Play Review: Waiting for Naseer

There aren’t enough things in the world that leave you with existential questions, thus actually staying with you for a fair bit of time. A brand new play, “Waiting for Naseer” is, thankfully, one of those things.

This play is a terrific tour de force of two actors — a veteran and a greenhorn — who lock horns with each other and empathize with each other in equal measure. In the backdrop are questions of life, death and the multitude of possibilities apart from those two eventualities. And at the forefront is an undying love for theater; love which metamorphoses into passion, envy and jealousy, and fandom. In its truest form, it devolves into a certain kind of crazed obsession that you can only live with if you give up all sense of security and embrace vulnerability as part of your being itself.

While the play has placed theater as the subject of this love of its protagonists, you end up wondering if there’s something in your life’s travails so far for which you can give up everything, including your life.

There must have been many tributes to the phenomenal thespian that Naseeruddin Shah is. But there isn’t a more heartfelt one than this play. Yes, the “Naseer” in the play title is none other than the great man himself. In a manner of speaking, the story revolves around him without him being part of it. As contradictory as it sounds before the lights go off for the play to begin, it makes perfect sense once the lights go off to signal the end of a journey extraordinaire.

The intensity that the two central characters display is a sight to behold; there’s never a dull moment and you end up falling in love with both of them as they take tentative steps in their search for their own Godot. There seem to be striking similarities between this play and that epochal one by Samuel Beckett. But there are enough elements and more in this one that lend themselves to multiple interpretations.

The relationship between the two men is a force field in itself, lightened up due to the brilliant chemistry between them. Are they two men who are at the opposing ends of the spectrum of hope, and age? Are they two men united against their wishes by an absurd ruling of the powers that be? Are they two men who have taken each other to be their one true companion in a journey that they couldn’t have prepared for? Are they two men out of which one seems to be mentoring the other one for one moment and learning from him without realizing in the next one? This relationship itself adds a number of layers to the play — how often do we find someone in our lives with whom the equation we share doesn’t fit the neat boxes of societal norms?

There’s a cameo and a fantastic one at that. One almost ends up feeling that their longing for success should have been satisfied there and then. But then you realize that if it did, you wouldn’t recognize them anymore for their longing and their waiting has come to define them.

A word about the venue — the intimacy of this place was unsettling as a viewer, leave alone the thoughts that would have gone through the minds of the actors. But perhaps, the play needed that sort of closeness to drive the point home. It was a sheer delight watching the goings on from less than a meter away — every single expression and every bit of intonation felt like you were standing at short leg while the batsman had a one point game plan — sweep the off spinner in front of square leg.

Speaking of cricket, I don’t know of any other example of theater wherein the sport, with just one momentary connection with the script, infused such a brilliant angle into the scheme of things.

Finally, onto the exceptionally talented Jaimini Pathak — I had the great fortune of sitting right next to him as he seemed to be mentally preparing himself for the play to begin. He seemed to be, at once, a picture of immense concentration as well as an embodiment of inner peace. After staring at him for a few minutes without deliberation, I sensed that he was entering what test cricketers refer to as The Zone.

I had watched him in action in another such mano a mano — Postcards from Bardoli — and with the latest one, my appreciation for the sheer depth of the emotions he is able to bring forth very effortlessly has multiplied.

There’s a good measure of risk in watching a new play in its first ever run but I’d like to believe that like many of the crew who were first timers as well, the sense of catharsis is well worth the risk.