Irawati Karnik�s VADANI KAVAL GHETA is a disconnected string of real life experiences, interspersed with the unreasonable consequences of incidents, springing from undefined roots of behaviour and Bollywood-style magic moments. The play starts on the promising note of a rebellious flight and fight of a woman against the atrocities of her husband, albeit posthumously. Vidya, the protagonist � a woman nearing her forties, with a graduated son and a college going daughter � does all that she can to take in her newly attained freedom. Her husband who was a failed writer has just died and when the rest of the family is mourning the death of the dictatorial father, clearly out of tradition, Vidya enters the home dabbed in make-up, is wearing colourful clothes and expresses her limitless joy and dancing to the tune of a song. The whole family is in for a shocking surprise.
Then follow a sequence of contradictions between Vidya and her children when they take her for a mad woman and she explodes to them the news of her relocating. Incidentally, Vidya has to leave for Kerala that very evening as a long awaited job opportunity in a field of her interest beckons her. She is about to leave her daughter at the hands of her son who has recently started working. These sudden shocks from a woman bursting with energy, who has long felt suppressed are acted upon by a reverse force when the son tears her ticket to Kerala and signals the end of the matter. Vidya�s complete submission to her son�s act as against raising a voice of resentment, was not something the audience was looking forward to.
The story plods on with Vidya sacrificing her job; this time for the sake of her children. Initially it was her husband who didn�t want her to work as it was against his masculine ego. A flash-back technique brings in one more character into the play. Nanda � an old friend of the couple is now doing the rounds of Vidya�s home and seeking a �yes� from her to marry her. Nanda gels with the children and they too develop a sudden liking for him- so much so that they go on to arrange a surprise visit by Nanda and prepare their mother to meet her to-be boyfriend. Nanda�s efforts to avail a job for the son to embark him on his favourite journey of photography and also for Vidya to carry on with her long-lost dream to work come by as a matter of chance.
The play completes a full circle when we see Vidya leaving the house against a hopeful Lucky Ali playing in the background. However, many questions remain unanswered. Why was Vidya�s husband so queer? Why did she not retaliate when her son tears her ticket? Why does she accept everything so easily when she had all the energy and hopes to make a new beginning?
From the technical point of view, the set was a complete misfit. A traditional Maharashtrian household is not something we are used to seeing these days. The pieces of music borrowed from old Bollywood films, give the whole play, an amateur, college-production feel. Disabled by these factors, there was not much that one could do with the light design too. On the whole, Vidya�s initial flight of rebellion which gets marked by a dead-end, limps towards a happy-ending with events turning out to her benefit, purely as a matter of chance. Isn�t this what we watch on the television every afternoon?
* Asmit Pathare is a software engineer by profession and a young theatre enthusiast. His theatre experience dates back to his college days in Sangli. He has participated in theatre productions and has his own blog, which reveals his passion for poetry. His column �The Marathi Theatre Round-Up� is now a regular feature in the Prithvi Theatre Newsletter (PT Notes).
