Vinay Sharma, director of Atmakatha, tells Utpal K Banerjee that his play deals with an author's dilemma while penning down his thoughts
Atmakatha (the Autobiography), presented recently by Padatik and Rikh from Kolkata, is an out-and-out existential play. Jean-Paul Sartre’s main tenet of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. In other words, there is no such thing as “human nature”; each man is a blank slate on which he will, by his actions, come to define his own being. The play has four characters: Rajadhyaksha, a nationally-acclaimed writer who is now dictating his autobiography; Prajnya, a young researcher who has chosen the former’s works as the topic for her thesis; Uttara, the author’s volatile wife, now estranged for 30 years; and Vasanti, the comely sister-in-law with whom the writer had a brief affair, causing the married couple’s separation. All four characters look at their own lives. Different versions of the essential truth emerge from their own actions: revealing that all of them are trapped in their own cycle of torment.
At one level, Rajadhyaksha has published a novel depicting the ménage a trois, where Uttara/Vasanti become semi-fictional Urmila/Vasudha, suitably cloaked in “half-truths.” As Prajnya starts questioning Rajadhyaksha about his life, what emerges at another level is a warped version of the “truth” that he had immortalised in his celebrated novel. In real life, Uttara and Vasanti have since reconciled. But the past resurfaces and the real truth stares them in their face. The existential entrapment is laid bare!
Mahesh Elunchwar, the noted Marathi playwright who has penned Atmakatha, conceded in an earlier interview that his theme deals with the disjunction between literature and reality and many sides of the truth. He noted, “My writing is a by-product of my life. It could be different in case of other writers, I don’t know. In my case, writing was never the rasion d’etre: living life was and is. Writing just happens. Certain experiences demand to be expressed and so I write. But it is not a career; perhaps, that’s why I am not a very prolific writer. And when I put down this confessional, I do not mean I am writing about certain incidents or certain people picked up from my life. I try to distill the essence of certain personal experiences and translate it, thereby creating and inventing perfectly imaginary, new situations, characters and details.”
Kulbhushan Kharbanda, who plays Rajadhyaksha (returning to the stage after some decades), gives a most powerful performance as an ageing author whose beliefs are shattered as the play progresses. He oscillates between calm and trembling, philosophical and superfluous, strong and shattered in the blink of an eye. Anubha Fatehpuria as Prajnya is very impressive. While her fondness for the writer as she remonstrates with him, makes him endless cups of tea and disregards all his advice, nothing prepares one for the scene where she bares her heart and confesses to having fallen in love with him! The author’s surreal meeting with Urmila and Vasudha, straight from his novel, works out very well.The final scene in which Rajadhyaksha takes Prajnya near a window to gaze at the starry sky — trying to explain how some distances can never be covered — is hypnotic.
Vinay Sharma, the director, has some revelations. On his motif he said, “Everything is recorded, everything recorded is distorted, everything distorted is recollected, and the cycle continues. Shifting viewpoints between different truths, the play of memory finds itself questionable.” On the existential approach he adds, “The cycle of torment can neither be stopped nor initiated. At the intersection of these two possibilities, my play invariably narrates its predicament. Every evening’s images lay themselves exactly over the previous evening’s images: almost, but not quite; not exactly. Everything is a little distorted, re-recorded, recollected. It’s a bleak universe.”