A closer look at people and places

Six-year old Udaan Performing Arts, of late have been highly visible on the theatre scene with their regular offerings at Lamakaan. With ‘Shakkar ke Paanch Daane’ they add one more to its tally of plays, an impressive one at that.

Unintentionally, a normal, event-less life turns up to be something exciting and original. That pretty well sums up accidental poet Raj Kumar ‘Gambhir’’s life who is a simpleton living his dreary life in a village. In a 75-minute monologue, (seemed a little too long at first when the duration was announced by the organiser) his life story was supposed to roll out as a play titled ‘Shakkar ke Paanch Daane’ and it did, pretty well. The play originally written by Manav Kaul was directed by Saurabh Gharipurikar.

The onus was on the artiste – Siddhesh Dharmadhikari- to keep the audience engaged with the various events in his lives. In a clear mix of mimicry, timely pauses and facial expressions adding to the overall viewing impact Dharmadhikari elicited very good reactions from the packed audience on a Saturday night. His life experiences see-saw between five characters – his mother who has a fetish for red ribbon and action films of Bollywood, his maternal uncle Pundalik, a maverick poet, his school friend Raghu, his neighbour Radhey who makes up stories about his interactions with Mahatma Gandhi and a mysterious truck driver friend.

The narrative was not linear as it moved from situation to situation in Raj Kumar’s life. Still, the connect was about how each one of the people in Kumar’s life was impacting him and how it had a certain rhythm and sequencing.

The triumph of this drab person to establish his new identity as a poet, generously passed over by his uncle Pundalik forms the climax as he manages to write and send a final set of verses to complete the book that was under print in a distant city by another well-wisher known to the protagonist.

- KNK