Chairs creak and slowly the murmurs are drowned by a group of people who tromp on stage with their dreadlocks, painted masks and bamboo sticks.[break]
They dance to the music, they sing along and beat the floor with their sticks and create a haunting rhythm. And then they leave.
In dazzling visions and touching dialogues “Malami” the play directed by veteran theatre actor Anup Baral and performed by the seventh and eight batch of Actors Studio delivers an applauding act.
There is no holding back here. Littérateur Sarubhakta’s lines are infused with life. The audience is easily transported to a village where now only the old and the deprived remain.
Any village in Nepal will stand testimony to this story. After all every week more than 1,000 youth leave the country for foreign employment or further studies.
The stage has a crooked orange house and a cow shed with a hungry cow (Pawan Jha) and a dog (Diya Maskey) that always follows Padam Bahadur (Aashant Sharma), the protagonist of the play around. But the small setting tells a huge story-- one of social injustice, woes of deserted parents and of a changing society.
Padme’s house is testimony to everything. He and his old friends now have nothing to say and nothing to do. They live isolated with their memories waiting for their children to come back. They realize that they have been abandoned but they cannot stop hoping.
Baral uses a mixture of lighting, sound and music to hold the audience. Each sequence of the play leaves one wondering and emotionally wrecked.
When a punchy comic line is delivered by one of the actors, the audience roars with laughter and as a dream sequence unfolds there’s heavy breathing, sound of tiny sobs. “What an apt picture, the dialogue was too touching,” someone comments.
Saieli runs away with her lover. The old men pester her to go back home but she doesn’t listen.
Padme can only hope she didn’t end up in a brothel in Mumbai. His wishes and inner desires are exposed through his dreams by actors that appear in spotlights on stage.
His son’s imaginative letter spoken in a perfect Indian army tone can only leave one nostalgic.
His daughter’s letter filled with good life is a yearning, far from reality. Sadly with or without the young left in the village, life must go on.
So with old age arrives death and the irony of death is exposed with Padme’s passing away.
If the number of individuals who turn up at your funeral determines the worth of your life Padme has all his friends around him. But they are too weak to carry his dead body.
His journey to the other world is on hold. The old in the village discuss and lament.
Their hands are tied; they are too weak to carry his body to the river bed. His son will not be there to light the pyre after all.
Then, Padme in death makes a decision; he wakes up and walks through the audience to his
death bed.
All problems are resolved; he has found his place but what about the living? What about humanity? What about the young who desert their parents without remorse? What about the youth of our country who disappear in droves into the heat of the Arab deserts and glaze of Europe and America?
Malami was staged from March 11 to 13 at Gurukul, Old Baneswar. It was previously staged in 2000. A film based on the same play by director Subarna Thapa was screened after the play.
Malami will be staged again
after April 3.
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