The Ocean in His Backyard

Chennai, which was formerly known as Madras, is southern India’s premier city. Take the spanking new East Coast Road going south and you whiz along to the historic temple town of Mahabalipuram, a must-see for tourists. Farmhouses, resorts and entertainment centres pop up on both sides of the highway, growing at the rate of about two a week. The southern coastal region is fast becoming the playground of the city’s affluent middleclass.

Barely a kilometre to the east of the highway, the coastline is dotted with fishing villages. There is electricity but no running water and few toilets. There is alcoholism among the men and a reluctance to go to school among the children.

Balan came to the village of Injambakkam with his family about 3 years ago from his hometown of Kumbakonam. He is a mason, an expert roof layer, but even with the spate of construction going on all around, he cannot get regular work. He finds it difficult to put together the initial capital of $100 or so to, as he says, ‘launch himself’. $100 is rather less than the average family from the city spends on a weekend bash at one of the nearby resorts. Balan is taciturn, dignified and is in a way exceptional for he does not drink and does not indulge in the nightly ritual of wife beating.

Balan’s wife Sulochana looks much older than her 40 odd years. She usually wears an oddly blank expression, as if her mind has caved in under her load of worries. The older son drives a trishaw and considers himself the main provider. This gives him the right to beat his mother, since his father won’t. Somebody has to keep the women in their place. The younger son’s eyes are bright with intelligence but all efforts to send him to school have failed. He is Balan’s apprentice and a television addict. Illiteracy has already defined his future.

The older daughter, together with her mentally retarded child, has been deserted by her husband. She has come back to live with her parents. She is ‘family’ and it would be unthinkable to ask her to fend for herself. In any case, fending for herself could only mean working as domestic help, with probably a little bit of prostitution, brewing illicit liquor or drug dealing on the side. The younger daughter, Nagu, is just into her 20-s and unmarried.

The apple of the family’s eye is Goutam, Nagu’s 6-month old son. Getting Nagu’s pregnancy confirmed was difficult enough – being made to run from pillar to post at Government hospitals, having to borrow money for the tests and so on. The family was aghast and the truth had to be beaten out of Nagu, quite literally. Another daughter had been married to Govindan, who had children by her. Then she died. The family believes that she was killed by Govindan and his family for dowry she could not bring. It did not even occur to them to go to the police, for they knew they did not have the money to buy justice. Govindan had been demanding that Nagu now be given to him to bring up the children. The family had refused but Govindan hung around. And then one day, claims Nagu, he had waylaid her by the community toilet, tied her down and had sex with her.

Abortion was out of the question, especially as far as Sulochana was concerned. A grandchild was coming and had to be welcomed, regardless of marriage or social approval. And so here’s Goutam, a strong, happy infant, ready to break out into a smile at the slightest excuse. Everybody in the family adores him. The neighbours have accepted him as just another kid who will grow up in Injambakkam along with a swarm of others. In time, he will find his place in the almost inevitable cycle of poverty, lack of education, lack of self-esteem, struggling to find work, struggling to raise a family, struggling with alcoholism… struggle, struggle and yet more mind-deadening struggle.

The families that drive down to the beach in their shiny new Korean model cars (Chennai is being billed as the Detroit of India) would not approve of this state of affairs. They would see no courage, no compassion, no dignity in the decision the family took. “This is the way all these poor people behave”, they would say. “And besides, the child is illegitimate.”

Quite right. He is illegitimate not only because his mother is not married but because the resurgent new India has no place for him. As his inquisitive little head jerks from side to side, the blue of the ocean in his backyard shines in his bright little eyes.

Half A Century Ago

The Sixties

No sentiment is more dangerous, they say, than nostalgia. The past is another country, another reality. But the past is also history. And without a sense of history, it is scarcely possible to begin to understand the present…or the future.

I remember the sixties mainly as a period when the Nehruvian vision of society was still alive. It was honourable to be poor or moderately comfortable financially. It was bad to be rich and absolutely unspeakable to flaunt wealth. One depended implicitly on the State for education, health and a host of other services. Inefficiency and corruption were bemoaned but the public sector was seen as something that needed to be improved, not discarded.

And aah!...the arts, the arts. You went to a host of all- night music festivals and discussed the performances, bleary eyed, in the college canteen or nearby coffee house the following day. That, in any case, was where most of the teaching and learning took place, not in the classroom.

You thronged to film festivals. Cinema seemed to have been re-discovered as the new medium after Pather Panchali. (The re- discovery of Bimal Roy and Guru Dutt came much more recently- whereby hangs another interesting tale). There was no question that cinema had a social purpose (though Cesare Zavattini, Italian Communist Party member, Neo- realism ideologue and De Sica’s contemporary, had said long ago that cinema changed nothing).

The first New Wave package of films came from France around 1963, and we were agog. Soon after, Mrinal Sen made Aakaash Kusum, complete with freezes and jump cuts, which we had not seen till then.

There was a sense that something was about to happen, although that is probably being wise after the fact. Look at the late 60-s and early 70-s and see what did happen – Ray’s Kolkata films, Sen’s Bhuvan Shome and Kolkata films, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s best work, Ritwick Ghatak, Aravindan…quite apart, of course, from the tremendous things that were happening in Europe…

Only Plays or Some Theatre Too?

