus come to symbolise the ideal ‘superman’ in the Bengali theatre-goers psyche. Badal Sircar has brought this character in referential terms. The viewer has every reason to doubt the actual existence of this character just as he doubts the existence of the old man. 

It would be interesting to observe how Sircar brings in this romantic character from the following excerpt from the play where the woman passionately speaks out to the old man. The conversation has the qualities of a serenade and the reader drifts into a musical ambience.    

Old man: Do you know Ranjan?

Woman: Only that much which is possible for me.

Old man: Do you love Ranjan?

Woman: (Smiles) Loving Ranjan – do I have that courage in me?

Old man: Does Ranjan love you?

Woman: Does the star in the sky love the flower here on the earth?

Old man: Is Ranjan so far away?

Woman: I think so.

Old man: Why?

Woman: What do I have? I am very ordinary.

Old man: Is Ranjan extraordinary?

Woman: To me, yes.

Old man: You have built Ranjan up in your dreams – in your imagination. Ranjan is not what you believe.  

Woman: Ranjan is exactly that. I have seen Ranjan. The sky and the earth cannot bind him. Ranjan is the breeze, I can feel him, but cannot touch him. Ranjan is everywhere. His two eyes travel beyond the earth, beyond every moment of the days, beyond the horizon. He has the world in his eyes, the whole big world. It is so big that it does not fit into the nitty-gritty of our daily life.

Old man: He has the world in his eyes – his are all ablaze. And that is why his eyes are eternal and never wink. His eyes keep open, in the dark, every night. The fire in his eyes burns him. It gives him pain. It kills him. Ranjan is old. Ranjan is finished. Forget him.

Woman: I crave him.

Old man: You crave him?

 Woman: Yes I crave him. So many nights and midnights, my twenty eight years have gone up in smoke; have vaporised out of the window to mix with the air outside. I have groped to find it – to find the worth, to find the means, to find the price. I could not bear his nonexistence. I have restlessly and aimless tried to find out. But I failed to understand then. Today on this wakeful night all the sleepless windows of the midnight have merged in this room. All my emptiness all my bareness are all here in this room, and in the fire of this wakeful night a very sharp desire has been cast, moulded and welded. I yearn for him. I desire Ranjan.

Old man: What about your husband?

Woman: I don’t know.

Old man: Your world?

Woman: I don’t know.

Old man: And Ranjan?

Woman: I don’t know.  Ranjan does not want me. He won’t need me. He cannot want me. But what does it matter? In my want – he is mine. In my want – he is me. As long as I never knew – I was empty. Today I know – I am full. Today I have a meaning. Today I am. From today on I shall live.

Old man: You want to live for only one wish?

Woman: (Her eyes sparkled) Yes only for one longing. The emptiness of twenty eight years has drifted down to this sedimented desire, and you say it’s only a single want?

                    (The old man suddenly stretches out both his hands)

Old man: Ranjan! Just listen.

.................

The character of the old man is a purely surreal character that Badal Sircar had presented in his unique style, though surrealism in plays is a difficult tool to handle. Sircar was master in playing with the psyche of the reader/viewer. Through this character Sircar expresses the functioning of the thought of the woman as well as that of the husband.

A few excerpts from the play will illustrate this point.

Man: You – stay here all alone?

Old man: It seems you can’t stop thinking about it.

Man: No, I mean, here, like this –

Old man: Why I stay here, is that what you want to know?

                (The man makes an unintelligible grunt. It is understood that was exactly his question.)  

Woman: Why do you ask him repeatedly? He might have reasons not to tell us.

                (The old man looks at the woman and smiles.)

Old man: No, I have no reservations, but not all things can easily be said for others to        understand.

Woman: Why not?

Old man: If I ask you – why do you live alone? Can you answer that for me to understand? 

Man: But she does not stay alone.

                (The old man stares at the woman as if he did not hear the man)

Woman: I – we do not stay alone.

                (The intonation is softer than that of the man)

Old man: Yes yes, right. You people don’t stay alone. Right you are.

                  (To concede to this may seem like being ridiculed. As a matter of fact, the old man had a touch of ridicule in his words all along.)

                  People may think seeing you that you are just married.

Man: Yes, many have said so.

Woman: You have not thought so it seems.

                  (She grins, but she is a bit annoyed. She was used to the mistakes that the people made. The old man smiles – a leer of owning up a crime.)

                  Guess how many years we are married.

Old man: Should I tell you? (He observes both of them) Seven years. (Both of them look at each other) Is that correct?

Woman: Do you practise astrology?

Man: Tomorrow is our anniversary. We will be completing seven years.

Woman: I have heard a range from three months to three years. Till now no one has said more than three years. I wonder how you said that.

Old man: I did not think much. I have a theory about seven years. I believe seven-year is a unit in man’s life.  It’s a unit, a module, a yardstick – whatever you may call it. Seven ones are seven, seven twos are fourteen, seven threes are twenty one, seven fours are twenty eight, seven fives are thirty five – just think of the ages – seven, fourteen, twenty one, twenty eight, thirty five, forty two. Each of them is like the different crossroads in our lives – the end of the old perception and the beginning of a new consciousness.

