Director Dr M Sayeed Alam talks about Chacha Chchakkan, who picks up faults and criticises everyone he meets, so symptomatic of our times. By Vaibhav Ratra
A gentleman, with self-proclaimed claims of being a distinguished scholar of the Aligarh Muslim University, wants a finger in every pie and believes that nobody better than him can deliver a task, no matter how complex.
“Chacha is a complex character inspired from Jerome K. Jerome’s creation, Uncle Podger. He is almost pitiable but the play manages to elicit a favourable response for him. He blunders, nags, suffers rebukes, bounces back and surprisingly makes his character very difficult to dislike,” says Sayeed Alam, actor-director of the play.
The play begins with Chacha Chhakkan’s chaotic search for his lost eyeglasses while sporting the same. He then proceeds to take care of his ailing son and messes it up by administering the right dosage of the wrong medicine. Not discouraged by his idiocy, he decides to take up the job of giving out dirty clothes to the dhoban. This time, he succeeds in giving away his wife’s gold button-studded shirt to the poor woman.
“Already a very popular part of Urdu literature, and perhaps its most famous comic, Chacha Chchakkan has been brought to stage several times, in countless adaptations. The trick is to find the right fit. The repetition of his academic pursuits at Aligarh is an improvisation adding yet another layer to Chacha’s character,” says Alam. Or perhaps it is a metaphor for the academic degradation at what used to be a prized institution.
As we see Chacha picking up faults and criticising everyone he meets, he strikes a laughably farcical pose, probably an allusion to the self-conscious and self-assuming propagandists of our time. His wife keeps up an almost non-stop stream of criticisms and even his washerwoman doubts his claims to superiority and fine education.
Giving an insight about the play, Alam explained, “In the garb of humour and satire, this stylish comedy by Qudsiya Zaidi beautifully captures the socio-cultural milieu of the life and living of a middle class family in an upper class town.”
In this version, Alam plays his role with just the right variations, alternating between the obnoxious, ridiculous and loveable till a most interesting character emerges, far from the flat farcical one it could easily have become, given the genre. The play also features artists like Niti Phool as Chacha’s better half and Jaskiran Chopra as dhoban.
Qudsiya Zaidi’s genius scripting and Iqbal-Alam’s careful artistic directions never dilute the edge of comedy and you laugh exactly where you are intended to.