In the shadow of a giant

IT was with some reservations that I attended the seminar on a Marathi writer grandiosely termed the "Playwright of the Millennium" (Mumbai, 2 Oct). This was part of the 15-day Vijay Tendulkar festival, featuring "Kamla", "Khamosh! Adalat Jaari Hai!", "Anji", "Jaat Hi Poocho Sadhu Ki", "Hatteri Kismat" and "Kanyadaan". Actor/director Dinesh Thakur's 24 year-old "Ank" has been celebrating 2000 as the year of Tendulkar, staging his plays every month at the Prithvi Theatre. The finale? A December production of a recently unearthed, hitherto unpublished, yet-to- be-named play written in 1972, which Tendulkar "found" when he monsoon-cleaned his room last month.

Surprisingly, the totally unstructured seminar developed into a rather interesting "adda", probably because the participants were non-academics with hands on experience in the theatre. Their regard for the senior playwright, and for the intrepid Thakur who perseveres with Hindi theatre despite the heavy odds, ensured focus and involvement. Though everyone admitted that Tendulkar's image was that of an Indian - not Marathi - playwright, with admirable consistency and body of work, only five or six plays were mentioned. The non-realistic ventures ("Vitthala", "Anji", "Safar", "Niyati chya Bailala") were ignored.

The tributes avoided the cloying eulogy such occasions often generate. True, someone recalled Girish Karnad's statement that "Sakharam Binder" was the greatest play written in the last 1000 years. And of course, Thakur justified his hyperbole, "No other Indian playwright has Tendulkar's range and continuous success, with 29 plays in 31 years, plus One Acts and children's plays, performed all over the country in many languages, revealing socio-political concerns, and with a sensitive stance towards women." (Later, when I asked him if he thought Tendulkar was dated, he flashed back, "Tell me, is Ibsen dated?")

But there were others who admitted that Tendulkar left them cold. Listen to the younger director Waman Kendre's views. "Marathi theatre's identity is inextricably bound with Tendulkar's name. He has developed a theatre philosophy of his own by writing only when the impulsion comes from within. Beginning with a rejection of a 100 years of the stylised Marathi tradition, Tendulkar also rejected each of his plays before starting on the next. Yet his plays do not excite me. So tightly structured that they allow no scope for the director's creativity. If we want to get ahead, we must reject Tendulkar's influence. Our challenge is to take Marathi theatre beyond the point to which he has brought it."

Bansi Kaul, (Clowns' Repertory, Bhopal), who believes that Tendulkar writes mostly poster plays, concurred, "I am not a mason but an architect and I want the playwright to create the space where I can interpret afresh." He had once got over this problem by making Tendulkar's stage directions into a choric character! "The playwright saw it and did not say anything, in itself a comment." Others, including Marathi director Jayadev Hattangady (who recalled the explosive censorhip problems over the first production of "Gidhaade"), cavilled at Tendulkar's tendency to "sit on the director's head", allowing no changes or deviations from his script. "That's why I haven't done his plays."

"He gave a humane form and human face to violence," declared Hattangady; a point stressed by Ramgopal Bajaj (Director, National School of Drama) in describing the villainy and evil depicted in a "Shantata..." or "Baby". He added provocatively, "Due to historical reasons we have not developed the skills or the tradition to deal with this kind of realism or naturalism on the stage, to reach the level of imagery and abstractions that Tendulkar's plays demand. With rare exceptions, we are still stuck in imitation, caricature and cloning."

Nana Phadnavis, sorry, Mohan Agashe (Director, Film and Television Institute of India) sighed, "Long ago I grew a "temporary" moustache for a play. I got stuck with it for 20 years of playing that role. And for 10 years after that I have been thinking about what I did in those 20 years." Agashe found that this long stint with "Ghashiram Kotwal" had turned theatre into an addiction for him, opening new dimensions in life and art. "Tendulkar has always been ahead of his times, existing in a zone which is neither real nor pure imagination," infected by an unbearable restlessness until he unburdened himself in the cathartic activity of writing.

"Talking about Tendulkar is recollection, experience and analysis for me," began thespian B. V. Karanth, who has acted in and directed Tendulkar plays in Hindi and Kannada. His jokes on the use of four-letter words in Tendulkar soon developed into a reflection on how theatre draws its energy from the pulse of life, and on Tendulkar's unflinching integrity in diagnosing contemporary reality. "The tradition of drama is to break all traditions, it has no history or guruparampara but a heritage of understanding. It is the only medium capable of arresting the dull uniformity of globalisation," said he. "Every age requires the stage to express itself. But a 'Ghashiram Kotwal' has also the revitalising power of imagery to assume a new avatar in every age."

The most moving tribute came from playwright Satish Alekar, whose own works ("Mahanirvan", "Begum Barve") are as different as possible from the senior contemporary whom he acknowledged as a major influence, though not for imitation. He had found Tendulkar very dull until he encountered the charged atmosphere of "Shantata...". "I can still smell that stage!" he said.

Alekar noted that the major plays of Tendulkar are so entirely different in structure and content that it is hard to believe they are written by the same person. (Kamalakar Nadkarni was later to remark that none of Tendulkar's characters reflected the personal or political views of the playwright, they were totally non-autobiographical). Alekar summed up, "I shudder to think of how my 'Mahanirvan' or Shafaat Khan's 'Shobha Yatra' would have fared if Tendulkar had not developed a new sensibility and maturity in our audiences. He has been a light house to all of us." He added that a student of the drama department, Pune University, has chosen "Sakharam Binder" for his term presentation this year saying, "As theatre it is relevant to me."

Identifying Tendulkar's greatest achievement as the creation of a new nuanced theatre language, theatre luminary Satyadev Dubey fumed that it became a fashion to admire Tendulkar only when the issues he wrote about were dead. "Since the future will bring its own problems, we will need another Tendulkar. But theatre can be reborn and playwrights appear only if the audience is clear about what it wants."

Tendulkar's own response showed that at 73, the playwright had not lost his capacity to surprise his audience. "A senior theatreman came to me after watching 'Shantata...' and said, 'Why can't you change the end and make things easier for Miss Benare?' I feel like him now as I watch life. I get restless, upset, even murderous, when I see the changes that have come, and which I see coming. I feel agitated and helpless because I can do nothing except watch. Sometimes I want to walk out... I can't take it any more...I ask myself, are our playwrights, actors and audiences aware of the serious, complex changes that are going to affect our fate in a big way? Because, unless we are deeply concerned with life, what we write or stage or film, whether they are read, seen or discussed, don't really matter... Yes, I continue to watch plays and films, but they don't move me anymore. I feel that the person you have all been discussing is not me, but someone else..."

GOWRI RAMNARAYAN

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