STREER PATRA (trans: Wife’s Letter) of Nirbak Abhinay Akademi: an
eternal memoire of a woman’s journey to emancipation (presented on 22 March 2026, at
Achira, Phuldanga)
With a very
threatening nor’wester looming overhead, with lightning and thunder cracking all around I
was present in a room of Achira in Phuldanga, near Shantiniketan, But I was transported to the
Twenties of the 20th century Calcutta. It was not because of the
décor of the room, or the ambience around. It was because of Mrinal, the Mejo-bou
of 27 Makhan Boral Lane.
I was listening
to Mrinal's pledge to cross over the threshold of her cloistered world and break
open the heavy chains of the patriarchal society and to live an emancipated life of her
own. That vow had no emotional bearings, had no unpleasant comments about her
husband nor her in-laws, but had a bulldozer of rationality shattering the ‘mason-built
walls’, ‘the barbed wires of household regulations’ of the society. She
narrates how against the wishes of her in-laws she had given shelter to her
elder sister-in-law’s sister Bindu, who was being tortured by her cousin
brothers and had been married off to a mentally
deranged man. But that she could not save
Bindu, for situations compelled Bindu to die. But she says the ‘banner of
victory in the hands of Death’ taught her that ‘Bindu was superior than her
unfortunate human birth…greater than Death – and here Bindu is not only a girl
from a Bengali household, not only a cousin
sister, not only a deceived wife of an unknown mad husband – there she is eternally infinite’.
When this
story written in 1914 was published in ‘Sabuj Patra’ Tagore had to face a
barrge of condemnations from different quarters. Even a person like Bipin Chandra
Pal wrote a piece ‘Mrinaler Katha’ which translates into like ‘The Account of
Mrinal’. The misogynist rage was perhaps amplified reading Tagore ending the
letter of Mrinal to her husband with ‘চরণতলাশ্রয়ছিন্ন – মৃণাল’
which can be loosely translated into ‘Severed from the shelter under your feet
– Mrinal’. Tagore had told Rani Chanda that such a piece by Pal would not deter
him from ‘taking the side of Women’.
About
fifteen years back Seema Biswas had staged this piece in a play in Hindi in the
Nandikar Festival. I liked the work. But as it was a proscenium work, it had to
be an extrovert representation with an obvious loud expression. But the very
intimate dialogue of Mrinal has a very inwardly communicative character. The
reader would find it comfortable to read the piece in his own quite corner. And
would perhaps hear as if the voice of Mrinal herself pronouncing an
introspective realisation. In the small space of Achira, it was exactly that feeling
which I underwent when I sat to experience Suranjana Dasgupta’s performance. The
feeling was so intense that I was totally oblivious of the other persons
present alongside with me in that room. A numbness took over me as I listened
to the inner soul of Mrinal. I felt that, time had frozen and Suranjana had
metamorphosed into mejo-bou Mrinal for that time being. Her performance
was steeped with her nuanced expressions that brought out Mrinal with all her
shades. Keeping to the tone of the letter she did not deliver her monologue but
simply conversed with the person in front of her. It felt that she built each
and every moment holding firmly the hands of Tagore.
The other
aspects of the production like the background sounds like the roar of the sea,
or the bleating of the calves or the shehnai seemed redundant and were
like intrusions in the intimate space of both the performer and the
viewer.
Before
signing off I would like to state that despite reading the story umpteen number
of times, Nirbak Abhinay Akademi through Suranjana introduced me to a new
Mrinal of 27 Makhan Boral Lane.
We will
be meeting Sayak’s KUNDUBABU (staged on 3 May 2026) in my next Blog.
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