The story of life of a woman was splendidly shown in a play ‘Ai Ladki’. The play was performed at Bharat Bhavan here on Tuesday, marking the fourth day of Madhya Pradesh Rangotsav.
The play was directed by Ayaz Khan and was splendidly performed by the artists of Parivartan Theatre Troupe, Gwalior. The play is an adoption of the story with the samee name by Krishna Sobti.
Ai Ladki is a long story which is about an old woman waiting for death. In the days approaching her death, an elderly woman finds herself a physical captive to her illness and yet, for the first time in her adult life, free to think and say exactly as she pleases.
This agonising rapport between paradoxical elements is the foundation of the woman's relationship with her daughter and is explored by Krishna Sobti and translated by Shivanath at multiple levels in the play Ai Ladki.
Throughout, the woman's apprehension about death is laced with a desire to be rid of a "grief so intense that one has to experience it all alone", and her pride in her daughter's single status is mingled with a fear the stigma carries.
Both the characters of the play i.e. mother and her daughter speak for a generation that considered itself more progressive than the one before as portrayed in the independent spirit of the daughter but which ultimately only reiterated the position of the woman at the bottom of the social chain-symbolised by the mother's increasing and ultimate weakness.
The play was wonderfully performed before the Bhopalites. Each and every detail of the play was kept intact.