Memoirs are personalised histories that offer us a version of the past as seen and experienced by their writer. They tell us about the person who has written them but they also tell us about the times and personalities that have been written about. Therefore, memoirs give us rare insights into the past as it was actually lived and we often come across poignant portrayals of situations that we can often not even imagine. They are living documentary evidence of the times gone by.
Recently, Surya Prakashan Mandir, Bikaner brought out a two-volume set of the late Rekha Jain’s memoirs and her scripts of 31 children’s plays that she wrote and directed. The memoirs are titled Yaadghar (A House of Memories) and the other volume containing scripts is titled Bachchon Ki Duniya (Children’s World). Since 1956, she had been very active and deeply involved with the children’s theatre in Delhi and held numerous theatre workshops for children and wrote, directed and produced plays for them. Her involvement continued almost till the time of her death at the age of 85 in April 2010. Her account of her own journey from a conservative joint baniya family of Agra to the left-leaning Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and children’s theatre is truly fascinating.
At the age of 12, Rekha Goyal was married to Nemi Chandra Jain on May 3, 1936 in a traditional wedding ceremony that was first performed according to the Vaishnav faith and was later performed in accordance with the Jain rituals.
Nemi Chandra Jain belonged to a well-to-do business family but was getting drawn towards progressive ideas and Marxism and had started writing Hindi poetry. Later, when Agyeya brought out the historic collection Taar Saptak , his poems too figured in this. The other poets were Agyeya, Prabhakar Machwe, Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, Girija Kumar Mathur, Bharat Bhushan Agrawal and Ramvilas Sharma. Later, Muktibodh wrote with pride that he had learnt Marxism from Nemi Chandra Jain. So, it was not surprising that breaking with the tradition and facing a great deal of opposition from the family, Jain inspired his wife Rekha to become educated and participate in the life outside home.
As her husband shifted to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and immersed himself in the activities of IPTA, Rekha Jain too started taking an interest in theatre and began singing in chorus. Her memoirs are very frank about portraying her husband as a very enlightened and progressive person who took great pains in educating his wife and making her shed old social and religious beliefs, but they also make it clear that he at times imposed his will on her and the relationship ultimately remained within the confines of patriarchy. The way she was forced to go to Calcutta illustrates this point. This reminds one of the Mahatma Gandhi-Kasturba Gandhi relationship in which the Mahatma’s will always prevailed.
Unprecedented famine
In Kolkata, Rekha Jain witnessed the Great Bengal Famine and the colossal human suffering that it brought in its wake. It was a man-made famine aimed at helping the British war machine. Here, they became associated with the Communist Party and continued their association with it as well as IPTA. Later, they shifted to Bombay (now Mumbai) where she made her debut as an actor in a play directed by Sombhu Mitra. Those were the days of hard struggle and experience in cultural work and theatre as part of the central squad of IPTA. In those days, the Communist Party of India (CPI) had its headquarters in Bombay and this enabled the Jain couple to come into close contact with many important communist leaders as well as prominent theatre, music and film personalities. Prithviraj Kapoor used to stand at the gate of the auditorium after the play was over and would request people to donate whatever they could for the Bengal famine victims’ relief.
From Bombay, the Jains went to Allahabad in 1947. There, Nemi Chandra Jain joined Agyeya to help him edit the Hindi literary journal Prateek . Like Taar Saptak , Prateek too played a historic role in those years and was highly thought of because of its literary standards.
After coming to Delhi in 1956, both Nemi and Rekha Jain made their names in theatre and children’s theatre became her passion. She started writing and directing plays for children and their scripts collected in Bachchon Ki Duniya tell us about the range of subjects they dealt with. Most of these plays have an educational aspect to them and teach many things to children in a very easy, playful manner. Sangeet Natak Akademi honoured her with its prestigious award for her contribution to theatre.
The foreword, written jointly by her children Urmi Bhushan Gupta, Rashmi Vajpeyi, Kirti Jain and Sanjay Jain, tells us that Rekha Jain wrote more than 1,500 pages of her memoirs. They were first edited by Ramkumar Krishak who abridged them to one thousand pages. As this was also considered to be too long, they were further shortened and this volume was prepared with the help of Piyush Daiya. Both the volumes contain historic photographs of Nemi Chandra Jain and Rekha Jain along with the leaders of the IPTA movement and performances of the children’s plays. This history has to be preserved for future generations.
