Scattered Reflections

About a week ago, I went to watch a theatre performance- the first time ever in my life when I sat in the audience. My previous experience inside a theatre was on stage, and the second time was during an LST class.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite a disappointing event. For one, as I left the theatre, it dawned on me that I may soon turn into an addict- a theatre addict. And as if that wasn’t enough, raising the bar so high with the very first play that I watched might make other good performances appear quite pale in comparison. I know, I know, and I am thankful for your sympathies.
It might seem impossible to watch Bikhre Bimb by Girish Karnad and not turn into a theatre junkie. For the uninitiated (as I was, not too long before the play came to town), he is probably one of the most respected and distinguished playwrights in Karnataka. This play was a Hindi adaptation of his award-winning play in Kannada, the name of which eludes me at the moment, owing to my ineptness at the language. I do beg your pardon. A year in Bangalore, I should have learnt a lot more than just the rudimentaries.
The review of the play in the newspapers talked about the story of a Kannada author who struggles with her books for a long time, until she finally writes a book in English and gains instant recognition the world over. However, the guilt of betraying her mother tongue follows her as she climbs new heights of success and falls into new abysses of moral dilemmas. While waiting for the play to start, I had the nagging feeling that I might not like the play, owing to a conflict of the idea discussed in it and my own sensibilities and ideas.
Turns out I was wrong.
The play was far more than just a moral predicament arising out of a supposed betrayal to the mother tongue. In fact, this aspect was just a microcosm of the larger picture that the play attempted to deal with.
A one-and-a-half-hour performance executed to perfection through a compelling portrayal by a single woman, this play flit in and out of the light, dark and gray areas of human nature. While on stage one sees a sole performer, the presence of the other two absentee characters to the story is strongly felt. Whether that can be attributed to the adroit writing of the writer, or the skilful portrayal of the actress is hard to figure out. All that can be ascertained is the intricate weaving of human emotions, natures, helplessness, wickedness and morality into the plot, as the audience is left baffled as to their own stand. Who should they attribute the evil in the plot to: the deceptive and selfish wife, who cheats the whole world while bowed down by neglect by her own parents, tied to managing a household as she struggles with a handicap sister, a sliding career and an apathetic husband, or the home-wrecking ungrateful handicapped sister, who brings sunshine and cheer wherever she goes and whomever she meets, brimming with positivity and heavily parasitic, or the philandering apathetic husband, who himself finds no understanding from his wife as he stays at home and works?
Not an easy question to answer. The play progresses ostensibly to attribute all the blame on the protagonist, the wife. I still am not entirely sure, however, whether the feelings that it invoked in me were intended to be invoked or not, since they were in direct conflict with the ostensible flow of the play. I relied upon what we call ‘mitigating circumstances’ in law to deliver my judgment upon the situation, liberating the protagonist from all the blame that she carried upon her shoulders.
It is quite commendable how Girish Karnad managed to weave such a complex web of human predicaments, vulnerabilities and malice, while simultaneously arousing sympathy and admonishment in the eyes of the audience. Though it might be a little premature to say this, considering I have watched only one play, it does appear to me that Girish Karnad deserves every single one of the laurels that are showered upon him.
And with this, I welcome myself into the world of intelligentsia (yes, I did ponder over whether I wanted to look intellectual at the performance, or modish. I settled on whatever comes naturally to me).