One River, One Crab

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Swar Thounaojam’s Turel

 

 

I have been feeling for a while that scripted English language theatre, as against devised theatre, is going through a crisis of form, content and method. Most audiences want more than to hear actors striding about saying pithy stuff that sounds like a cocktail of wit and thermacol. And watching Tom Stoppard’s much lauded Rock ‘n’ Roll proved this point. I say this with pain, being a fan. What can one say about the man who wrote the masterly Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead?

 

I have read the reviews. Unbelievable intellect….Czech political content etc. But for me the best part of Trevor Nunn’s production was the giant scrim with projections of rock history - the Stones, Syd Barret, Dylan. But that was the beauty of the music, the times and the rebellion thereof. Not the script. Oh, and the second best moment was when Rufus Sewell playing Jan forgot his lines! He excused himself, said he “had lost the thread” and asked the prompt for help in a classic moment of Brechtian alienation. Perhaps he threw it in that evening to wake us up? I too, Rufus, had lost the thread.

 

Having said that, I saw two plays in Mumbai in January, as part of the Royal Court Theatre’s Writer’s Bloc Festival, that were so exciting, I’m having a re-think. Strangely they were both in some way related. One was called Turel (River) by Swar Thounaojam and the other was called Crab by Ram Ganesh Kamatham. The former sinuous, slithered along the earth, mysterious and apparently placid. The latter was sky bound, with harsh bursts of firecracker dialogue that sounded the way we speak in Indian cities. Jagged streams of consciousness, much like the rocks in the play.

 

Turel is set on a riverbank outside Imphal. A child has died and is being buried. Two characters, the old Brahmin Eigya and Drunk Luwangcha, are living their interconnected lives on the riverbank. Eigya comes by every day to put fresh flowers on his grandchild’s grave and Luwangcha keeps him company.

 

There are subtle mentions of insurgency and the Meirapeibi – “young men with guns, women with torches” - and one is aware that this is Manipur. The language is heavy with impermanence. The shifting riverbank sand, Luwangcha’s missing wife, the anticipation of violence.

 

And then that thing happens. Luwangcha is attacked on the riverbank by a commando. Interestingly, the commando speaks in Hindi. All other dialogue is in English with some Meiteilon thrown in. So the use of Hindi sounds like an embedded indictment of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which allows the Outsider to penetrate a culture and a people with brutality.  As he prods him with his gun, he discovers Luwangcha’s secret. One that the community knows and has previously accepted. But when the Outsider makes the discovery, something gives, and the community is now vulnerable.

 

English language theatre in India has often shied away from political content. To watch a play about Manipur that is urban-representative is a unique experience. The playwright roots the play in a deeply personal space – the relationship between Eigya and Luwangcha. But following the discovery of Luwangcha’s secret, the play explodes into the political domain and then unravels further, till personal and political are inseparable.

 

About the other play – Crab. It refers not to Species Cancer but an abbreviation of carabiner, the rock climber’s tool. Turel and Crab are both written by young writers grappling with the sounds and vibrations of societies that are adrift. The central metaphor of each play is one of longing. The birth pangs of the river. The solitude of a rock face. Both have that quality of viraha, so beloved of Indian aesthetics.

 

Crab has four characters, but one who matters. Zamiel. The existential heir of Camus’ Meursault in his remorseless commitment to the truth. In 2007, when achievement and success for young people, is defined by employability, group dynamics and other corporate-speak, the “alone-ness” of Zamiel is even starker. And therefore darkly romantic. In contrast you have the hapless Rocky. Would that he were called Stone. He’s never gonna get the girl. Try as he might to get the job, learn to climb, achieve… It’s downhill for Rocky. Yet the characters are sufficiently grayscale (Zamiel’s relentlessness could well be annoying and Rocky’s stupidity is often endearing) thus making the audience recognise oneself in Rocky while wanting to be Zamiel.

 

Yes, there were things that I would change about both scripts but that I can discuss with the playwrights. The purpose of this article is to say, something’s going on! In the hands of these writers – diverse, introspective, globally aware Indian kids from Manipur to Banglore – there is much delight ahead, both onstage and off.

 

Kirtana Kumar

 

Published in the Indian Express in February 2007