A play from an intriguingly named theatre group, The Blind and the Elephant, has been quietly doing the rounds of the city’s fledgling fringe theatre scene for over a year.Ripples, directed and co-written (with Harsh Desai) by Gerish Khemani, is an ode to childhood and that special kind of tutelage that transforms the lives of young students. Its most recent staging earlier this month was at one of Mumbai’s emerging cultural spaces, the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture. It’s a furtively tucked away venue in an old mills complex, but has garnered a good house for the play’s outing.
Recent films have romanticised the humble wells of Maharashtra. In Nagraj Manjule’s Sairat , it is the great leveller enabling love to blossom across class barriers; its inviting waters signifying freedom and abandon. In Umesh Kulkarni’s Vihir(The Well) , the well acquires philosophical underpinnings. Childhoods are made and lost in its uncertain depths.
In Khemani’s play it takes on the guise of a wishing-well modestly constructed with wooden cartons and wisps of straw. It is the discreet but immaculate hideout for kids from a school in rural Maharashtra.
The play is in English, with a smattering of Marathi, so its young denizens do appear too urbane for its mofussil settings. But the self-possessed charm and infectious vim that good ensembles exude draw us in quite irrevocably into the piquant world created in the play. The rippling waters below, reflected in the faces of the youngsters, allow us to access their hopes and dreams.
The universe ofRipplesis fairly finite: five children, their English teacher (Khemani himself) and a classroom full of possibilities. There are forays into the world of literature: kids immerse themselves into scenes from Tagore’sKabuliwalaor Mario Puzo’sThe Godfather. These dramatic detours sometimes detract from the task at hand — of fashioning a believable rites-of-passage for each child. In this case, it is not what the story tells us, but what we know of such stories already. Either from growing up with do-gooder teachers ourselves, or watching To Sir With Love or Dead Poets Society , and others of that ilk.
Khemani does benefit from having taken up a story that is as old as the hills. Therefore, even if the play’s purported journeys — metaphorical, physical or both — haven’t been fully realised, we can still buy into the fruits of his efforts. That is what is expected of teaching after all. Especially his classroom interventions — that appear to be closely modelled on real-world drama exercises — that are primed at activating each child’s innate inclinations and setting them up on the path of realising their true potential. These are hallowed concerns that have been done to death, yet it must said be that its unpretentious sincerity and easy humour is what conspires to giveRippleswings. It’s also why the play’s constant advocacy about overhauling the education system doesn’t seem too pat.
One striking sequence involves the trunk of a massive banyan tree that is suffused with the knowledge of centuries, and a child holding on for dear life can almost hear the voices within. The play features several moments of inventive storytelling, made alive by the alacrity of efficient theatrical devising.
Khemani himself, with his formal diction and conservative demeanour, seems too distinct and too alienated from the kids, to be a true agent of their imminent transformation. Bearing the weight of the play’s ostensible vernacular ethos is the young actor, Nikhil Modak, who stutters his way through a mix of languages, and yet achieves a disarming lucidity of expression.
Chirag Lobo gives us youthful charisma in small doses. All together, the performers never let thejoie de vivresubside.Ripplesends up hitting the target.
The writer is a playwright and stage critic
