Mumbai-based playwright and director, Ramu Ramanathan, jokes that he has penned more plays than he should have, among them, 3 SAKINA MANZIL, POSTCARDS FROM BARDOLI, COMRADE KUMBHKARNA. His work has been fundamental in contemporary Indian theatre for its acute socio-political commentary. His latest play AMBU AND RAJYALAXMI will be staged at the NCPA Centrestage Festival. We talk to Ramu Ramanathan about his inspiration for the play, the representation of women in Indian theatre, and more.
By Nishtha Juneja
Nishtha Juneja (NJ): What has been the inspiration for this play?
Ramu Ramanathan (RR): A year ago, I was to write a play for an all women theatre festival. It was a project which was commissioned by a theatre friend, Suruchi Aulakh. That's when I wrote PART I. Very late in the day, someone discovered I am male and therefore the piece was disbarred.
A few months ago, I was invited to deliver a talk by the Department of Philosophy at the Mumbai University. Not having anything remotely philosophical to say, I read PART I for the delegates of a refresher course on the Kalina campus. The reading was complete in 33 minutes. This meant we had to kill another 60 minutes talking about the play and its philosophical motif and technique. Most of the delegates were impossibly bright and prone to uttering intelligent things. Towards the end of the 60 minutes of chit-chat, one of the philosophy professors suggested I should write PART II.
Later when Gurleen Judge agreed to accept to direct the piece, she mentioned she would need a little extra, in addition to ACT I.
That's how PART II was born.
NJ: Your plays are known to have characters that are part of larger historical and political processes. Is there a bigger story or stories in which your characters Ambu and Rajalakshmi find themselves? Or is this more an interpersonal play of their relationship defined by their individual traits?
RR: It's a very small play about two women on stage; and one woman who is offstage.
ACT I is based in Varanasi; ACT II is in Mumbai. ACT I is about the making of a katori of fresh home-made malai with a dollop of sugar on top. ACT II transpires a year later when Ammi, the matriarch of the family is in the city, accompanied by Rajalakshmi for a cataract operation at a nursing home.
The play is a chronicle of domestic life. The play tries to dismantle (playfully) the myth-making which exists behind all our stories about a family.
NJ: Your women characters have been intelligent and sentient beings and you have sought to emphasise their distinct personalities. In this regard we have very few Indian playwrights of your disposition.
RR: The play is about Ambu and Rajalakshmi and how they have remained friends since they were young. All they have is their secrets to give one another: confessions and intimacy.
Plus they have Ammi (the matriarch), who remains off stage.
There is Rajalaskhmi's misery plus there is the mystery of her being content in life which is the narrative that drives the play. There are flashbacks from her memory and the story of the family in the past and the present.
Ambu has studied in a posh university and has a busy professional life. She is godless and lives in a whirl of travel and erudite conversation. She believes in the utopia of internationalism.
NJ: What are your own thoughts about the representations of women on our stage? Do you feel our theatre does justice to them?
RR: In the past three months, I have been watching a lot of Marathi and Hindi plays in Mumbai. These range from mainstream theatre to one act plays.
There are three broad themes which I am seeing...
- Some of the women on stage are annoyingly synthetic; and sugary
- Then there are the women on stage who are determined by the levels of their promiscuousness
- Then there are the women who offer drug prescriptions (in a manner of speaking) to life's most grievous and perplexing problems
Having said that, there were couple of realist one-act plays I saw where the playwright was trying to look at the fine print in a modern Indian woman's life. For me, this is a change for the better.
Otherwise the tone is superficially uncomplicated; or bombastically melodramatic and apocalyptic.
NJ: You are an experienced writer with several plays to your credit. Yet when you begin to write a new play, do you feel that you are starting your journey from a scratch or is your play writing now embedded in a process that you have grown familiar and accustomed with?
RR: It's become tougher to write a play. More so in the times we inhabit, which are quite frankly, dark and grim.
Plus when one scours the scenario, there are young documentary filmmakers with their multitude of styles and voices as well as quite a few non-fiction English authors in India who have dazzling dexterity with the bookscape.
In all this cacophony, the play has to stand out and make sense. And it just gets one shot to do so. Bloody unfair!!!
*Nishtha Juneja likes to act and write about theatre. Nishtha Juneja is passionate about dance and food and has completed a post-graduate diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute for Communication (XIC).