The Hindu Theatre Fest, Chennai, August 2007

It has been nice to have something to genuinely look forward to for so many evenings in a row. It was nice to know that a few hundred people were heading for a hall with a common purpose. Nothing compared to the thousands who head for cinema halls to see The Boss, but still…

The challenge of open spaces

What theatre workers and theatregoers have been doing over these 11 days is sharing an open space created by the Metro Plus Theatre Fest, a kind of Theatre Commons. The organisers deserve our thanks. We have to remember, though, that a common space has to be looked after, tended and even expanded by all who use it. Space, whether physical, intellectual or artistic, is a scarce resource and one has to be prepared to share it. Otherwise it loses that very special quality of openness. The wonderful thing about being in a space over a period of time is that its contours and its uses become sharper and thoughts and questions arise about how to nurture it and use it better. Here, for what it’s worth, are some of the things I’ve been thinking about.

A particularly enterprising film society in Kolkata started its own international film festival a few years ago. The event took root, grew popular and soon became the official Kolkata International Film Festival. So sharing has its rewards. Who is to say that the Metro Theatre Fest will not become the Chennai International Theatre Festival? And what can the stakeholders do to prepare the ground, as it were?

Without meaning the slightest disrespect to those who take responsibility for it now, does it make sense to appoint a Festival Director to design the event, choose the plays and mount other related activities? It needn’t be the same person every year, needless to say. It’s futile to try to put together a list of the year’s ‘best’ plays. No such list can ever be possible. So why not let the audience share one knowledgeable, sensitive, committed person’s vision instead? Would it help to organise the programme under broad themes- say 12 plays, 3 themes?

A launch party is all very well. Everybody loves a Big Bash. But does it say ‘5 Star Entertainment for the Chennai Elite’ too loudly? Would a daylong seminar with well- prepared papers set a more appropriate tone? Surely there’s a whole host of issues theatre workers should be discussing. And what better occasion than this? Can discussions, exhibitions, film shows be facilitated during the course of the Fest with the help of other organisations such as the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the Alliance Francaise, the British Council, the Goethe Institut? In other words, can the Fest be about more than just putting on and watching plays? Over time, can it ground itself in the larger context of theatre?

And then, of course, there’s the seemingly intractable question of representation. The Fest is about theatre in English, even though it doesn’t say so explicitly. Is there a special reason for foregrounding this segment? Is it truly representative of theatre in Chennai or in Tamil Nadu? And are English plays from Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai truly representative of theatre practice in these centres? Would the inclusion of Indian language plays (yes, yes I know that we think of English as an Indian language too!) spread over a larger number of venues broaden enthusiasm and participation? Or would it just compound the logistical problems? Is it possible to learn from the experience of multilingual festivals elsewhere in the country?

Theatre as process

Speaking of the larger context, one question that has puzzled me for a long time is: What constitutes an English theatre group in this city? Is it commitment to a certain ideology, a certain process, a certain way of doing theatre? No offence meant, but I haven’t seen a great deal of evidence of this. Or is a group defined by a particular person- a director, a producer or a writer- with actors flitting about from group to group like honeybees in a field of flowers? It is true that individuals of extraordinary stature have invested groups with unique significance. Utpal Dutt, Habib Tanvir and Badal Sarkar come to mind, as does Arianne Mnouchkine, from very different fields of theatre practice. But, seriously, is English theatre in Chennai ready for this?

Unless theatre workers reflect on the meaning and integrity of groups, shall we be able to move up from merely putting up plays to doing theatre? Do we tend to use the ‘amateur’ status of English theatre as an excuse? Amateur is not the same as amateur-ish and the difference between amateur and professional is often in the mind, in the attitude and understanding, not in the money available.

Do we understand that theatre is anchored in a continuum? Do we ignore the importance of learning- of theories, traditions and texts? Does the energy we devote to theatre as process match the enthusiasm that we have for turning out a product, for staging a play? Above all, can we replace the notion of theatre as entertainment with the notion of theatre as engagement? Entertainment is such a tiresome, one- sided concept. Engagement is so much more exciting. It means that you see the audience as partners in the experience, that you involve, mystify and provoke it.

Enter the Audience

That the audience is willing to be engaged was demonstrated by the Stages Theatre Group’s forum experiment. There is a notion that the English theatre audience is affluent, elite, interested only in a good evening’s entertainment. Changing one’s class character is not easy and you can’t really be expected to carry a copy of your Income Tax returns when you buy a ticket. But the contribution of the audience is vitally necessary to push the boundaries of the Theatre Commons. There seems to be one good place to start: demand more, not in quantity but in quality, relevance, innovation, experiment. Do not be passive or polite in your criticism. Be willing to see theatre in basic, even uncomfortable spaces, so that you can relieve theatre groups of the burden of finding money to hire luxurious, air- conditioned halls. Without the audience as enthusiastic participant, there will be no worthwhile theatre.

Curtains

That’s about it then. There’s neither time nor space to discuss individual plays…but there will always be a next time. Suffice it to say that I value whatever friendships I have in theatre more than any foolhardy notions of frank and fearless theatre criticism.

Whatever else the audience may or may not take away from this Festival, one thing is certain. The vital statistics of a particular brand of car will be scored indelibly in their collective memory. Is there any truth in the rumour that, at the next Festival, we shall have the privilege of actually seeing this car, or its successor, on stage, embedded skillfully in various scripts?