Source: IMPHAL FREE PRESS
Posted: 2007-01-16

Ratan Thiyam captivated Pune theatre goers. A great theatre personality Amol Palekar paid tribute to another great theatre contemporary by holding a festival of six Thiyam plays, the “Mahabharat Triology” and “ Manipur Triology” of the latter at the YB Chavan Natyaghruha, Pune during January 12 to 14. It is amazing that the immensely large theatre was totally sold out for all of the days the festival was held. It is a reflection on not only the eminence and reputation of Ratan Thiyam and his Chorus Repertory Theatre, but also on how finely culture-literate Pune is. On January 13 evening, the day the last of Thiyam’s Mahabharat Triology, “Blind Age (Andha Yug)” was staged, the IFP editor (this writer) who happened to be present in the city for a workshop on liberal education organized by a new university to be set up this year (FLAME, Foundation for Liberal and Management Education), was fortunate to be able to be in the theatre after the day’s work. The atmosphere simply exuded theatre and art, with connoisseurs, young and old, college going students and pensioner couples, converged at this swank location of the city to sample the production of the renowned director of whom they have heard so much. We (a group of us from the workshop including some from the northeast) were among the first to be seated in the theatre, half an hour ahead of show time, and all the while we wondered if there would ever be enough to fill up the huge theatre. But to our amazement, even as the time for the start of the play neared, slowly but surely it did – and to the very brim.

Amol Palekar emerged in the forestage under the spotlight and in chaste Marathi addressed the audience. We had no idea what he was saying as none of us knew the language, but from the laughters that erupted now and then, it was clear there was plenty of humour in it. Hindi film idol, Omrish Puri’s son spoke a little later in Hindi and we could get a sense of what was spoken. Then somebody else also spoke, this time in English, and for those of us from the northeast, this made sense. Not much later the play commenced, in Manipuri, and this time for probably the entire audience, except for a dozen students from Manipur pursuing their studies in the city, and a few others, words ceased to have meaning again. Obviously this did not matter, for as in all Thiyam plays, it is not just words that communicated. Understandably, the pin drop silence was never broken except by rounds of applauses at the end of each Act, if the end of a sequence of connected events in Thiyam’s play can be called the intermission between Acts. And at the end of play, there was a thunderous standing ovation, even as the actors and actresses lined up in the forestage to pay their obeisance to the audience in the knee-down, half prostrate posture in the Meitei tradition. And the ovation lasted so long as the ensemble remained on their knees, as if in a return salute. As we emerged from the theatre, we asked for tickets for the next day’s shows (three plays of the Manipur Triology, all to be staged in a day), but we were disappointed to be informed they were sold out. In a strange way, one was also proud that a creation from one’s native land could captivate so many so totally in this distant city in a different culture milieu. Ratan Thiyam spotted me amongst the audience from his glass house perch above the audience at the back of the stage from where he was watching and directing his actors on the theatre’s hotline. We went to congratulate him, and a lot many of my companions later told me how they were over-awed by his presence that words failed to form, and they ended up staring at the director in silence even as they shook hands and could not even utter the single word “congratulation”.

But it was also the diversity that constituted the audience which became a message in itself. Perhaps it was an element of design that the ceremony preceding the play was allowed to freely flow from on language to another. There must also have been speakers of at least 10 different languages in the hall, for they included a substantial number of fair-skinned, blonde-haired heads. This is the comity nationalities of the world, and indeed the Indian nation today. It is to this comity that we must have to be telling our stories to, just as it is from this comity that we must have to be hearing stories of others from. It is to this comity that we must have to be opening our hearts, and share our future. That is, unless we want to condemn ourselves to another generation of desolation.