Anasuya Vaidya unfolds the journey of the renowned play, The Ramayana, by her father Gopal Sharman, the man behind the contemporary, philosophical interpretation of the epic. She tells Devi Singh how the play has transitioned over the years from her illustrious mother Jalabala Vaidya’s solo performance to the involvement of her own daughter
From the very first play which ran for three-and-a-half hours at the Ashoka Hotel in 1970 to its shortened version playing today at Akshara Theatre, the family behind the theatre as well as the play has come a long way. Anasuya Vaidya tells us how her mother memorised the entire script. “People who saw the original play complained to us as to why we cut it short,” she says.
“My parents were asked to create a small theatre in the Ashoka Hotel by Dr. Karan Singh who had been very encouraging when the play was being written by my father. In fact, he was the one who suggested it should be done as one woman performance by my mother,” Vaidya tells us.
later, Sharman converted half of their house into a 50-seat theatre as it was really expensive to hire auditoriums for performances or even rehearsals. “We didn’t have enough money for the plays, but we got a lot of monetary assistance from the people,” Vaidya shares. She tells us how Ramnath Goenka used to come by at the Akshara theatre while his son was hospitalised at RMl Hospital which is right next to Akshara. “He gave us some advertisements in his paper which helped us a lot,” she adds.
The play has been staged all over the world over including the Broadway in New York to far flung places like Fiji Islands. The play has had changes over the years. From a solo performance to a cast of actors who now support Jalabala Vaidya. Among them, is her granddaughter, Nisa Shetty as Sita. Jalabala Vaidya now can be seen in the opening and the finals scenes.
Having studied journalism with aspirations to become a writer, Jalabala Vaidya played 22 characters in mere two hours of time. “It is definitely incredible, but it was something in her genes. She was always good at acting even during her college days,” she tells us. Jalabala Vaidya changes the costumes four times in the play and each costume reflects the different act. It is basically her voice, facial expressions and the body language through which the transition from one character to the other happens.
“My father wrote a very philosophical column in The Indian express which was read by the then President of India Dr. Radhakrishnan and he wanted to meet the writer who was writing such interesting articles. The President wanted the person to read out the columns and articles he missed out on. “Bapji wrote under a pseudonym so it was difficult for people to find him. But finally he was located after a search and was invited to the Rashtrapati Bhawan when he totally lost his nerve. So he asked my mother to read out his pieces which were a combination of prose and poetry,” she says.
Apparently, the President of India was the one who then kickstarted Jalabala’s career. She read out the pieces in a dramatic manner which the intelligentsia at the President’s house adored. Dr. Radhakrishnan then arranged for her performance at Azad Bhawan and the audience consisted of diplomats from different countries who invited her to perform at their home turfs.
Interestingly, Sharman was invited by the Royal Shakespeare Company to bring a play for their world theatre season. He chose the Ramayana which he wanted to look at through contemporary eyes. “Ramayana is something which we all grow up with. We all know it well. There are some grey areas in it though like Sita going through the fire ordeal and that intrigued Bapji. He thought it was all human.”
He has used the traditional old concept of katha, where there is a katha vachak who narrates the story. He has taken that as a base from where he has built the entire script. In the beginning of the play, Jalabala is a contemporary person sitting in the audience. She then puts forward the dilemma of contemporary human problems and searches for solutions. That’s when the character of Hanuman is introduced from where the play starts.
In Sharman’s interpretation of the play, Ram is a philosophical, analytical human than a god. In the play, both Sita and Ram are shell shocked after the war. Sita tells Ram that she would like a wooden image of her to be made and sacrificed to fire which would act as a symbol of the past. And she would like to start her new life with its ashes.
But the statue doesn’t burn which is again a symbolic representation of the fact that Sita doesn’t burn. The play emphasises on the fact that the past can never be burned down or washed away. In the end, both Sita and Ram merge into each other and become divine.