An eternal spectator, tiptoeing across life, appropriating from but not wholly belonging to it. Man of light and laughter, with a hidden heart of darkness. A catalyst of sorts, challenging not just social systems, but the ideology that manufactures them — that is Mahesh Dattani
In a brown kurta, a jhola bag slung across his shoulders, Mahesh exudes the free-spirited air of an avant-gardist. Yet surprisingly, his stories are drawn not from the alternative but from seemingly humdrum, mundane middle-class existence.
Seemingly, being the catchphrase here, of course. “Nothing is really what it seems to be. All of us wear masks and that is at the very heart of drama. We are so comfortable wearing them that we don’t understand the feel of our own skin. It is only when the mask is ripped off that we know what naked skin feels like, though the ripping does leave its scars,” says the 55-year-old playwright, who is here in the city to release his latest book Me and My Plays, a slim volume containing an essay detailing Mahesh’s journey as well as two of his recent plays Where did I leave my Purdah? and The Big Fat City.
“I have sung my song, danced my dance and played my part,” laughs Mahesh (referring to his productions Dance Like a Man,Morning Raga and Where Did I Leave My Purdah that use music, dance and theatre as a metaphor for freedom). Mahesh admits that although he laid a part of him to rest by penning this volume, the state of Indian theatre continues to vex him.
“We have to get out of this elitist notion of theatre; it affects everyone. We come with an assumption that only the elite have the right to something that challenges them and that is completely untrue. There are so many norms in society at the grassroot level that need challenging — whether it is about the girl child, education, sexuality, child abuse or religious fanaticism. We are lucky that we come from a culture in which theatre is integrated with dance and music as that offers us a very wide scope, and Indian performance art continues to be popular. However, given that we are a nation that is 1.5 billion strong, this is just a fraction of the potential that theatre has,” he says.
Mahesh’s particular brand of theatre attempts to constantly challenge these norms. And his latest offering continues in the same vein. While Where did I leave my Purdah? is a tribute to the outstanding actresses of company theatre (his reference here being mostly Zohra Sehgal, whom he describes as being a true rebel), The Big Fat City is a gritty take on Mumbai.
While the plot, the setting of his narrative, the origin of his characters and even the medium he uses to tell his story (cinema or theatre) varies from production to production, the outcome of his endeavours remains essentially the same. “It is the celebration of being human and understanding the human condition but there are different paths to a common journey. Modern lifestyle has deadened our emotions. Theatre works with your self-awareness. It connects with you on a very raw, emotional level; you are in the same space as the performer and in that sense there is this passage of emotion that we traditionally call rasa that can happen only in theatre. You experience a range of emotions in one session that you normally wouldn’t — it almost is life is a zip file,” Mahesh says.
And though, it has been over 28 years since his first full-length play Where There’s a Will , the allure of theatre has still not dimmed, “There is something that calls me to this medium and I can’t really explain it. It is almost like a lover — you simply know that you are meant to be with that person and you align your life accordingly. I don’t see a need to misalign myself, right now.”
