The social maelstrom

In the Indian theatre arena, Vijay Tendulkar (1928-2008) has been virtually a messiah — wielding his cudgel against all ills and evils that he would ever come across. Active in all the print and electronic media — spanning proscenium stage, celluloid, small screen and journalistic column — his was a stentorian voice mostly in the guise of an acid pen. By providing insight into major social events and political upheavals during his entire adult life, Tendulkar became one of the strongest radical political commentators in recent times. 

While contemporary writers were cautiously exploring the limits of social realism, he jumped into the cauldron of political radicalism and courageously exposed hegemony of the powerful and the hypocrisies in the Indian social mind-set. Understandably, his powerful expression of human angst resulted in his receiving both wide public acclaim as well as high censure from the orthodox and the political bigwigs. 

Tendulkar’s early play, Ek Ziddi ladki, mirrors the above features of the playwright, warts and all, drawing upon the ethical turmoil of a lower middle-class family in every sordid detail. Babuji, a thoroughly unscrupulous person, earns his livelihood and maintains a family of five through dishonest means, while sternly maintaining the intra-family discipline. 

Slowly, dissident voices arise, one by one, among the siblings — the totally-dominated schoolboy Siri, the nubile girl Kamal and the just-married eldest son Dinkar — but to no avail. Meanwhile, the newly-arrived bride Mangala reveals her true face, who, having realised the inner rot, is steely resolved to transform the family situation, not without considerable hassles. The adamant woman opens a home-based cooperative of spices and various concoctions in which the entire household takes part. How disappointments set in — in sales not taking off, finances not flowing in and incipient dishonesty raising its ugly face — and how an extraordinarily determined Mangala copes with the problems and comes out with triumph of truth, is the rest of the story.

Ek Ziddi ladki, presented recently by the Delhi-based Pehchan, did full justice to Tendulkar’s moral theme, with a surprisingly young and inexperienced cast to a large extent. Under the baton of the thespian Dinesh Khanna, the play had Babuji (donned by the veteran Ravi Taneja) — veering from the saffron-clad recluse to the spinning wheel-wielding social activist, to finally surrendering to the exhortations of the doughty daughter-in-law — all very well-etched. There were other cameos — of a crest-fallen man direly needing money with the fake monk’s blessings; of an equally distressed business-tycoon seeking “approach’’ to the higher-ups through the hypocrite’s false contacts; and of a Gandhian relative who had spent a whole life aesthetically and was now appalled by the prevailing corruption. In a thoroughly realistic mise-en scene, the eventual resolution of the tangled milieu — in the teeth of mounting monetary worries, on one hand, and brewing revolts from the family-members, on the other — was left somewhat vague. This is not to diminish Tendulkar’s superb depiction of rank ingenuity and insincerity in the veneer of black humour.

Recalled the director, “When I first read Ek Ziddi ladki, I felt that it was an absorbing narrative about the broad humanitarian situation within a family background. The play’s theme and characters revolved round life and its constant struggle to achieve balance with truth and integrity. The moral environment dealt with in the play, its social surroundings and the market forces vitiating it all, were so imbued with reality that I couldn’t resist my temptation in directing it.”

Responding to what changes he made In Tendulkar’s script to suit our times, Khanna responded, “Making the necessary environmental alterations was a great challenge. First of all, I had to change the Maharashtrian allusions to a pan-India perspective. Then, in order to introduce a fast tempo in the action, I had to modify some dialogues and characters so that the rest remained cohesive. Finally, I brought the play into a national movement context”.