The Grand Dame Noir

Me And My Plays

Author: Mahesh Dattani

Publisher: Penguin, Rs 299

Dattani attacks the inflexible social norms that constrict human growth, says Ananya Borgohain

Having begun his theatrical journey over two decades back, Sahitya Akademi award-winning playwright and one of the most established names in the modern Indian theatre in English, Mahesh Dattani, comes back to where it all started in his recently released memoir, Me And My Plays. The memoir begins with his personal reflections and biographical details. Dattani narrates how and why theatre fascinated him, how he decided to pursue the craft, the miniscule and commonplace spaces he started in, and so on. He recalls how his Indian-English writing and the habit of thinking exclusively in English were unique and idiosyncratic and troubled the hitherto cleansed and established syntax of Indian theatre that was largely Hindi-oriented. Further, it entails essays by Lillete Dubey and Achint Kaur on their experiences and equations with Dattani and his body of work. It also includes two plays — ‘Where did I leave my purdah?’ and ‘The Big Fat City’.

In the former, Dattani effectively underlines the discrepancies of a life in the theatre circle that subjects one to lonesomeness and futility. It belongs to the genre of the Grand Dame Noir wherein an aging diva romanticises her past and struggles with her present status of faded fame and decayed fortune. Aged Nazia (Lillete Dubey) is a theatre diva of the 1950s and founder of the theatre group The Modern Indian Theatre, and is renowned for playing the mythological Shakuntala. In the present age, Nazia is doomed to negligible, grandmother roles with no essence or screen presence in Hindi films. Ruby (Soni Razdan), daughter of Nazia’s dead sister Zarine, craves for the warmth of a mother and at the same time despises Nazia whom she suspects of having concealed the truth behind The Modern Indian Theatre group. She deduces that Shakuntala was played by her mother Zarine and not Nazia who according to her is a selfish conniving woman. The play turns into a metaplay (play within a play) with a consistent parallel track set during the time of Partition when young lovers Nazia and Suhail are separated by a fatal and heinous hate-mob. The narrative further turns three-fold with the sub-plot of yet another young couple playing Dushyant and Shakuntala in the present setting. The narrative is complex and an emotional roller coaster and as it progresses, it reveals tragic and befuddling facts and undresses the barbaric trauma of death, doomed love and the worst, mob-rape, during the macabre event of Partition. The manifestations of theatre veteran Zohra Sehgal in feisty octogenarian Nazia and the references to Habib Tanvir’s repertory company Naya Theatre and the Leftist Indian People’s Theatre Association, though only ostensible, are the crucial themes of the play. It’s gripping, sentimental, shocking, and non-condescending.

The other play in the memoir, ‘The Big Fat City’, is a black comedy with off-the-edge and gory consequences. It displays text messages exchanged between the characters on a white screen in the background to strike an immediate connection between the audiences and the actors’ minds. It is an incorporation of three plots bound by one fatal incident. The manipulations of the corporate sector in Mumbai, the superficiality of the television entertainment industry, the naivety of immature lovers, the decayed consumerist fads of the youths and the ghastly notion of honour-killing, all come together to leave the audiences in a state of bewilderment so as to confuse them about whether they should laugh or panic as the chaos unfold. The dramatic irony and tragic humour compel one to doubt the rigid value system of our society. The Grand Dame Noir element is present in this play as well — in the form of Lolly (Achint Kaur).

Both plays attack the inflexibility and degenerating customs and communalism that regulate unfortunate social norms and constrict human beings from enhancing their boundaries of perceptive camaraderie. Dattani’s flair for writing is empowered with the experimenting narrative techniques that he employs — the recruitment of shock in both plays, the dual role (same actor playing more than one roles in a play) in ‘Where did I leave my purdah?’, or the displaying of the text messages exchanged between the characters in a separate screen in the background in ‘The Big Fat City’. Both plays betray the unity of time and plot and lead the audiences to unexpected and unsettling events. The plays compel to ponder why the past was ruptured and where the present is headed to. With an effortless flow in the narratives, the book as a whole is a compact, inviting read.