NSD Director Waman Kendre’s Mohe Piya and Afghan play Statues raised questions about our moral fibre
Sunday at NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav was a full house with various auditoria staging plays spilling over into aisles and recesses. The old and the young never seemed more connected than they were over reinterpetations of classics and interpretations of the contemporary human condition
NSD Director Prof Waman Kendre’s play Mohe Piya revolves around Bhima’s encounter with his demon son Ghatotkacha and his one-time love Hidimba. Though this sub-episode of the Mahabharata may have been played out many times, the novelty of the presentation lay in its folksy narrative, sheer physicality of martial dance forms and its quasi-comical elements to convey a serious message. Was Bhima, the madhyam of the Pandava brothers, who is seen to harness the balance of heaven, hell and earth, equally balanced and fair in lifeIJ Would he have left Hidimba, the forest tribal demoness, after their brief courtship and union, if she were to the manner bornIJ Would he have abandoned a boy child if she was from a privileged line of Aryans, matching his royaltyIJ Or would he have insisted on his long-lost warrior son joining the fight against the Kauravas as a duty to the motherland had he been a princeIJ Was it easier for him to use the simpleton and unquestioning Ghatotkacha as a sacrificial lamb for politicsIJ These questions of Hidimba to Bhima, traditionally admired for being the most integrated among the Pandava brothers, raise the age-old issue of the poor and the backward being pawned for the powerplay of the rich. Bhima might have tried to justify his neglect by citing his years in exile and his need to revenge himself against Duryodhona but as a deserter father, he fell short of his towering strength.
The story begins with Hidimba ending a fast. She orders her son Ghatotkacha to bring a man from the forest for her meal. Ghatotkacha stops a travelling Brahmin family in the middle of the forest. To save his parents and two brothers, the second son Madhyama gets ready to sacrifice himself. As his last wish, he goes to drink water with permission of Ghatotkacha. When the Brahmin boy is not back at the expected time, Ghatotkacha gets furious and calls out loud, “Madhyama Madhyama.” Bhima, the Madhyama Pandav who is in that forest at that time, hears the call and responds. He pacifies and promises the Brahmin family to save them from their present agony. He asks Ghatotkacha to take him instead of the Brahmin boy, but only if he is able to defeat him in a trial of strength.
Ghatotkacha accepts the challenge and fights with Bhima, who is defeated. He brings Bhima in front of his mother Hidimba. She recognises her estranged husband and asks Ghatotkacha to accept him. The son gives a heart-rending speech on why he couldn’t accept some random guy as his father, whose face or stories he has never grown up with. When Hidimba manages to convince him, Bhima appeals to his new-found son’s warrior spirit, saying it is needed in the battle of dharm and motherland. Ghatotkacha proves himself in battle but is killed by the trickery of Duryodhana. Hidimba cries on her son’s body, proving that she had been used. Yet again.
The father-son encounters in the forest were brilliantly conceived with deft use of Kathakali and martial dance rhythms to show the lifting of mountains and uprooting trees. The choreography was perfectly synchronised. The father-son verbal duel was more like a comic interlude to the darker truth that would play out later. But it was the war action scenes which held the audience together as it peaked in a crescendo and fell in a heap, metaphorically crashing Ghatotkacha’s hopes. Hopelessness was the theme of another play, Statues, from Afghanistan. It is amazing how the most conflict-ridden countries manage to tell the most universal of all stories. With a mix of all key theatre styles — classic, romantic, absurd and comedy — Statues is about four pieces of sculpture who bear the imprint of human society and engage in conversation in the workshed while their sculptor walks out to take a break and wonder why his pieces remain unsold. Is it because each piece embodies the worst aspect of menIJ The gold statue, looking like a royal, behaves and acts all arrogant, ruthless and hierarchical. The silver idol represents intellect, a poet who has lost his glory days and is not heard anymore. The stone figurine is of a girl, a metaphor of a grisly incident in which a girl was brutalised in an act of war. The fourth statue is made of clay, symbolising earth, who is full of love and forever very giving, although ravaged the most. Secretly, they aspire to be human but by the end of their conversation, they realise how soulless human beings have become and they are better off as statues. It is the Earth who holds a lot of love inside her and convinces others that it is better to remain so, inert and as a receptacle of virtue, than be a human. Director Mohammad Zaher Sangar and his multi-tasking crew are academics and have been conveying this probing and self-searching message for around six months. As an Indian, one couldn’t help but wonder if the statues had anything to do with the lost statues of the Bamiyan Buddha. The play opened to rave reviews in Kabul and shows why we need to reimagine Afghanistan as a birthplace of ideas.