The harrowing real life story of Aruna, raped and then strangled by a chain around her neck that resulted in cutting off oxygen to the brain, is the subject of Lushin Dubey’s play Aruna’s Story.
Based on an investigative book by activist Pinki Virani, this tragic story is made even more tragic when the court denies her the right to take her own life, even though she is bed-bound and reduced to complete incapacity. Permission only comes over 40 years later!
The varied characters in the young nurse Aruna’s world come to life in Lushin’s virtuoso performance. She plays a range of people; the concerned nursing staff headed by a Parsi matron, a Maharashtrian police officer, Pinki herself, Aruna’s boyfriend, a doctor, different characters in Aruna’s hometown and of course the vibrant and vivacious Aruna.
If anything distracted both the performer and the audience, it was the loud applause at seven-minute intervals by a section of the audience.
It completely broke the audience’s involvement with an otherwise very captivating and relevant piece of theatre. Lushin, along with director Arvind Gaur, has over the years created a series of one-person shows around themes of gender and violence. Virani’s previous book on childhood sexual abuse, Bitter Chocolate, was also dramatised by Lushin. Her very first solo piece based on a story by folklorist Vijaydan Detha made waves 10 years ago. Since then, Lushin has assiduously worked on her themes of inspiration and given them a voice. And while Aruna’s Story actually delved into serious themes, a production from Mumbai, Ladies Sangeet, also flirted with a serious theme.
These two productions are strong examples of the churning in contemporary Indian theatre. Audiences are no longer happy with the latest play imported from Broadway or the Westend. They seem hungry to see their own social concerns reflected on the stage. Very often, the substance of the plot seems to be drawn from yesterday’s newspaper headlines. But then there is the compulsion of finding ways and means to make such a ‘social’ theme sell to a wide audience. So often the recourse is taken to clever one-liners, easily understood uni-dimensional characters who do not develop through the play, but remain trapped in a kind of cultural shorthand. The script of Ladies Sangeet set in a large elaborate haveli, where three generations of a family gather to celebrate a wedding, was a mawkish attempt at being relevant.
The themes were certainly all there, rich with possibility, pregnant with promise: the autocratic old order of not questioning one’s parents being brought into question; the very need for marriage being put to the test by a young generation; the stultifying view of a woman expressed in much of classical music; the issue of sexuality. Despite brave performances by Lovleen Mishra and Joy Sengupta, the otherwise amateurish performances and direction, stereotyped characterisation and garish costumes were little beyond an Ekta Kapoor serial.
The writer is a Delhi-based theatre director
feisal.alkazi@rediffmail.com