Dharamvir Bharati’s one of the hit plays ‘Andha Yug’ (The Blind Age) was staged on Friday at Madhya Pradesh State Tribal Museum.
The play was staged to mark the regular drama performances ‘Abhinayan’.
The play was directed by Pnakj Dubey and was brilliantly performed by the artists of Sandesh Theatre Troupe.
The play narrated the verse from the Indian classical epic ‘Mahabharata’.
It also elaborates on the consequences, when a society fails to step out of the cycle of revenge and instead choose a redemptive path, which is always available even in worst of scenarios, leading to wide-scale bloodshed.
Set in the last day of the Great Mahabharat war, the seven-act tragedy does not only show the destruction of human lives but, also ethical values.
The play begins on the 18th and last day of the Great Mahabharata War, which devastated the kingdom of Kauravas, cousins of Pandavas, their capital Hastinapur lay burning in ruins, the battlefield of Kurukshetra was scattered with carcasses and skies filled with vultures and death laments. Sufferers were on both the side as cousins killed each other.
The survivors were left grieving and enraged as they continued to blame other for the destruction even divine will, yet no one was willing to view it as a consequence of their own moral choices.
Just the Ashwatthama, son of guru Dronacharya, in one last-ditch act of revenge against the Pandavas, releases the ultimate weapon of destruction, the Brahmastra.
Krishna, who mediated between the cousins prior to war, remains the moral centre of the play. Even in his failure he presents options that are both ethical and reminds that higher or sacred way is always accessible to human beings even in the worst of times.