Man: That could be done with any other number.

Old man: Like?

Man: Take, take five?

Old man: Think of it – five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty five. Do they go like those of seven? 

                (They think. It’s not happening)

Woman: All right – eight?

                (The old man said nothing. They think of eight, sixteen, twenty four.)

Man: (Elated like almost has won) But five eights are forty!  

Old man: So your age is thirty five.

Man: How did you know?

Old man: Usually at thirty five the number forty gets to the head. Almost like a terror. Apart from that I have a leaning for the unit – five sevens are thirty five.

Woman: Right, now tell me what is my age?

                (The old man rises up. There is no grin now.)

Old man: One shouldn’t guess the age of a lady. Otherwise I would have told you that you are of that age when the woman sits to take a detailed account of the past life.

Woman: How much?

                (May be some difficulty in hearing but the intonation is like a whisper. It seemed that the woman took some time to ask the question.)

Old man: Four sevens are twenty eight.......

...........    

A little while later the man ridicules his wife as a poet and the old man retorts:

Old man: .....With their feet on the ground those who can fly on the wings of poetry are the most satisfied of all. What do you say?

Woman: Satisfaction?

Old man: (Suddenly stops) No, I was wrong, it isn’t satisfaction – something else – something much bigger than satisfaction. What is it? Happiness? (Turning to the man) You must not be liking this? Want to play cards?

Man: Cards? You have cards? (The old man takes out a pack from his pocket) But how do we two play?

Woman: I can’t play cards.

Old man: I see. Then? Want to see card tricks?

Woman: (With a childlike interest) Can you show magic?

Old man: Of course! Pick one from this pack. Don’t show me.

                (The woman picks one card. The man did not show much interest. Still glanced at it from behind)

                Have you seen it well? Well keep it inside the pack wherever you want. Now shuffle the pack. 

                (The woman shuffles it like a novice. The man takes it from her and does it with great style. Then he offers it to the old man.)

No, no don’t give it to me. See if the card is there or not.

(They try to find it.)

Woman: Where is it, it is not there?

Old man: It is not there? Have you thoroughly looked for it?

Man: No, it’s not there. 

Old man: Not there? It is lost? (Taking the cards.) Well now here is another magic –

Man: How about finishing this one?

Old man: Which one?

Woman: Won’t you get the card out?

Old man: Which card?

Woman: The one that I picked.

                (The old man stood up and looked straight into her eyes.)

Old man: (With a serious tone) You picked it. It is lost. Do you think if you look for it you’ll get it?

                (The woman could not retort.)

Man: Then why call it a magic?

Old man: (Looking at the man) You can’t relax till you get it back?

Man: Unless you get it back the game isn’t over.

Old man: You insist on an end to this game?

Man: Of course.

Old man: And whatever the end might be? If I return the card all crumpled, crushed, smashed,   battered, pounded – you still want an end?

.........

The old man tries to give the couple whatever comfort possible in that situation.  He gives the woman a fresh sari to wear. She comes back to the room in a fresh sari and overhears the old man telling her husband something about the whole night.

Woman: What about the whole night?

Old man: I have been awake, all night.

  Through the long and dark night.
    I’ve been awake ,watching.

   My eyes sleepless and awake.

  The sleepless eyes looking into the night,
  watching, feeling, learning the night.

[Translated by Mrinalini Ghosh]

Woman: (Almost in whispers) What did you learn?

Old man: Learnt what one shouldn’t know, something that shatters the serenity. Compassion    collapses. Dreams crumble.

Woman: And if you learn of it?

Old man: Yes, if you learn.

  My innocent dreams,

   I have crushed them

  My sleepless eyes have driven them away.

  With these anguished eyes,

 I have seen this night, known this night, believed this night.

[Translated by Mrinalini Ghosh]

Woman: And then?

Old man: Then there is nothing.

Woman: Yes there is. Certainly there is.

..........

At the end of the play the dramatist makes the woman open up to the old man. The husband feels cheated as he fails to synchronise to the refrains of his wife’s longing for life and her denial to the process of mere existence. The rains had stopped and the night had passed off, as the surreal world gradually disappears.

Old man: The rains have stopped and it will be dawn soon. The sun would come up. The waters   would subside and the path for your return would once again be usable. The long night will end.

Woman: And what about Ranjan?

Old man: Ranjan is a night – a long wakeful night. He is an impossible wakeful night in an impossible room. If you don’t want to forget then don’t.

Woman: No, I will never forget – never ever. This night is mine – this one night – one long night – the whole night.

Old man: Come what may. Tonight at last

                    at long last, these eyes

                    have realised their dreams.

                    So what if this is the end. At least this Night

                    would know the possibility of what is impossible. 

[Translated by Mrinalini Ghosh]

Badal Sircar in this play as in his other works used the language as his tool to define, explore and build the idiom which has become his signature style. No one since him has been able to use this idiom with such flair as is evident in his plays. Very little work both in the academic field and on the applied side has been done and it is time we acknowledge the importance of this poet-playwright in the art and world of theatre.