Karl Marx in Kalbadevi: a Wordplay with Polemics
by Shujaat Mirza
Karl Marx in Kalbadevi is an adaptation of the bare facets of Howard Zinn’s Karl Marx in Soho, taking it’s storytelling device of Karl Marx returning back after 150 odd years to Mumbai and closer home to Kalbadevi, a precinct of Mumbai which is home to small business and cloth markets, sub locating the original Soho of Zinn’s play to downtown mumbai.
The most dominant feature of the play is the energetic performance of Satchit Puranik, who is the sole performer in this play that runs on for almost one and a half hours without a break. The way he effortlessly slides from one emotion to another and from one language to another through a snarling sarcastic drawl, with a song and dance routine to wit, is commendable for its ability to keep the audience on hook, on as dull and beaten a topic as Marxism and its relevance in today's world. The play is an extended monologue and he improvises and adlibs through it with a remarkable virtuosity.
So we find him square and fair somehow at Mani Bhavan, the place where Gandhi resided when he was in mumbai, and he is stranded there as the gatekeeper won't allow him entry due to the fixed timings. And the writer -director of the play, Manoj Shah, apparently recommends him some drab guest house in Kalbadevi, where he lodges himself and goes back in a reminiscence, recollecting and commenting on his life journey, with snippets on present day Indian politics thrown in for good measure.
At the beginning of the play itself he talks of how language in itself is a valuable currency, bringing in a lot of present day concerns about the way language shapes our life in good and bad ways. What we speak otherwise would just be syllables if language didn't have currency. Something akin to the mechanism of pricing power in economics where the intrinsic value of a commodity is determined by the demand for it. So this prepares us for critically examining the issues that the play will put forth, even if said in jest and light-heartedly.
A critique of Gandhi's work ethic is also thrown in when the importance that he gave to dressing down and looking poor is shown as an avoidance of the real structural issues behind poverty. The difference between being povertarian and trying to invoke real change. The way society brushes aside fundamental issues of inequity is constantly hammered into us throughout the play in a subtle anecdotal manner. It wishes to lay bare the faultlines, but without inducing discomfort, by making a song and dance of it, so that the message gets in subliminally. The play is quite interactive and asks for audience participation at each stage, setting in place a comfort zone within a discomfiting discourse. For me this was what caught my eye, as the novel factor. A necessity as well,because Gujarati theatre production has usually fought shy of overtly political themes, and so the audience needs to be handled with kid gloves.
Where it falters is when the Paris Commune, the radical, socialist revolutionary government in Paris,that lasted for 72 days from 18th march 1871,is posited as an ideal of equality and fraternity and offered as an alternative to the present world order/political system. For any decently knowledgeable person who knows his/her history would vouch that it had a lot of inherent contradictions that cannot be swept under the carpet. As an ideal it might yet evoke nostalgia in the adherents of Marxism but its reality was more brutal and fissiparous. Basically a utopian formulation on the lines of Friedrich Engels concept of ' withering away of the state' wherein once socialism is firmly established then it will make the State obsolete and society will govern itself.
The beautiful parts where the play lights up the atmospherics are those slowly infused moments of pathos and humour that follow the retelling of important incidents in the life of Karl Marx, with clever staccato,musical bits and pieces added with a flourish to add subtle meanings to them. And the minimal use of lights subtly to evoke moods. Reds are used in the beginning to showcase the story of his education and his early life as a wannabe poet and the President of a drinking society in Trier, which also humanises him for us as he marches onwards to his inevitable journey as first a pamphleteer and then a man of letters and a dogged, indefatigable crusader of socialism. All these events are interspersed with random question & answer sessions with the audience as well as polylingual conversations, ranging from french to german, to showcase the milieu,as well as the polymath genius of Marx. Once Satchit Puranik also breaks into his version of Gangnam style dance and an impromptu remix of Gandhi's bhajan Vaishnava Jana as almost a communist anthem.
He also depicts the struggles of surviving on next to nil income in the zeal to pursue one's writings. In an especially poignant scene he sings a lullaby at the loss of his young child. In a way he himself lived the class struggle as he fell from his high perch to a lower station in life. Married into an aristocratic family he still survived with the help of Engels and some income here and there. His in-laws being aristocratically short-sighted send him a nanny to help his wife with the kids, instead of monetary help , escalating the dire straits. And he has one more mouth to feed, further complicated by his affair with the nanny. We get an inside view of Marx's life in Soho, London and see the penury and the persistence both, side by side.
There are clever digs at the way society indoctrinates us. When Marx visits the Mumbadevi temple he observes the strange phenomenon of people visiting the temple to ask favors of God and right outside the temple beggars entreating the visitors to give them some money in the name of God.
There are some interesting lines about the difference between Rolex and Timex watches. A comment on the way people accrue value to products due to clever marketing, such that Rolex defines that your time has come and Timex just shows you the time.
Finally it also tries to sort the debate around the demonization of Marx. And tries to shape the debate towards the fact that just because his followers messed it up, his ideology cannot be blamed for it. The oft-repeated quotation attributed to Marx about religion being the opium of the masses is shown in its real context. People take it as a standalone sentence out of context and assume Marx was against religion. That's the writers take. Also rather controversially the writer proposes that Marx wasn't against capitalism but the way it is formulated that only the 1 percent enjoy the fruits while 99 percent don't and stay poor.
The play, in my opinion is a brave attempt at familiarizing new generations to Marx in a cosy familiar setting of a standard format of playful banter but it does not clearly enunciate and espouse the ideological moorings on which it is based and Satchit Puranik's masterly and at-ease, bravura performance saves it from itself. A rare and honest effort, though it glosses over how Marx was appreciative of the colonial enterprise in India as a way to the emancipation of Indians. But simultaneously Marx's work is foundational in a lot of anti-imperialist struggles as well. It's a mixed bag and so naturally we leave with mixed feelings and open ended questions.
Maybe that's the play's take and its intention as well, to make us reflect and think and make up our minds ourselves about Marx's legacy and relevance.
© Shujaat Mirza
