Court Martial

Swadesh Deepak’s 1970s play about caste in the army remains as searing as ever, finds Trisha Gupta

In the true tradition of the courtroom drama, the action of this now-classic play takes place almost entirely within four walls. The plot revolves around the trial of one Sawar Ramchandar, who is accused of having opened fire on two superior officers, Captains Kapoor and Varma. Only Kapoor survived and is now a witness in the court martial proceedings against Ramchandar.

The play opens with Ramchandar’s act of violence being treated by all concerned as unprovoked and inexplicable. Some time is spent on establishing that as the soldier on duty at the post, he could have – but had not – challenged the two senior officers in standard military fashion (by shouting out “Tham, kaun hai?”). Then the interrogation of the army doctor (a great potential cameo utterly wasted by Rahul Batra) brings to light a past incident when Ramchandar had reported sick, but been compelled to report for a hockey match based on Kapoor’s intervention (“These johnnies are always shamming”). Ramchandar had then collapsed on the field. As Bikash Rai, the righteous, sarcastic defence lawyer (decently played by Bajrang), begins to probe into these seemingly insignificant details, we are drawn deeper into the past relationship between Ramchandar and Kapoor, and an ugly tale of caste prejudice and violence emerges.

Asmita’s production has many flaws – the long-winded opening monologue by Deepak Ochani as Colonel Surat Singh, for instance, is often unintelligible because he speaks much too fast, and the “flashback” sequences, which invariably involve a bunch of shouting men running onto stage, are markedly amateurish in execution. But Swadesh Deepak’s tightly-structured script is both important and courageous, because it manages to convey how caste prejudice still simmers just below the surface of relationships in contemporary urban India, and because it does so by setting the action in a context which is itself deeply hierarchical – that of the Indian army.

The only weak link in the script is the character of Captain Kapoor, who is shown as nothing short of a monster: apart from being feudal and unremittingly casteist, he’s also an alcoholic who beats his wife. Such overkill can only detract from the play’s effect. As with any villain, you stop perceiving him as a regular guy – which is unfortunate, because this play could have demonstrated precisely how regular people, in regular jobs, regularly treat other human beings as inferior on the basis of their birth. Court Martial overstates the case – then again, perhaps this is an issue that can do with reiteration.

Time Out Delhi, 2007

Super trouper: Arvind Gaur

Arvind Gaur tells Trisha Gupta what keeps Delhi’s most prolific theatre group going.

Once upon a time, Arvind Gaur used to study electronic engineering. He left it to join Navbharat Times, where he wrote a culture column. “You could say watching and writing about plays is how my training started. I used to do theatre too, mostly with activist groups. I did plays with the Delhi Public Library. The first street play I did was with Zakir Husain College, it was called Videshi Aaya.”Gaur started conducting theatre workshops with children, but he still needed a job. So he joined PTI TV, where he helped produce the popular show Tana-Bana. But all this was before he started Asmita in 1993. Since then, theatre has been his passion as well as his bread and butter.

Gaur has directed all of Asmita’s plays – and the group has 52 productions to its credit. Six of these – Moteram ka Satyagraha, 30 Days in September, Log-Baag, Rakt Kalyan, Court Martial and Operation Three Star – are being staged as part of Asmita’s summer festival. Does he never act? “I was never much of an actor. I have acted once or twice – usually under compulsion,” he grinned.

“Asmita’s first show was a performance of Bhisham Sahni’s award-winning play Hanush in the Sahitya Kala Parishad youth festival. But on the eve of the first proper public performance at Shri Ram Centre, the main actor backed out. Forty other actors were involved, and we had booked the hall. We made a supporting actor do the main role instead, and I took on the supporting role. The two of us – or at least I – did the play with the script in hand! That was the first and last time I acted in an Asmita play.”

It was this unfortunate experience that triggered Gaur’s decision that Asmita plays would have only in-house actors. “We take whoever comes to us, regardless of experience. But we put them through an intensive programme of theatre workshops. Our actors are divided into three tiers: senior actors, with the greatest level of experience; mid-level actors, with some experience; and finally, people who are more or less newcomers to theatre.” In productions with a small cast, only senior Asmita actors get to be on stage. The larger the cast, the more likely it is that second-tier actors might get a role. “We also have in-house productions, in which all parts are played by junior actors, and the whole group gives them feedback.”

