NSD Repertory’s recent production, Virasat, is a generational saga that traces the rise and downfall of a family. Director Anuradha Kapur spoke to Utpal K Banerjee
Virasat written in 1982 by thespian dramatist Mahesh Elkunchwar, is an extraordinary play, chronicling the life of the Deshpandes, their graft-ridden meteoric rise and equally inevitable fall to dust.
In a rare interview, the reclusive Nagpur-based theatre-person said, “Virasat came to me when I was talking to Satyadev Dubey. He told me about a feudal family that owned a tractor, but never used it.
“Slowly it sank into the courtyard. When tractor was destroyed, so was the family. This image haunted me and started me off on Virasat.”
NSD Repertory’s recent production of Virasat, under the institute’s erstwhile director Anuradha Kapur, is a magnum opus. The original play has three parts — Wada (the stone mansion), Talab (the pool) and Yugant (end of the era).
In the NSD version, the three have been stitched into one seamless whole — tightly knit and without black-out gaps. Unlike the original, the characters hardly take exits and keep the narrative running.
In a cleverly-built set of rafters and pillars around a square cesspool in the middle where action takes place on all sides, spectators — seated as though in the wings — witness fortunes and struggles of the Deshpandes, once highly respected and well-off landed gentry, with sprawling acres: now caught between the memory of their own genteel past and the financial penury of the present, drawn upon themselves by their own devious ways. It is a cyclic saga that moves between many registers, without specific heroes or anti-heroes, to unfold the evolving history of a family.
There are elopements and deaths; midnight drooling over hidden jewellery and its sudden disappearance; falling-out and reconciliation; the nearly-forgotten elderly and the youth. In a sense, the play mirrors social and cultural shifts and mores that mark the 20th century in present-day India. As members of several generations come to terms with their past and future in drastically different ways, viewers perceive an image of India: negotiating its way through modernity. In what could have been a denouement at the end, there is an about-turn, with the dead spirit rising like a phoenix from the ashes and the brick-boundary of the dried cesspool being jointly built up once again. An interview with the director:
Did you intend to make a tragic-comedyIJ
Yes, it turns out to be that, with Parag’s mistress Nandini asserting, “live each day with courage”, Uncle Chandu returning to his prostitute and Parag agreeing with Nandini, “life must be lived on its own terms.” There’s always a ‘connect,’ hence a redemption!
What has been your overall motiveIJ
I meant this to be an epic of modern India. I find it’s only courage that’s needed to make the rot work. It’s an epic of the ordinary people.
Are there elements or influences of Henrik IbsenIJ
Yes the play is in the same spirit of Western realistic tradition. It’s also about everyday reality and mundane life. But here relationships are palpably real, not cynical.
Your style seems naturalistic…
My style is hyper-realism. Basic things are done even in real-time, like making chapatis, tea and rice!
But why has make-up not changed over years, except sister Prabha’s hair becoming grey before she commits suicideIJ
(After a pause) Yes, Prabha applies sandalwood to her hair to make it grey. In other cases, I thought attempting greying may create superficial impact. I wanted the actors’ body-language to indicate aging, as Aai develops stupor, like the erstwhile dadi…
You used various kinds of music. like dhrupad aalap in the beginning…
Other than dhrupad, I’ve used tarana, khayal, Marathi natya-sangeet, laavni and film music, depending on the prevailing mood. A special item has been clapping music by Steve Reich, when personal belongings are being forcibly taken away.
The set is simply beautiful…
Deepan Sivaraman has done a wonderful job to create the hyper-realism. Making audiences sit around, and characters go in and out for real-time actions through them, is inviting audience-participation and challenging spectatorship among the actors!