A small theatre group (headed by a rural diva) in the middle of nowhere performs unimportant plays which are based on the Ramayana. These plays don't signal artistic achievement, nor do they constitute a movement. The group has accepted our musical and glorious past (now present) simply because the past refuses to go away. One such icon of the past is: the Ramayana. The rural diva is an expert in the oral tradition of the Ramayana. The young actor (the rural diva's son) plays Kumbhakarna - and grows up in such a milieu. To skew things, his grandfather and father are part of the Self Respect Movement. He is unable to draw a distinction between the real achievements of the Rationalist Movement and what he sees as the excesses of a cultural fraud. He follows his rationalist dreams because all around he sees the relics of a decadent culture which reeks of affectation and phoniness, plus the leisure-dreams of upper caste, upper class society.
To be honest, the young actor is not the first debunker. And his Twin Sister tells him so. She also tells him that his plans of demolishing the cant, hyperbole, romanticism, wishful thinking and plain stupidity that continue to swirl around in this Age of Complacency are foolish and naive. Meanwhile the theatre group continues to perform its plays. But when the young actor casts aside the rose-tinted spectacles, he gets a glimpse of the mindless mayhem, shallow commercialism, and unbridled cruelty. He points it out. But the times are such that revolution is not what he can hope for. Survival is adequate.
In the meantime, due to his ancestral past in the Self Respect Movement, he has a special interpretation into his role of Kumbhakarna. The role means two things for him.
One: A reason to live.
Two: Counterculture.
The young actor deals with both, but his main, polemical interest is the second. He aims to cut the icons of Ramayana down to size. Much of his approach is straightforward. He chronicles what its heroes, leaders, groups and movements actually said, did and achieved, as opposed to what "official" observers believed they did.
On cue, arrive Tripathi and Singh. Their arrival places the region's s cultural convulsions in a national perspective. In their eyes, the region is a cultural ghetto and should be wiped out. Tripathi and Singh represent the State. They are neither left, nor right. But their eye is particularly acute when it comes to dissecting the archetypal conflation of liberation, freedom and "revolutionary" politics. Now they decide to wage a war on its people. According to Tripathi and Singh and their solemn belief these sort of plays could start a war. As responsible representatives of the State, they feel it is a total cultural attack on the nation. And so, the State which is the oppressor communicates to the world (without a trace of irony) that it is being besieged.
The young actor who specialises in performing Kumbhakarna is arrested.
An interrogation begins.
The lines between real and unreal start to blur.
Tripathi and Singh make the mistake of confusing the actor with the role he plays. They are repelled that he is critiquing the Ramayana. Kumbhakarna argues that the fairy tale dreamy myth is all well and good, but not when his own people (and family which includes the rural diva and twin sister) are starving and depraved. Gradually, the cross questioning intensifies. Kumbhakarna is made a scapegoat. His account of the condition of his people is the single factor most responsible for it. In the end, the State triumphs and the world does not change. Comrade Kumbhakarna's clear-eyed demythologizing is perhaps salutary. But when it comes to the today, State power is the ultimate victor
Meanwhile the shows which have been going on continue to do so. There is yeastiness in the air and the plays are performed with pomp and pageantry plus a great deal of unrestrained and irreverent frivolity. Even while as he is dying Comrade Kumbhakarna makes a strong case that the State has achieved almost nothing in the past six decades, except for brief, trivial and inconsequential episodes that have pleased the few high and mighty people. It's hard to argue with him. And yet the bloodstream of the majority disagrees with him.
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