Akshara Theatre begins its series of intimate literary conversations with readings and discussions on cult authors. Kanika Aurora kicks off with her interpretation of American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath is perhaps one of the few contemporary literary figures who has been analysed, rediscovered, etherised and dissected many times over after her tragic suicide in 1963. With her autobiographical writings of a confessional nature and the graphic imagery and metaphors of the inner workings of her often phantasmagoric mind, she left an indelible impression on future generations. Though considered a feminist statement back then, her writings are humanist, reverberating with a sense of urban loneliness, incompleteness and angst of our times.
And it is this contemporaneity that writer and director Kanika Aurora picked up during her research for a selective reading at Akshara Theatre on Sunday. “This is part of Akshara’s attempts to introduce literary evenings of an intimate nature once a month for connoisseurs,” says writer-director Anasuya Vaidya, who is helming valiant efforts to continue the legacy of Jalabala Vaidya and Gopal Sharman.
Aurora, on her part, admits that she was a bit nervy about beginning with Plath as the inaugural session. But then she chose her most popular quotes and poems to trace the state of her mind chronologically, interspersing them with lighter moments of the poet’s frivolity. Sample this: “I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I wantIJ I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath). It is this boundless creativity waiting to explode that resonates with the multiple role-playing and competitive spirit of the millennial.
And then this extract from The Bell Jar, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” The multiplicity of choices and the inability to decide, or having attained status quo, the inability to break out into new territories is what most of us relate to intensely. And it is these common threads, particularly the ease with which they are articulated, that give Aurora reason to believe that Plath would make for a good Sunday evening adda.