Delhi’s Hindi Academy has presented Phanevarnath Renu’s famous novel Maila Aanchal, directed and adapted by Surendra Sharma of Rangsaptak and staged at the Kamani auditorium.
Delhi’s Hindi Academy has presented Phanevarnath Renu’s famous novel Maila Aanchal, directed and adapted by Surendra Sharma of Rangsaptak and staged at the Kamani auditorium. Maila Aanchal is a very interesting novel. It is about the people living in Bihar who cannot get a square meal at times of drought and scarcity. It is at such times that diseases like Malaria and Kalazar strike the rural population causing immense human loss.
In the novel, a young doctor from the city comes to the village with high hopes of curing the villagers of not only physical diseases but also the mental and emotional ties they had with old systems of healing. These superstitions had to be cleared for him to be successful. There is a scenario of the local tough man who buys all the land from the peasants at a throw-away price and he gets to rule the village. There is a mahanth with whom lives Lakshmi in the matth. He runs away when he is scared away by the political ascendancy of the villagers. They believe in socialism and then they become communists and come to question mahanth on his ill-gotten wealth and also presence of Lakshmi in the matth. A crude villager takes over from the mahanth and tries to rape Lakshmi who raises a hue and cry, causin the villagers to gather in the matth and the man runs away. Lakshmi is a beautiful woman, and one does not know her background except for the fact that she was left there by a man.
The opposite party of Gandhians during post-independence give up the ideals of Gandhianism and try and go with the rich men. However, finally the Communist Party manages to get all the money that tough man had got from the villagers and the land is returned to the villagers. The play begins and ends with a mass scene.
Lakshmi, played by Chandra Bist, was quite good in the emotive parts. Manish Kumar was efficient in his role as a watchman. The lighting and set design was also proficient and economic.
A Collection Stories From The Pages Of Life, Octave Foundation presented Wari, an evening of story-telling at the IHC. Ankit Chadha who presented the opening story, GUPP, was very good and has been working with Mahmood Farooqui to revive Dastangoi since 2010. He was the most articulate of the lot and managed to create a quite a stir in the audience, and the other story-teller was Anuja Jaimal, a Delhi-based actor and a freelance editor. She told the story of Chaar Peheliyaan, from the story entitled Saat Baras Ki Bitiya from a Russian folktale book. She asked for four riddles to be solved by the audience but then she solved them herself. Her projection was very good. Saif Ali directed the story-telling. There were 15 stories.
The founder of the Octave Foundation is Nicky Chandam originally from Manipur, now based in Delhi. She aims to connect North-Eastern India to the rest of the country through art and cultural exchanges. Her story of coming to Delhi and how she managed to overcome the fact that she looked different from the rest of the Indians and her struggle to establish the NGO was very well narrated by her.
Though story-telling is an art in itself and it makes for good theatre, wich this evening certainly was.
CANSURvive was written by Asif Ali and directed by Vandana Vashisht, was staged at the Kamani under the aegis of Pink Chain Campaign NGO that speaks about cancer and its prevention, its implementation of challenges and initiative to promote screening, timely detection and treatment.
The play opens with two women with breast cancer on the way to the hospital where they both are certified as cancer patients. Sonal Jha is a TV actor who is very depressed about her cancer, Sajida is optimistic about it and being cured. This negativism of Sonal is that she has a bad relationship with her husband who has no patience with her, while Sajida lives with a man who is very protective about her wellbeing. The story follows the two women through their lives with cancer and then during chemotherapy, their attitude towards it and Sonal’s husband’s comment on the treatment where the only question he has for the doctor is that whether or not he can prevent the loss of her hair, which he likes very much.
The play was slightly schematic with it’s being written for a particular purpose that is cancer related otherwise why would Asif Ali prolong the argument between Sonal and Sajida about how cancer is caused and how it is detected and also the scenes of the patients having chemotherapy! There were a number of romantic scenes in the play between the husband and wife and between Sajida and her live-in partner. Sajida was good in her portraying her character. She is full of brightness and good humour even when she was in pain. Sonal on the other hand only looked at the negative side of her life that included the divorce when she was undergoing treatment. The use of language in the play was good and so was the acting. For the public Asif will have to edit the play and make it shorter without being repetitive.
