Director Tripurari Sharma speaks to Utpal K Banerjee about his play that reveals how over the years Vrindavan has become the dumping ground for hapless widows and also some married women, deserted on umpteen social grounds
It was the time when joint families met an important societal purpose — giving umbrage to the not so useful members of the community. There would be one member or two as breadwinners for the entire house and a proportionately large number of close relatives — who have either passed their useful period of earning bread for the family, or never been able to do so, for one reason or the other — as what many Western societies term “passengers” for the rest of the family, being provided bread by sufferance.
With the emergence of nuclear family, the means of livelihood have become limited to one or barely two members, the living space has severely come down and the concept of permanent hospitality — even to the near and dear ones — taken a complete U-turn. Old people’s homes, therefore, have sprung up, of necessity, in most cities and towns where the aged and the lonely have to move in: most of them unwillingly: leaving their hearth and home for good. These homes exist in the twilight zones of urban conscience today, for two principal reasons — drying up of the ostensible sustenance from the rest of the community and visible withering of all lines of communications with the rest of the clan.
Radha,presented by the NSD second-year students, highlights the conditions of denizens of Vrindavan. The latter is nothing but an old people’s home as a huge melting pot: in its most sore, festering manifestation. Directed and scripted (based on improvisation) by the thespian Tripurari Sharma, the play reveals, almost leaf by leaf, how that holy city has become, over years, the dumping ground for hapless widows (and also some married women: deserted on umpteen social grounds) from the eastern part of our land. Devoid of any ostensible means of support and deprived of the last vestiges of social bonding with those whom they had connected earlier, they live on the most frugal charity doled by society and seek bonding to the elusive divinity for the rest of their wretched existence.
The play begins at the heartless counter of the “accountant” for whom the incoming women are only pieces of worthless documents. The story is created through the eyes of a young man who has come in quest of his loving aunt who had nurtured him up in his tender age. One by one, the characters pass before him: refusing to dabble in any memory of the happier times, clinging to the puppet-like icons of Krishna and Radha and creating imaginary stories and events around them; establishing surrogate relationships with monkeys that abound; and, from time to time, submerging themselves into routines of community singing and dancing on any major (or flimsy) occasion available. Eating and sleeping are just necessary diversions, not looked forward to, in the dreary life of a marionette.
Excerpts of an interview with the director:
What has been your experience in VrindavanIJ
Our experience from the first visit to Vrindavan up to production has been thought-provoking and soulful. We got to choose the characters we wanted to work on or create after our visit. We chose characters we connected to, those who touched us, the ones we feared and also the ones we would love to become.
What were the ideas that you shared with themIJ
Here are some thoughts and questions one would like to share from where we stand right now: How one has to create new reasons to exist when everything is over, but you still want to surviveIJ How miniature can wholeness beIJ How do you want to pause, when you see life running in ‘pause’ modeIJ How can devotion be beautiful and haunting at the same timeIJ Can belief be so liberatingIJ
We almost need to be prepared to be alone and very lonely at all times. Our dreams and aspirations seem very meaningless and shallow right now. There are several moments where you demand new ways, definitions and explanations. Is chanting ‘Radhe’ like opiumIJ Does it function like an ‘Ctrl+Alt+Delete’ key button for memoryIJ