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Of fact and fiction

ROMESH CHANDER

“Banabhatt Ki Aatam Katha” is a unique production by the National School of Drama Repertory.

Great Imagination A scene from the play.

To mark Acharya Hazari Prasad Dwivedi’s birth centenary year, the National School of Drama Repertory Company presented “Banabhatt Ki Aatam Katha” based on Acharyaji’s novel of the same title written in 1946. Months before the rehearsal started a word went around that M.K. Raina one of the top theatre directors in the country and an alumnus of NSD, had been invited by the Repertory to direct the play and that he had accepted the invitation. Why this gap, I asked Raina.

“Why ask me? I don’t know why they invited me and I was only too happy to accept the invitation.” I asked a number of people concerned, who should have known. But no one was willing to solve the mystery.

I am told “Banabhatt Ki Aatam Katha” is Dwivedi’s very first novel, written in 1946 when he was teaching Hindi at Santiniketan. It is a fictitious autobiography of a 6th-7th Century A.D. Sanskrit writer Banabhatt. In Dwivedi’s novel, except Banabhatt, all other major characters are the creation of the writer’s imagination. The novel is more than 200 pages and so the first task was to adapt it for the stage. Raina picked up his friend Amitabh Srivastav, NSD graduate and an active member of the Delhi theatre scene, who has earlier worked with Raina. But first about the novel, as told in the programme brochure.

Though the plot is based on the past, it reflects the author’s contemporary vision. In the novel, Dwivedi often refers to Mahavaraha, one of the incarnations of Vishnu who saved the submerged earth from water. In the novel, Bhattani represents the earth and Banabhatt has to save her. Repeated reference to the myth has it own importance. The greater human value is losing its meaning, like the submerged earth.

The caste system and the reaction of the mass, which was the reason for fragmenting of the society at the time, is unfortunately the same reason for the present social scenario....The greatest human value is always based on love and sympathy. The co-existence of these two is as important today as it was in the past.

The play opens with Banabhatt’s arrival in Sthamishwar (present-day Thanesar in Haryana) where he also runs into Nipunitka, a low-caste woman who had run away from his theatre company six years ago and all this time Bana had been searching for her. Now when she meets him in this faraway place, she persuades him to help her rescue a princess named Bhattini, who, like Sita of Ramayana, is being kept in captivity by one of the courtiers. He agrees, and thus begins a long journey through the Gangetic plain.

We later come to know that Bhattini was the daughter of the mighty king of Triver Milind, whose kingdom was located on India’s North-Western border and who had repulsed many foreign invasions. She is rescued and while on their way back to Maged, travelling in a boat, they are attacked by the army of a small princely state. To save their lives they jump into the Ganga. They are saved by a loyal commander of the Gupta dynasty who provides them shelter in his palace.

The crowd scenes were most intelligently choreographed by the director to create beautiful intricate patterns. Among the cast, Summan Vadaya as Banabhatt 2, Nidhi Mishra in Nipunika’s role, Dakshinia Sharma as Mahamaya and Subhas Chandra in Aghor Baba’s role were good, in fact the best that I have seen of them so far.

In terms of stage design Raina follows the classical Natya Shastra and divides the stage into two parts. The cyclorama had roots of free upside down and juxtaposing the images to an imaginary blue river with water animals like fish and turtles, and a water pond down the centre stage, representing as it were a river.

“Banabhatt Ki Atam Katha” is indeed the best presentation by the present members of the Repertory, but most of cast still needs a polish and a shine.

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