Women Centre Stage

The Dramatist and the Play

Poile Sengupta

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000084474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This selection of six contemporary plays explores a wide range of issues — familial, social, mythological, political — with women centre stage. The plays are distinct from each other in structure, theme and style, but are bound together by a common thread — the position and role of women in family, social and political systems. Issues such as sexual abuse, in-law relationships, the trauma of ageing, the struggle for women's empowerment, love and passion, desire and revenge, and dynastic politics are discussed through the varying perspectives of a number of characters, bringing an immediacy and urgency to the subjects under consideration.

What is significant about the plays is that they highlight the manipulation of the English language resulting with the introduction of an 'Indian' syntax. Multilingualism is used to offset the so-called 'westernisation' that has been the by-product of the systematic globalisation of 'third world' countries. While the plays are meant to be staged, they are also very reader-friendly and will be entertaining as well as educative for the general reader.

KEATS WAS A TUBER

1996

Keats Was a Tuber was written with the intention of vanquishing that old demon — of being Indian and choosing to write in English. Though this issue is no longer as vexatious as it once was, all writers in English have had to deal with it at some time or the other and in their own way. Keats Was a Tuber is set in the staffroom of the English department of a small town college where it is possible even now, to find staunch custodians of the English language and literature, and where romance is the exclusive property of the poets in the syllabus.

The methodology of teaching English is integral to our knowledge and appreciation of the language, and this is a key element in the narrative. However, the play, and the role of the English language, goes far beyond that. English is a legacy gifted us by Lord Macaulay, when in his famous Minute on Indian Education, 2 February 1835, he declared, ‘We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern — a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.’ For independent India, is that legacy a Trojan horse?

English brought with it the promise of democratic ideals, the ordered calm of legal phraseology, and the vocabulary of modern administration, to a land that was fragmented by a thousand identities. But did English also erode the colour and richness of our own many tongues? Today, when English suffuses the world of technology and international commerce, the voiceless Ramanan epitomises the aspirations of many Indians who believe that the knowledge of English would help them transform their lives. And yet, is it possible to convey our Indian sensibility through the imperial language of the British?

In Keats was a Tuber, I allowed myself to explore my own relationship with the English language and to express unabashedly my deep love for it.

First performed 18 January 1997

Cast

Woman Speaker	Raj Dutt
Mr Iyer	Shiv Kumar
Sarala	Munira Sen
Mrs Nathan	Ranita Hirji
Ramanan	K. Raza Hussain
Dr Dennis	Chippy Gangjee
Raghu	Preetam Koilpillai
Damini	Rakhi Chaudhuri

Crew

Sets design	Ashish Sen, Dominic Taylor
Set execution	Rang Manch
Original music score	Preetam Koilpillai
	Herbert Paul
Musicians: Guitar	Herbert Paul
Flute	Hema Choksi
Keyboard	Lawrence
	Preetam Koilpillai
Vocal	Shalini Subramaniam
Percussion	Vivek Menzel
Costumes	Vidya Appaiah
	Marianne Jacobie
Production management	Nirupa
	Reshma D'Silva
	Kartik S. Kumar
	Gagandeep Chhabra
	Abhijit Sengupta
	Anuradha Mundkur
	Mikhail Sen
	Latha Ramaswamy
	Nasreen Taher
Direction	Ashish Sen

ACT 1

Stage in total darkness except for a single spot downstage right. A WOMAN (about thirty-five) is seen addressing an unseen audience.

WOMAN: It is my privilege to speak to you as a teacher of English from India and to share with you my thoughts and experiences. Thank you for inviting me to this forum; I am honoured.

Pause.

English is not my language. It is not the language that my grandparents and parents speak at home. In fact, I do not think I knew anything of English before I went to school. But my parents, born when India was still a British colony, attributed the glory of the British to the power of their language and sent me when I was five to a school run by Franciscan nuns. My fifth birthday calculated according to the ascension of my birthstar and celebrated at our family temple, was, or so I believed for a long time, my last birthday as an Indian.

