As a young boy, Ramakrishnan (Ramu) Ramanathan remembers sitting exiled in the parish room of St. Stanislaus, a Jesuit school in Mumbai, poring over exquisite books about the natural world. He had been punished, but thanks to a priest’s kindness, given access to maps of the world, and was baffled by large green and brown blobs — unnamed and unmapped swathes of land in Middle Africa and Asia.
“I’d wonder what was going on outside the clutter of Europe and America, and why nobody had mapped these other parts,” says Ramanathan. “I was also fascinated by these books: beautifully printed and published, with woodcuts and engravings; 18th and 19th century marvels.”
Perhaps this image from his childhood is a metaphor for the playwright’s journey thus far: Ramanathan has since written plays about forgotten histories and people on the margins and relentlessly critiqued the establishment through his work. Apart from bring one of most important playwrights of his generation, he continues to look at the Indian print industry closely as the editor of PrintWeek India .
Ramanathan, whose work in Indian theatre has shaped many younger playwrights and contributed significantly to its present landscape, recently won the prestigious Art Spectrum Award South Asia 2017 for Performing Arts, instituted by NDTV, Mojarto and Serendipity Arts Trust.
Play and poetry
“In a country such as ours, where there is a degree of reluctance to recognise the work of artists, this award is certainly welcome,” he said. The prize money (₹6 lakh), he says, will go towards several theatre and activist groups in Maharashtra. Ramanathan writes primarily in English and his body of work includes 30 plays (including 3, Sakina Manzil, Cotton 56 Polyester 84, Mahadevbhai, Comrade Kumbhakarna ) and a large collection of poetry (the latest being a cheeky series on the Aadhaar card). But he is a keen observer of Marathi theatre, particularly its throbbing ‘underground’ scene.
Ramanathan’s favourite contemporary work are the one-act plays written as part of youth fests across Maharashtra, a tradition that Marathi theatre is fortunate to have. “Such short plays were first performed in front of chawls, mill gates, and improvised spaces in the late 1930s. They had to be impactful, the content had to be potent and loaded with politics.” he says.
“This is perhaps why Badal Sircar’s one-act plays are more popular in the intercollegiate circuit here than anywhere else,” he says. A lot of this material is new, specifically written for competitions, and tackles a range of subjects: from demonetisation to a young person from small-town Maharashtra yearning to watch a Justin Bieber concert. The most refreshing pulse exists here, he feels, in the crowded grounds of these festivals.
Jaimini Pathak plays the titular role in Ramu Ramanathan’s pivotal play Mahadevbhai.
Much of Ramanathan’s work chronicles Mumbai’s often-splintered history. It’s a theme that peppers most conversations with him too. Cotton 56 Polyester 84, for instance, looks at the condition of mill-workers whose livelihood was taken away by the rapid modernisation of Mumbai. Suni Shanbag, who directed the play, isn’t surprised that Ramanathan was awarded the Art Spectrum Award 2017. “He has a deep sense of commitment to telling the stories of the unseen and the unrepresented, and engages with the political with a combination of rigorous research, wit and intellectual sharpness.”
Many younger theatre-practitioners, especially playwrights, find that Ramanathan’s work has paved the path for a certain rigour in writing. Irawati Karnik, multilingual playwright and actor, says, “Ramu is very well-versed with the history of Mumbai, and subsequently things like the Kamgar Rangabhoomi (the workers’ theatre festival).”
But has he always been a political animal? “Not so much,” he says. “I responded to the kind of work being written about Mahatma Gandhi in Maharashtra in the 90s. Their ideology affronted me, and so I chose to respond with Mahadevbhai .” This pivotal play in Ramanathan’s career tries to understand Gandhi through the eyes of his secretary, Mahadev Desai.
Conscience keeper
Jaimini Pathak, theatre-director and actor who played Desai, believes Ramanathan “is the strongest voice to emerge since (Vijay) Tendulkar.” He tells “truthful stories amidst the enforced gloss of easy slogans that makes him a consistent conscience-keeper of society.”
The good thing about writing is that it can be done from anywhere: prison or hotel room
Ramanathan and Pathak ran the successful Mahadevbhai for several years across festivals and venues in the country. It was after this play that Ramanathan looked at himself more as a political playwright. “Having been a journalist most of my life, addressing issues generally not addressed, clarifying copy and research-based writing comes quite naturally to me.” Print and theatre have had a close connection over the centuries, he says. “Printing has its own ecosystem in India, and it’s a science that deserves recognition.”
Mumbai constantly finds its way into our our conversation. “There is this extraordinary line in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool. It goes, ‘Mumbai meri mehbooba hai ,” he smiles.
Love and hate
“And like most lovers, Ramanathan flits between love and hate for the city. My architect friend says Mumbai suffers from ‘empty space phobia’. Any time anyone sees a tiny patch of free space, they fill it up by building something or parking a car there.” And likewise, theatre needs space, he says. “If there isn’t any space left, theatre will suffer.”
It could be the need for space that led Ramanathan and his partner and wife Kinnari Vohra to divide their time between Mumbai and Dharampur, a small town in south Gujarat.
“Kinnari built our home in this fascinating town in the forest belt. Dharampur has a museum of musical instruments, a science museum, a library with an archive of old texts, and a planetarium that gives adivasi children access to science, ” he says. “The good thing about writing is that it can be done from anywhere — prisons or hotel rooms.”
Ramanathan tells me about his future projects. “There is a grand play I want to write about Mumbai during WWI in 1914, against the backdrop of the birth of the Indian National Congress. The play will look at nation-building and large-scale massacre of Indian soldiers in the trenches of Europe,” he says. There is another one about the Mathura rape case of 1972, and a ballad about Ambedkar’s Mahad Satyagraha. “But I think the one most likely to be staged first is the series of sketches about the Aadhaar card.”
A playwright and theatre practitioner, the writer hopes to learn a musical instrument this year.
