The last few years have seen the resurgence of Manav Kaul as an actor in cinema, ever since his breakout performance as a sinister right-wing leader in Abhishek Kapoor’s Kai Po Che! in 2013. That year’s Colour Blind , was his last major work as director and playwright (with writing credits shared with Kalki Koechlin and Dwijottam Bhattacharjee), although he did helm a revival of his 2006 play, Peele Scooterwala Aadmi, last year. For those who imagined his film career may have prematurely sounded the death knell to what had been a prolific decade-long engagement with theatre, the announcement of his new play was met with a degree of anticipation. Chuhal opens on Saturday at the Prithvi Theatre Festival, and apart from writing and directing it, Kaul also plays the romantic lead opposite the talented indie actor, Sugandha Garg.
The title Chuhal is derived from the colloquial term, chuhalbaazi , which refers to a kind of playful banter between two people. “I had written a few scenes three years ago, and the word popped up in a conversation between characters, and it stayed in my head,” says Kaul. He was working on several plays, and from that pile of half-written works, this script resurfaced a year ago, and was enthusiastically backed by his group, the Mumbai-based aRanya Theatre. “It is traditionally a very simple play, a light-hearted take on romance. But at one point, it just takes off,” he says. The germ of the idea came to him when he read Nirmal Verma’s story, Bukhaar , featured in the collection, Gyarah Lambi Kahaniyan. The small-town romance in that story informs Chuhal ’s own ethos, even if it is so markedly different from the darker universe of Verma’s tale.
For Kaul, although the play marks a stylistic return to his earlier works that were driven by strong texts, this is the first time he has attempted to write a play from the perspective of its female protagonist (Garg’s Aarti). Part of this was precipitated by the growing tribe of singletons among the women Kaul knew, who seem so refreshingly untethered to convention. “Although during the writing process, I did ask myself several times if I was talking about the woman, or about myself. It did make me realise that all of us have an embedded feminine psyche,” he says. The making of Chuhal benefited from the democratic stock-taking that is part of aRanya’s process; there are open discussions at the end of each day’s rehearsals. The female actors in the cast, specially, were able to confer with candour, with Kaul, regarding the veracity of the play’s feminine outlook.
Garg, particularly, was a great find. “Sugandha is very elemental in the role. Her personality embodies Aarti’s strength, her philosophy, and her — I don’t want to use the word feminism — whole stance as a woman.” Several of Kaul’s plays have been marked with a distinctly male gaze, and the women inhabiting them are cast in the mould of the eternal muse, a cipher for inspiration for the man as creative force. Colour Blind foregrounded feminine disaffection but it wasn’t much of a departure as the women around Tagore became a chorus of characters from his stories.
Kaul had once told me that each of his plays were written as a response to love. “The warm languor of intimacy, and the endless conversations, springs in me the desire to complement those feelings with something tangible. The play becomes the proof of everything I have received,” he says disarmingly. A scene in the play that featured nudity, in which the woman radiates an allure that is full of strength and beauty, but never titillating, had to be scrapped because of the usual concerns venues have about culture policing. “I hope I can eventually perform the play with the scene restored,” he says.
One of Kaul’s maverick qualities as a theatre-maker is to promptly lose interest in a production once it is staged. The running of a show is then left on the shoulders of his team of trusted lieutenants. Chuhal showcases him as an actor, which promises to keep him engaged for an extended run, perhaps. This is only the second time he is acting in one of his own plays. Having acted in Peele Scooterwala Aadmi in 2006, Kaul wasn’t entirely satisfied with its execution, “I felt acting in the play distracted me as a director.” This was what prompted the play’s revival last year with Kaul keeping himself firmly behind the scenes. However, Chuhal comes at the heels of a solid run on celluloid that has established him as an actor, so it does feel like a new beginning. “I’m feeling the same butterflies in my stomach that I felt when I opened my first play as a playwright, Shakkar Ke Paanch Daane , in 2004”, he says. Given the stakes, Chuhal could very well mark the start of yet another memorable innings on stage for Kaul.
The writer is a playwright and stage critic.
Chuhalplays at Prithvi Theatre, Juhu today at 5 p.m., 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
This is the first time Kaul has attempted to write a play from the perspective of its female protagonist
