Red-amber light washes the stage. A mellow tanpura hums. Women in maroon saris glide slowly onto a raised platform, their presence heavy with anticipation. The first notes of a song fill the air—soft, yearning, elusive. And thus, the story of a lover searching for her absent companion begins.
Written by Sarah Mariam and directed by Amitesh Grover, the play Mehroon is a tale of desire, longing, and imagination.
The plot centres on a woman sent to a widow’s ashram, who spends her days crafting clay figurines of her imaginative lover that come alive at night. “One day, we were standing on our balcony and Amitesh said out of nowhere, ‘I want to make a play on love’,” Sarah laughs. What followed were weeks of workshops with lead actors Ipshita Chakraborty Singh and Ajeet Singh Palawat, weaving their own love stories into the play’s foundation.
The story blurs the line between reality and imagination. Ipshita’s character animates her clay figurine into a man, played by Ajeet. Amitesh reflects, “For me, as an artist, the borders between dream and reality are blurred, and I don’t know how to tell a story that strictly belongs to one realm. The scenes where the figurine manifests as a man feel far more real to me.” The play questions how desire renders imagination real, and whether existence itself might be imagined.
When the female lead is handed her ashram uniform, she says, “Ye vaidhavya ke kapde to nahi hain, ye to mehroon hain (These are not the clothes of widowhood, they are maroon in colour).” An ashram woman replies, “Laal rang mein thora sa kaala andhera ghul jaye, to mehroon ban jata hai. (If darkness is blended into red, it makes maroon).” The colour maroon serves as a metaphor for love darkened into longing; a space between red’s passion and black’s grief. Each sari differs in shade and texture, representing the unique lives and desires of the women who wear them. Sarah observes, “The play explores the joy of draping maroon for a widow and what the colour means to her.”
When the imaginary man appears for the last time, he meets the woman. “The audience is touched by this scene. Men have often come up to me saying that the male lead’s vulnerability has unlocked a soft place in their heart,” Sarah notes. The climax arrives with a flood, a storm of sound created live with thunder drums and polythene. The woman confronts the truth of her imagined love. Amitesh explains, “As a director, the biggest challenge yet the most rewarding part was to represent a flood without a single drop of water.” The ashram becomes a sanctuary of freedom. Sarah reflects, “Fiction is perhaps the only place where we can escape reality and imagine what may never happen. If fiction is where I can create a life like that, why not?”
