The zest associated with the festival of lights hasn’t yet dimmed, but the passing of one of Delhi theatre’s most ephemeral presences has cast a pall on the festivities for many, even as they rose in concurrence to celebrate his unmatched joie de vivre while alive. At just 31, actor Shivam Pradhan passed away in the afternoon of October 29. One of the stage’s incandescent fireflies, flitting from project to project touching countless lives, he had been struggling with a debilitating blood condition for most of his life. In the face of the inevitable, Pradhan went through life with remarkable agency and tenacity.
There has been a massive outpouring of tribute on social media over the weekend following Pradhan’s death. These commiserations do not appear to be facetious or perfunctory. There isn’t a profusion of RIPs strung along ad infinitum . Instead, the tributes on Facebook are invariably carefully worded expressions of loss and homage, often pithily moving and sometimes affectingly elaborate. They are certainly a testament to Pradhan’s enduring popularity among his contemporaries. This esprit de corps also points to the inviolably close-knit nature of the theatre community itself, in which every cog in the wheel is pretty much indispensable despite what a cynical understanding of the world might have us believe.
A diminutive presence with a cherubic child-like countenance and great inquisitive eyes, Pradhan had a considerable repertoire of acting jobs, and contributed to the constant whirring of the theatre machinery in several other ways. His photographs posted on public timelines tell a tale of uninterrupted mirth and a disarming appetite for life. It seems almost everyone had a personal moment with him captured in freeze-frame for posterity. There is one of him holding a prop gun that’s almost too large, and another at a wedding reception where all but him have been faded to a forlorn black and white. Holding on to even the tiniest vestiges of a treasured connection, photographer Nicky Chandam, who has penned a beautiful passing note, shared a screen grab of the folder in her computer that contains Pradhan’s portfolio images from the play Table for Two , in which he plays an omniscient waiter.
Reading the tributes, interesting nuggets of Pradhan’s life bubble to the surface. For instance, one of his directors, K Madavane, talks of his turn as Raja Harishchandra’s son in the play, The Veritree (2013). “I saw some people crying in the audience when Rohit, beautifully acted by Shivam, was on the pyre,” he writes. In one of the photos he shared, Rohit ironically manages to escape the clutches of death.
Sudhanva Deshpande of the Jana Natya Manch (Janam), writes of meeting Pradhan when he was trying to get admission to a college in Delhi University through its theatre quota. “They rejected him, saying he won’t be able to take the rigours of theatre given his medical condition. What amazed me though was that Shivam refused to be downcast. ‘These things happen, it’s no bother’ is all he said, cracking that lovely smile.” Pradhan was later taken in by Ramjas College. Having directed him on some shows of Shambuk Vadh , one of Janam’s rare proscenium plays, Deshpande was keen to cast him in an upcoming performance of White Rabbit Red Rabbit , the Iranian play that is currently doing the rounds in Mumbai and Pune. It is a play that an actor can only perform once, and without ever having read the script beforehand. It would have been a rare ‘one time only’ performance that was sadly not meant to be.
In 2016, Pradhan appeared as the maverick Hippy Thakur in Ashok Yadav’s indie venture Kerry on Kutton . Actor Satyajeet Dubey, who played the lead, paid tribute to his co-star by changing his Facebook display picture to one of Pradhan’s beaming visages, so ubiquitous over the last few days to those linked to the theatre crowd. Mumbai audiences had an opportunity to see him as part of a chorus of performers that made Neel Chaudhuri’s Still and Still Moving (2011) such a compelling watch. Elsewhere, Kaivalya Plays’ Varoon P Anand writes movingly about Pradhan’s easy and familiar laughter, and lists a roster of memorable plays which will ensure hiss legacy will not ebb like “a flower dying in front of your eyes”.
The author is a theatre critic and a freelance writer
