Ramu Ramanathan's latest play POSTCARDS FROM BARDOLI - after last year's THE DIARY OF A WORD OR HOW I PROPOSED TO MY SECOND HUSBAND ON THE 321st FLOOR, and like most of his work, has traces of documentary theatre. In the context of Ramanathan's work, this fundamentally means serious research. Unlike a traditional docudrama, Ramanathan's plays have familiar characters from our present times visiting our history, reminding us of times momentous and cruel and of histories that are warped, forgotten and discarded. His characters like you and I are children of the Indian nation state that came into existence after 1947 and are either active participants or passive onlookers to the country that has taken shape since Independence.
After plays like MAHADEVBHAI (1892-1942) and 3 SAKINA MANZIL, Ramu Ramanathan, the playwright and Jaimini Pathak, director and actor re-unite to stage POSTCARDS FROM BARDOLI. The play presents a grave issue that India needs to address: the peasant crisis and interweaves into its main narrative, the epochal Bardoli Satyagraha led by Sardar Vallabh Patel in 1928. With dollops of wry humour and honest performances, the play follows the story of its two characters: an ageing troubled father (Jaimini Pathak), and his ebullient young son Mihir (Amol Parashar), who eptitomises the spirit of Sardar Patel.
Peter Weiss, the German documentary dramatist suggests in "The Materials and The Models" that a documentary theatre piece is born out of negotiation between two potentially conflicting factors: The real and its representation. Thankfully, neither Ramanathan nor Jaimini Pathak provide signposts, roadmaps, or lecture the audience. The audience has the liberty to choose and engage with the multiple layers within the narrative.
But unlike his more overt historical themed plays, the figure of Sardar in the play is left to the audience's imagination largely. He is central and yet not central to the narrative. It is only fleetingly through young Mihir that we can gauge his sentiments and appreciate the significance of the Bardoli peasants' struggle that he led. The play focuses on Mihir and his idealism and unlike Ramanathan's former plays like MAHADEVBHAI (1892-1942) and COTTON 56, POLYESTER 84, the young protagonist with his passion for football takes over. This aspect is not without its problems.
While the father-son duo presents a rich cornucopia of experiences, the desired catharsis is missing. The characters are developed through parallel layers embedded within the story. You feel sorry for the father, while the son is truly endearing. But this strand of the narrative sometimes overpowers the essence of the play - the plight of the peasant.
The play is well staged. It has a simple, minimal design. The highpoint of the play is the excellent use of Miles Davis to evoke full empathy with the father's embittered nights. The choice of music is extraordinary. You have Miles Davis, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Bhimsen Joshi to punctuate the scenes and enhance them. Also the rendition of Jhaverchand Meghani's "Fanana Panthpar Aage Kadam" is a goose bump moment.
A very nice touch by way of design is added by the mats that Mihir uses. The colour theme of the mats also seems to be carefully thought through. The rolling of the mats to denote the completion of one phase in life is remarkable. The rolled mats as they stand together in rows make them silent witnesses to the development of the story. It is also the realisation that we cannot completely dissociate our present from the past.
Then there are Jaimini Pathak's dark glasses with "love" written on them in green that make you chuckle. The counterpart is provided by Amol Parashar's Mihir with a constant change of address in London, again borrowed from Sardar's stay in London where he went to study law.
Jaimini Pathak as the older man delivers an underplayed, restrained performance. Sometimes the saccharine sweetness is overpowering, because here is a bitter man, if one listens to the script attentively. Amol Parashar as Mihir delivers a candid, vivid performance, especially the vignettes which are a tribute to the young Sardar. However speech clarity and meaningful pauses are just the two things that the otherwise capable actor needs to work on.
The finale of the play is the glimpse of the Bardoli Satyagraha. Here the metaphor of eight lamps (all of them artificial) gets tedious. With some effort, it could turn into a piece of choreography, a neat design actually. Sadly, this becomes evident towards the end, by which time, there is audience fatigue. To my surprise, there is absolutely no use of audio clips of Patel's speeches or video footage or even projection of images to substantiate the content, which seems to be a deliberate decision.
It is in this final sequence that the playwright juxtaposes the Bardoli Satyagraha with present day farmer suicides staged against the backdrop of the water scams that rocked Maharashtra. This is the bedrock of this production. But in performance, it sounds tepid and almost apologetic. When Jaimini Pathak sits down with the files and rummages through the statistics and data, the scene leading to the climax has no conviction or due emphasis.
The play is meant to present a scathing look at the inequity and the crisis borne by many poor farmers and is underscored especially by the scene in which Mihir and his friend- the two urban boys attempt to live on minimum wages. While I am writing this, there are ludicrous efforts by the ruling party to redefine the term poverty based on the minimum daily income. This farce of minimum wages is enacted with solemnity and placed into perspective a priori in this play.
Ramanathan recalls the history of Bardoli; but more importantly he scoffs at the idea of Modern India. This time he tells it from the point of view of a privileged middle class and hence the voiceless and dispossessed voices get diminished. That such a play is the need of the hour, of that there is no doubt. After the show, I saw some young members of the audience contemplating and jotting down their thoughts on a postcard. The humble postcard is now only a distant memory in our wired world.
POSTCARDS FROM BARDOLI calls for confrontation and catalysis instead of catharsis. Now if only the play could take the idealism beyond the theatre and compel at least some of us to walk backwards like young Mihir. It would certainly make Sardar Patel proud.
Jayashree Hari Joshi has done her M. Phil. Her thesis is a comparative study of Rasvighna / Natyashastra and the Experimental Theatre of Bertolt Brecht. She is working with the Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai as Officer - Cultural Programmes.
