At the core

Photo: Murali Kumar K.

SUPERB SARCASM There was easy-going familial chemistry throughout the play

When Vijay Tendulkar was awarded the Saraswati Samman for his play “Kanyadaan” (1983), he said, “You are honouring me…for a play for which I once had a slipper hurled at me. Perhaps it is the fate of the play to have earned bo th this honour and that insult. As its creator, I respect both verdicts.” “Kanyadaan” (The giving away of the bride) translated into English by Gowri Ramnarayan and directed by Lillete Dubey was staged last weekend at the Chowdaiah Memorial Hall.

The reservation issue, Delhi University alumni opposing a quota for Dalit Christians, the Khairlanji killings — all figure in this play set in 1981 Pune that is still relevant after 26 years.

Rajendra Gupta (Nath) was brilliant in his characterisation of the eager, idealistic father. With fine dashes of humour, bordering on sarcasm, the play centres on the hypocrisy and double-standards of the ‘liberal’ socialist Brahmin family. The play is set throughout in the drawing room of the Devlalikars, adorned with typical high-caste urban antique furniture, with a picture-frame of Gandhi hanging from the wall complete with a creeper to resemble the garden outside. All this later intimidates Nath’s daughter Usha’s suitor Arun Athavale played by Joy Sengupta.

Family jokes which mock at Nath’s socialist and political connections are plentiful, such as when he says: “…democracy outside and dictatorship in the home, we don’t know these two-timing tricks” and “The call of the nation is far more important than the call of a wife.” Or when his wife, Seva declares: “If he had been a democratic, would I have been his wife?” and the ability of Nath to make fun of himself: “That’s why I’ve lasted so long in politics” and “one can take a first class nap during the dull speeches at the session.” Lillete played the hypocritical Seva dal ‘activist’ who does charity work for the emancipation of women like any ‘self-respecting’ wife of a politician with finesse.

When they begin cross-questioning their daughter Usha, on her choice of groom, there is open blatancy in the way they want to know if he is from a ‘good family’. Arun says that he and Usha “will be brewing illicit liquor” – something that is ‘lowly’ and ‘shameful’. Similarly, when she terms his wife-beating as barbaric, he plainly says, “I am a barbarian by birth, when have I claimed any white collar culture?”

Usha’s naiveté and ignorance, who finds it hard to grapple with and comprehend Arun’s social background is well played out by Radhika Apte in all its oblivious innocence and petrification. Sengupta was outstanding when he jeers at her background in a poetic bout – “How can there be any give and take between our ways and your fragrant, ghee spread, wheat bread culture?” He prods her abilities if she “… can shit in our slum’s village toilet like my mother?” He mocks at the fact that he has “caught a Brahmin dame.”

Though the brother, Jayaprakash played by Raaghav Chanana didn’t have much of a role to play , he did deliver some important perspectives like when he comes to the conclusion that “yesterday’s victim is today’s victimiser”.

What was radical and sweeping was the exchange of words between father and daughter in the final scene, when Usha confronts his charitable gesture in releasing his son-in-law’s autobiography. She speaks out, “I belong to someone who makes your clean and pure soul impure by his touch” and denounces her caste and says she is “Jyoti Arun Athavale, a scavenger not Jyoti Yadunath Devalalikar.”

An equally evocative scene was when Arun ridicules Nath for “(championing) the cause of ‘A well in every village for the Dalit…with the trumpet call of idealism, you got your daughter married to a Dalit.”

And then, Nath’s two-facedness all comes out when he is ‘offended’ by the Dalit contemptuous mockery of him and says “…this visit has polluted this drawing room…I feel like cleaning myself! How have I come into contact with a man like this?”

Tendulkar does not ‘seek to make Arun Athavale a negative character’ but responds in an interview with Ranjit Pardesi by saying: “To date, many of my plays have been interpreted erroneously by foolish and self-serving people.”

The play then, introspects through all its layers of self-hypocrisy and seeks to re-examine the “non-violent ways of Brahmins…”

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