Sarabpreet Singh’s Kultar’s Mime drew similarities between Delhi’s 1984 Sikh riots and the 1903 Kishinev’s Jewish massacre. The director spoke to Rupinder Kaur about his memoir and drawing parallels between the two slaughters
Arise and go now to the city of slaughter;
Into its courtyard wind thy way;
There with thine own hand touch, and with the eyes of thine head,
Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay,
The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead.
The above lines in HN Bialik’s The City of Slaughter describe the pain, anguish and atrocity of a slaughter. The two cities, Kishinev and Delhi, situated on two different continents were shaken by a similar ordeal. It was in 1903 when 49 Jews were killed during the Kishinev pogrom which spanned over three days and here it was in 1984 that around 3,000 Sikhs were massacred after the then PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. Recapping the horrific episode thirty years later, Kultar’s Mime, a theatre production from Boston was staged in Delhi.
Composer and director Sarabpreet Singh said, “I was in college in Pilani when the riots took place. There was a little bit of disturbance but nothing much. So when I heard about what happened in Delhi, it didn’t really bother me a great deal for a couple of reasons. First, I was young and didn’t know how it was for young Sikhs, particularly men at that time. We had the collective fingers of the nation pointed at us. Every young Sikh was considered to be a terrorist. The very conscious effort was made to let the whole country think that Sikhs kind of asked for it.”
Singh left for the US in 1987 and stumbled upon a few writings by Madhu Kishwar (Gangster Rule), reports by two civil rights organisation PUCl and PUDR called the Black book and an academic paper by anthropologist, Dr Veena Das, who did some field work with the children in Tilak Vihar. Das had documented these stories, of which one was about a young deaf mute boy named Avtar which Singh then fictionalised into the character of Kultar and similarly the story about a young girl who holds onto her fathers hand while he was being burnt alive.
“So when I read all of this, it created a tremendous amount of ferment in my mind and what poured out was a long poem called Kultar’s Mime, which I wrote it in 1990. A couple of years ago, my daughter Mehr said that she wanted to turn this into a play. She weaved a story about a group of young artists, who want to honour the victims of 1984. They create paintings, put them on display and narrate stories,” Singh said.
Initially based on 1984 riots, it got a new reference when Singh read a poem by Hebrew poet Haim Bialik, The City of Slaughter written on Kishinev. “It was startlingly similar to Kultar’s Mime in many ways. Apart from the story, there’s a lot of similarity in terms of imagery, language, narration. It’s structured like an observer or a tour guide taking somebody to Kishinev showing them what had happened.”
Subsequently, he auditioned actors in Boston. When asked for a reason to do the play, the answer was uniform. “Every actor who was selected said that they cared about stories like these. They feel compassion for the victims and that it is important to tell their stories.”
The actors who according to Singh had not met a Sikh in their life had to start off with the basics. Actor Michelle Finston said, “We started the training by learning about the origins of Sikhism and did a lot of research work ourselves. We also watched films like Kaya Taran and read articles which Sarabpreet recommended. To the extent possible in a very short time we also did a lot of dramaturgical work just to understand the context.”
The play started-off with Jewish artists commemorating the massacre of Kishinev through an art exhibition with the reading of Bialik’s poem and come across the 1984 carnage. “All victims of violence are the same, so they (actors) want to honour the victims of Kishinev by honouring the victims of Delhi because they have been largely forgotten,” Singh explained.
The play was staged at the Harvard University in September and has also travelled to New York, New Jersey, Toronto and Ottawa.