NAMASTE

Mohan, who lives in America comes to meet his parents in India along with his live-in girl friend Porky, whom he has renamed Krishna. He wants to seek his parent's blessings and permission to marry her. The play opens in an aircraft, where Mohan is giving the last lessons of Hindi and Indian culture to his girl friend, in the hope that this will go a long way in his parents' acceptance of her, an Indian girl brought up with American values. It is Janamashtmi, and his parents are celebrating the festival with their usual fervour. But Mohan's plans misfire when his girl friend Krishna, not being comfortable in her fake identity, is not able to play up to his parents.

The conflict starts and the house turns into a battlefield. Each one wants his point of view and beliefs to be accepted. In the end the situation is resolved through a severely mentally challenged character, Sohan, the elder son of the family. In what appears to be a miracle, he suddenly starts speaking as a normal human being and challenges their very beliefs, thus forcing all the characters to introspect.

The play deals with the conflict of old and new ideas and values, belief about the existence of God and how this conflict can be resolved through a process of understanding each other and finding a middle path.