Delhi Theatre Review: Agnee Aur Barkha (Directed by K.S. Rajendran)
The third play in the third edition of Panna Bharat Ram Theatre Festival, which concluded on 1st of January, 2016 in Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, Agnee and Barkha was the most efficiently carried out play out of the three plays I could see here in this festival. Agnee aur Barkha is the Hindi adaptation of the now-popular play by Girish Karnad, “Fire and the Rain”, translated into Hindi by Ram Gopal Bajaj and directed by esteemed alumnus of N.S.D, the passionate K.S Rajendran who currently teaches Dramatic Literature at his Alma Mater.
The play was performed by SRC’s Repertory to an almost houseful theatre hall at SRC. Structurally, the play deals with contrasting characters, motivations, emotions and moralities in most of the situations. The opposing themes of Fire(represented by the seven-year-long yagya, carried out by the King) and the Rain (for which the yagya is being performed because of a drought in the land) are juxtaposed with the coinciding human emotions of love and hatred. Based upon the myth of Yavakri from Vana Parv in Mahabharata, the play hovers over a family feud between the Brahmins, Raibhya and Bharadwaj. The feud caused by sexual and intellectual jealousy and extreme egoism among the Brahmin males can be seen as representing the motif of Fire in the play. A different perspective representing the inherent love and kindness in mankind is offered by the relationship of Nittilayi, a Shudra girl, and Arvasu, youngest son of Raibhya.
The play starts with a scene where the yagya is being performed in a part of the King’s court where we can see a lot of Brahmins sitting and performing the rituals together in a neat and geometrical blocking. The image of the holy fire is created by a large cloth in the deep end center of the stage with the actors supplicating the Fire God created by lighting on the cloth. Next we are taken to the scene of childish romance of Nittilayi and Arvasu. The love between them is a very innocent one and sex is definitely not a part of their relationship as is made evident in the dialogues. The couple played by Satyaketi Mishra and Mujibur Rehman carries the relationship with a somewhat more-than-needed-childishness, in the face of their grown up bodies as actors. This confusion might be true in the case of the characters as well and we can really praise the Casting by the Director in this regard. This is not to disregard the acting on the part of the actors as the awkwardness also came because of the old man in whose presence they seemed to have regularly met(whose extremely rigid blocking made me wonder whether he was lame as well). Even in the scenes where they came aside, the ecstasy of their upcoming marriage was visible to some extent in their rollicking laughter together like in the picture below.
Arvasu is the son of Raibhya, played by the most beautiful actor in the cast, Chandan Kumar (who later plays the role of Indra), who with considerable experience probably, plays the conceited and malicious role of Raibhya who hates the fact that his eldest son, Paravasu (played by the dashing Saif Ansari) has been chosen for the yagya to please Lord Indra and in his absence, while Paravasu is at the court of the King, molests his wife as well.
Paravasu’s wife Vishakha is played by Sugandha Srivastava, second most beautiful actor in the play. Vishakha had married Paravasu even though she loved Yavakri as an adolescent. Yavakri, played by Raj Tanwar, the cousin brother of Arvasu and Paravasu, is considered to be the possessor of Brahma Satya, the ultimate truth, delivered to him by none other than Lord Indra after his long penance and wanderings in deep and dense forests amidst wild animals. Although he has learned the fact that true knowledge can come only from experience, he hides the fact from everyone that he’s not exactly sure when Lord Indra came to visit him(or if he was under the influence of some narcotic/hallucinogenic substance or in the grip of Sleep) as afterall he’s learned quite a lot from his exile and considers himself, like all others in the village, as an enlightened saint.
Even after returning he has Vishakha on his mind and when he finds that she has been married off to his cousin Paravasu by his uncle Raibhya, he plots revenge against the family. With Vishakha unaware of the whole plot, he forces himself sexually on her and she, because of her old love for him and a miserable present life gives in to his advances. But they could not hide from the shrewd Raibhya, not that Yavakri even wanted to. Embittered and enraged, Raibhya sets a Brahma-Rakshasa upon him who will either kill Yavakri or if unable to do so will kill himself. The Brahma Rakshasa, played by a big, fat, hairy and blackened man is able to instill some fear in the audience. Vishakha immediately goes to warn Yavakri out of her love for him, but when she comes to know of Yavakri’s plot, she foils her plan by draining out the holy water with which he planned on protecting himself and killing Raibhya in return. That is the end of Yavakri at the hands of the Brahma Rakshasa. Vishakha is able to display her angst in front of her father-in-law when he comes to know of their little sexcapade. Raibhya’s show of anger might have gone a little overboard but was a delight to watch in any case because of Chandan’s charm as an actor.
Elders of Nittilayi’s tribe had fixed a time for meeting Arvasu which coincided with the dance of the Brahma Rakshasa, because of which Arvasu misses the appointment and Nittilayi is married off to some other young man of their tribe who is kind enough to accept her, despite the bad name of a girl falling for the usual advances of Brahmins.
Next we see the egotistic cunning of Paravasu in killing his father in the guise of killing a wild animal, when he came to visit his cottage for a night. He asked Arvasu to take care of the last rites and went to resume duties as the Head-Priest in the yagya. When Aravasu, after finishing the rites, goes to meet his brother, Paravasu accuses him of patricide and he’s cast away from the premises. This breaks Arvasu’s heart and this motivates him for the last scene of the play, which is a play-within-the-play for which a troupe has come to act in the King’s court to celebrate the fulfillment of the yagya. The company’s manager, played by Chandan Kumar again, is looking for a dancer to play the part of Vritrasur in the tragedy they’re planning to play in the king’s court where Indra kills his innocent brother, Vishwaroop out of jealousy. This act of fratricide which reminds him of his actual recent past and the fact that he’s behind the mask of Vritrasur gives him a sense of purpose and he goes into a sense of frenzy, as if the mask had poured courage into his otherwise weak heart.
The conflict between the Fire and Rain is resolved by a catharsis experienced by both the audience and the actors on the stage by the Brechtian technique of Theatre-audience contact. The voice of Indra is audible to the actors and seems to come through the fourth wall. Pleased by Nittilayi’s sacrifice, who is killed by members of her tribe and Arvasu’s selflessness who asks for freeing the Brahma Rakshasa instead of Nittilayi’s life, Indra allows rain to fall on the drought-stricken land. The resolution can be smelled from afar but is sweet nonetheless.
One of the best part of the play, Costumes were elaborately and creatively designed, with bright colours making the clothes of Brahmins; dull, Khadi-like, well pleated designs making the clothes of the tribals. Set design was minimalist, mostly done by small easy-to-shift bamboo platforms and long, bright dupattas. There is definitely scope for some elaborations in the set in future performances of the play. Lighting was innovative and without using too many spots conveyed the hues of emotions that the Director wanted to express.
Natasha Jha