While old-timers like Jaimini Srivastava and Deepak Kochani continue to be associated with the group, Asmita has also been a training ground for younger actors. “In our 1995 production of Tughlaq, with Jaimini Kumar in the title role, a young chap called Deepak Dobriyal played a soldier. You would have seen him recently in Omkara, as Kareena’s rejected bridegroom.” Dobriyal was with Asmita for several years, as was Kangana Ranaut (of Gangster fame). Does this migration of actors from Delhi theatre to Bombay cinema bother him? “Not at all. I think this generation is more target-oriented. They may use theatre as a stepping stone to cinema or TV, but if theatre doesn’t provide people a living, how can you blame them? Also, it’s the theatre-walas who have changed the quality of acting in our films. It’s a symbiotic relationship.” Though distressed at the monopolisation of government funds by a small group of nationally-acclaimed directors, Gaur remains optimistic about the future of Delhi theatre. “Nowadays, there is a lot more emphasis on theatre-training. Asmita has a lot to do with this. Many of our actors have formed their own groups.”

But in an era when so many Hindi groups seem to be turning to comedy to get the crowds in, how has Asmita managed to survive financially, doing mostly “serious” plays? “I have nothing against comedy – in fact I think it’s the most difficult thing to do well. Moteram ka Satyagraha is very funny. But somehow my sensibility is such that even when I try to do comedy – like Chekhov’s stories in Log-Baag – the play somehow transforms itself into something darker,” Gaur said ruefully. “Financially, we manage because all our actors contribute to the running of the group, the rent for our rehearsal space, etc. For the actual shows, we get some money when we’re invited to perform in other cities. And I am constantly conducting workshops – for colleges, at the Habitat Centre and elsewhere. That money goes into Asmita’s coffers. Thankfully, the audience has supported us.”

Although Asmita under Gaur’s direction does only what he calls “socially and politically relevant theatre”, Gaur has no illusions about theatre’s revolutionary potential. “Revolution is not so easy to bring. Ab tak kranti jo hai woh JNU se nikalkar Munirka tak nahi pahunchi. But we try to bring about a dialogue with the audience.” Asmita’s shows of Final Solutions, Mahesh Dattani’s play about communal conflict, and 30 Days in September – a play about child sexual abuse, also written by Dattani – are often followed by animated discussions between the actors and the audience. “After a recent show of 30 Days, three people came out and said that after watching the play, they felt able to speak about their experience of abuse for the first time. That gives us a feeling of achievement.”

Published in Time Out Delhi, May 2007

30 Days in September: Theatre review

An Asmita production I reviewed for Time Out Delhi:

One of Asmita’s many adaptations of Mahesh Dattani plays originally written in English, 30 Days opens up the issue of child sexual abuse in a manner frank enough – in the Indian context – to be startling.  The play centres around a young woman named Mala whose relationships with men come with a fixed sell-by date: she has trouble keeping any of her affairs going for more than a month (hence the 30 days of the title). In fact, she maintains a calendar where she marks in advance the date on which the affair must come to an end. In one of the play’s opening scenes, Mala’s latest rejected boyfriend Deepak arrives at her home, hoping to try and understand why she has stopped answering his calls. Mala isn’t at home. Her mother, a nervy, anxious-looking woman with her shoulders perpetually hunched, first refuses to speak to Deepak, but later confesses that she doesn’t know where Mala is – or why she often disappears or deliberately cuts people off. Mala’s story – of having been sexually abused for years by her uncle, her mother’s own brother – unfolds gradually in a mix of first-person narratives and fraught conversations with her mother, alongside a parallel narrative that reveals the effects of that traumatic past on her present. The difficult role of Mala’s mother Shanta is essayed with effective understatement by Seema Mittal, while Girish Pal and Pushpraj Rawat provide more than competent support as the boyfriend and the oily, abusive uncle. Mala is played by two actresses who are, perhaps, intended to represent two periods in her life. (Or two aspects of the character? It’s unclear.) There’s the teary, distraught, childlike Mala, almost paralysed with grief and the sharp-talking, sassy young woman who conceptualises winning ad campaigns for sanitary napkins and is a compulsive flirt. The first portrayal (Jyoti Verma) is painfully repetitive and starts to drag from the word go – but the second (Amita Walia) manages to provide glimpses of the character’s conflicted inner life and complicated sexuality. One might want to dispute the play’s too-pat depiction of promiscuity and frigidity as two poles between which a (female) sexual abuse victim is necessarily caught, but it’s no small thing to have the issue dealt with on the Indian stage, especially by a group that’s committed enough to insist on a post-performance discussion with the audience. Source : Time Out Delhi Vol. 1 Issue 1, April 6-19, 2007