A young man is unable to consummate his marriage, and as if that isn’t dramatic enough, add to it the dynamics of a large Punjabi family, conflicts of generation gaps, East versus West sensibilities, and you get Akvarious Productions’s Rafta Rafta.
A stage adaptation of Ayub Khan-Din’s comedy-drama East is East, the play takes a look at close-knit Indian families living abroad on a lighter vein, complete with “floundering fathers, meddlesome mothers and sleepless sons”.
“I think the emotional core of the play is the relationship between a father and a son, which is affected by various things — generation gap, East-West conflict, the gaping difference in personal struggles etc. It is this element that actually drew me to the play,” explains the director of the play, Akarsh Kurana, who is the son of actor, screenwriter and director Akash Khurana who founded Akvarious Productions in the early 1990s.
“My co-director, Tahira Nath, hails from Chandigarh and lived briefly in London, and is an expert on the dynamics of large Punjabi families. So while she held up that end of the stick in the course of rehearsals, I could spend more time trying to bring to fore the intricacies of the interpersonal relationships,” says Akarsh.
The dynamics of an Indian family apart, the play also gains more by way of conflicts and dilemma from having a foreign setting. How different are Indian families living overseas? “We joke about this often, but it is quite true that wherever Indians go, they take over. But in all that, there is a sense of alienation and loneliness that is hard to ignore. Perhaps it is combated by even more resilience and boisterousness, but it exists. The brunt of the relocation is borne by the second generation, who are usually caught up in a battle of traditional values and the liberties one can take in a modern Western society,” observes the director.
Akarsh Khurana also wears several other caps – that of a producer, writer and actor. He is especially known for the screenplays he has penned for movies like Krrish, U, Me aur Hum and Kites.
Q& A with Akarsh Khurana
Of all the characters in your play, who is a stereotype and who breaks it?
I think the USP of this play is that while it seems packed with stereotypes, every principle character has at least one scene where he or she has the chance to break it and go beyond the expected superficiality. This endears the characters to the audience and sets the play apart.
How has the Indian theatre scene changed since the time your father started out?
It remains a struggle. But now it is more collective. Lots more people and groups are part of the movement.
Of course, there are more opportunities now, and English theatre has gained countrywide acceptance (and MPTF does contribute to both these developments) but I doubt any generation of Indian theatre professionals will ever believe it is adequate.
Having said that, while infrastructure, space, support etc remain issues, the medium has become more accessible, inclusive and even popular, at least in cities like Bombay and Bangalore, and is going to continue to be so.
How different is writing for the stage from writing for cinema?
I don’t really write for the stage. I do have the role of creative supervision though. Writing for theatre is often more restrictive, because the practicality of staging always plays on the playwright's mind, particularly in our theatre scene. This is also challenging and thus perhaps more rewarding.
