Charulata, a play by Anuragna Theatre Group, was an impressive show of art and innocent love. Director Ashraf Ali spoke to Kritika Dua about his interpretations
In art, man reveals himself and not his objects.” Charulata is an evocative story of a young, married woman caught between an old husband who is steeped in his work, seems detached and her sudden incandescent fascination with a young fine looking man, her husband’s cousin, was treated with sensitivity and handled delicately by director Ashraf Ali. It’s based on Rabindranath Tagore’s poignant novella Nastanirh (The Broken Nest).
In the opening of the play, Charulata, elegantly dressed in a saree, decked with jewellery sits on a sofa talking to her husband Bhupati clad in a dhoti-kurta sitting at his work desk occupied by his work. Then her brother-in-law, Amal walks into the room in a kurta pajama, returning from college, and asks his bhabhi to stitch him a new pair of shoes.
On an outward appearance Charulata has a comfortable life, her husband Bhupati runs a radical English newspaper at the time of the Bengal Cultural Renaissance in the late 18th Century Kolkata. She has a luxurious life with no household chores to do, which has left her bored, restless and lonely. She has plenty of time to pursue her passion for arts, literature and poetry, but she doesn’t feel an inclination towards it. She has no companion to share her creative ardour with.
Her husband has a newspaper to run and remains engrossed in his work which leaves him with little time for his wife. But her husband sympathises with the cheerless plight of her wife and thus asks his brother, Amal, who shares similar interests with her to befriend her. Bhupati asks Amal to read her poetry in his free time as she is fond of it. Amal says that he believes that Charu has a powerful imagination which he has seen in very few women and that she can write well. He replies that he doesn’t expect so much from her.
Finally Charu is happy, singing and playful, writing poetry inspired by her admiration towards Amal. She only realises that the admiration has blossomed into love when Amal is married off in a foreign land. Amal is married as his brother can’t keep him anymore. He has hit a financial low after his brother-in-law makes off with the newspaper’s money and has left him in huge debt.
Charu and Bhupati sit on separate corners of a sofa symbolising an estrangement and distance between the husband and wife. He then sits on her lap and says, “I have returned home,returned to you.”
Charulata, on the other hand, is physically present but emotionally she is with Amal. This is one reason that she pawns her jewelry in order to send a telegram to Amol asking whether he is well. To which Amal replies, “I am fine.”
Charu says to herself, “You (Bhupati) have come to me with your broken boat (he’s financially broke), where should I go with my broken heart.”
Charu, crushed by Amal’s departure inadvertently reveals her emotions to Bhupati. Bhupati is completely shattered by this reversal of trust and love. He decides to go to Mysore, she asks him to take her along and he declines. Then after a brief pause he says that he will, she holds the paan daani (thinking of Amal), says “let it be.”
On asking about how difficult was it to adapt The Broken Nest, Ali said, “I have earlier done a play on a story Dhoop aur Chhaya by Tagore and the response was phenomenal, which encouraged me to adapt The Broken Nest.”
He hasn’t seen the movie Charulata by Satyajit Ray inspired from the novella so that he can bring newness and his own vision into the play and not get affected in any sense by the movie. He has kept only three main characters — Charulata (played by Smita Pahari), Bhupati (played by Nishant Thakur) and Amal (played by Narendra Kumar) and the rest are eliminated in order to keep the story simple and maintain clarity for the audience.
Ali said, “There’s joy and a sense of satisfaction in doing a difficult task and to bring that onto the screen successfully is a challenge in itself.” He has also dramatised Prem Chand and Surendra Verma’s novelDo Murdo ke liye Guldasta into a play. He likes to experiment with literature and adapt famous works of art into a play. He enjoys the process.
The challenged faced to adapt a novel into a play is “to convert small scenes in a novel into bigger ones of 30-35 minutes in a play to captivate the audience. To match what the writer has said in a story or a novel with with what you (playwright) has said in your play.” The challenge is also to tell the story using minimum characters and still retain the flavour. The only difference between the novel and the play is that the events are happening in a continuous manner here, whereas in the novel it happens during a course of time.
He explained why he chose this particular work of Tagore. “The message given by Tagore is still relevant in today’s time. To tell a story of blossoming innocent love of Charulata towards Amal in a pious manner and to handle herself with grace when her world is shattered,” he pointed out.
The way Charulata weaves a dream of a beautiful garden with distinct flowers, flowing lake,chirping birds and a playing deer with Amol is her way of expressing love. At the end when Amal is about to leave Charulata asks him, “What about the gardenIJ He replies, “Destroy it” implying the end of whatever they had between them. Ali said the message in The Broken Nest is, “People should marry for love or companionship and not due to any greed (of lust or money).”
It does come as a surprise that even after so many years, subjects on which the bard wrote still make sense. He was ahead of his time in thoughts, philosophies and his views on issues that we now debate on like feminism and equality. In many ways, he is truely modern.