Pause.

English is now the language of my thoughts, it is the language of my reason, the language I use for loving. My perceptions are finer, my judgements more subtle, the range and depth of my emotions seem to be much greater in this language than in any other. What is it then that I and all those like me have inherited? A language, merely? A mode of communication that is functional in many, perhaps in most, parts of the world? Or have we inherited an entire civilisation, an alien sensibility that has seduced us from the culture to which we were born? Have we been enchanted so as to wander forever homeless?

Spot off.

Scene 1. The rest of the stage lights up. We see the shoddy staff room of a provincial college. A large, ugly round table with curved legs dominates stage centre. The table is bare. The chairs are straight backed, uncomfortable, of irregular sizes, and placed randomly. There is a smaller rectangular table next to one of the chairs, also bare. Upstage left are two high steel shelf racks filled untidily with books, notebooks, ledgers, loose sheets of paper, a large box of chalk and a bottle of ink. There is a ray of light falling diagonally across the room, brilliantly lighting up whatever lies in its path and leaving other areas in semi-darkness. The door to the staffroom is upstage left of centre. It is an old-fashioned half door with two flaps that swing wildly and which cover only the middle of the door space. Consequently, the head and legs of anyone on the other side can be seen; the legs alone if it is someone short.

MR IYER enters. He is tall, spare but vital, in his late forties, dressed formally in a light suit and tie, carrying a leather case which he places on the round table, then noticing something on the floor, picks it up. It is a rectangular piece of polished wood, with the words ‘Eng. Dept’ painted on it in white. It has obviously fallen down or been knocked down from outside the door. MR IYER runs his right palm across it and places it carefully on one of the shelves.

A bell is heard clanging.

Enter MISS SARALA in an almighty hurry. She is about twenty-seven, wears a shimmery sari, a fussy, embroidered blouse with long sleeves, a good deal of gold jewellery. She has a large red dot on her forehead, flowers in her hair and carries a cloth bag stuffed with books. She goes up to one of the shelves and hunts for something.

IYER: Is it your attendence register that you are looking for,Sarla?

SARALA: Oh! Yes. Yes sir. I was finding it but...

IYER: (Gently.) You mean you were looking for it but couldn't find it... I believe all the attendance registers have been taken to the office for calculating the students' attendance records. Were you not aware of this?

SARALA: Yes. Oh yes, yes. Mrs Nathan told me. But I just forgot. So many things that I have to remember. And

IYER: Do you find your work load too heavy, Sarala? Would you like me to speak to Mrs Nathan about it?

SARALA: Sir? No, sir. I ... so grateful ... I .... If I ask you sometimes, some passages that you can explain ... with your experience and knowledge then ...

IYER: (Withdraws slightly. Opens his case and takes out a notebook.) Certainly. But if you are meeting the Commerce section for the first hour, you should be on your way. You are already five minutes behind.

SARALA: Oh yes! Yes sir! (Looks into her bag, pulls out a couple of dog-eared books, goes up to the door, hesitates, then returns to get some chalk.) Sir! That book you gave me, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her poetry, it is so beautiful, sir. So much ... so much emotion ... so much ... (Pause.) ... emotion ...

Silence.

SARALA: I should go, sir. The students must be ... (Goes towards door and almost collides with MRS NATHAN who is entering.) Oh! I am so sorry. Really sorry. I was going to class ...

NATHAN: Late. Always late, Sarala. Even after three years of being a lecturer.

SARALA: It was just that I did not get a bus and ...

NATHAN: Then you should start early. What kind of example are you setting the students?

SARALA: I am sorry. I ... (Exits quickly.)

Silence. IYER is writing meticulously into the notebook. NATHAN sits at the smaller table and places her handbag and books on it. She is a small made woman, about forty-five. Her white sari is very crisp, her white blouse and bare forehead proclaim her widowed state. She wears no jewellery except for a thin gold chain around her...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Mangalam
• Inner Laws
• Keats Was A Tuber
• Alipha
• Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni
• Samara's Song
• About the Author