"On Ghas SHANTA GHOKI ortte If there is one play in Tendulkar’s entire body of work that confirms his standing as one of the country’s finest playwrights, it is Ghashiram Kotwal.'! Nothing in the history of the written play in Marathi could have foretold a text so totally theatrical. There is not one line, word or movement indicated in the text that does not resonate theatrical-ly. Nilu Phule’s comment on Sakharam Binder is more true of Ghashiram Kotwal. Phule writes: As a playwright, Tendulkar’s great strength lies in his dia-logues. It is as if he doesn’t need a director at all. The man seems to be able to ‘see’ every action, every move from curtain up to curtain down, He can probably even ‘hear’ it all... 2 To the fullest extent possible, Tendulkar, must indeed have staged the entire play in his mind as he wrote it. He indicates every movement, because in this play, movement carries as much narrative force as do speech, song and action. The human curtain of a dozen rhythmically-swaying Brahmans, which closes to hide or parts to reveal action, is not merely a theatrical device. It is integral to the creation of an environment of intrigue, hypo: visy, greed and brutality, in which the story of Nana Phadnavis, (| the Chancellor of the Peshwa in Pune, Ghashiram Savaldas, and the Tatter’s daughter Lalitagauri, unfolds. Every song in this play adds meaning, every word indicates gesture of tone, “of yoice, very speech pattern marks character, and the juxtapositioning of scenes provides ironic comment. While Tendulkar’s instructions for movement, gestures, sound and music might be modified in a detail here or there in Shanta Gokhale’s Playwright at the Centre: Marat Present, published by Seagull Books, C70 | GHASHIRAM KOTWAL production, their overall nature and mood cannot because they, too, are the story. If he says, A Brahm himself from the end of the line and begins to the movement suggested by the word ‘scurry’ indicates of his plan. If a content analysis of the playscripe one would discover that more than half of it consists of tions for movement, expression and gesture. i Tendulkar’s use of language has always been precise clog. The brahmans’ speech is nasal. This is how it it reveals the slyness of the speakers. A careful reading of th text reveals a wide variety of speech rhythms and layers 0 references and associations which intensify the irony or bruta of a given situation. BRAHMAN: Oy, oy, who are you, which mother’s son? Have you no eyes or ears? SUTRADHAR. My mistake, priest sir, BRAHMAN. Have you no sense or shame? SUTRADHAR . My mistake, Priest sir, BRAHMAN . Have you no this or that? SUTRADHAR, Forgive me, priest sir, BRAHMAN, You bumped into me, SUTRADHAR. I fall at your feet, BRAHMAN. You ape. Is this the Pes! straight into a holy Brahman? SUTRADHAR. But not into his wife. BRAHMAN. Just as well. Or wouldn't I cover hoist you face-to-tail on a donkey and SUTRADHAR, But there are no donkeys. Bi I. 3? Ne ii aes Nt do yo ae ats et tt othe Pe he can produce a thousand donkeys all ina row in shee ‘ € You son-of-a-such-and-such! priest sir, hwa’s land or the Moguls? You bump your head with vermilion, Parade you? ity of Pun repetition in this bit of dialogue is derived f children’s tales,=——occuts_in the Tamashahwheg ter, general] Ser the sutradhar, ‘Here the situation i, Heer, uPeer hand represen the Sstblishment andthe’ Sutrdhar kg ae le of the sendy: Hence the cheeky reference to the Brahmans wife. . ener a a's L NANA. Go, Ghashya you bastard, we've made you, Kowal. Go have a ball. But you have no eluces barrels of this political gun are loaded full, Wl lay your luscious girl, With awhirl. Ghashya, you're an u we've made you Nana’s moves. Both th the first shot, Pll the second, Nanalll set this Puine city Pstart; but we've made you chief Why? fate. You can't join + Not will they rust you if you have such thoughts, You don't belong. Youte an outsides, after all. Youre a hound ed at the korwali door. We are your only support. Ghashya you're a bastard, you'll be top dog over the highest caste, you'll keep them j on the leash, no doubt about that, You'll work efficiently. That's clear to see. And then again, our sins, as they mount, will be credited fo your account. We will do the deeds; our kotwal will pay for them. (Act I) Ghashiram Kotwal’s speech comes closest to ordinary middle-class speech when he speaks, as a father, about finding a good husband for his daughter Lalitagauri. GHASHIRAM. | am in full control now as kotwal. Pune city’s morals have improved. The undisciplined arrogant Brahmans oa this a are now like putty in my hands. a: a relia si ae look this Ghashiram straight in the face, und the right match for the jewel of my life, my darling sare jal and married her to him, then I shall have ae ee will be such pomp at the wedding, not a tongue wl ws I a Against my daughter. And ic if does, it wont take Hie fo chop It off, So I must look out for a match now. : zs ee time when there's money, jewellery and gifts inlay : it all, my little one’s beauty makes her one jousar tions send out my people right away and start prepara aTh is i ral forms lyrics, too, written in sevei ; - ee or ironic meaning to the text. There in kirtan mode. ight has fallen, the Brahmans of Pune have gone ¢ M4 mecha gone co Bavankhani, gone to Bavankhan; ING Gone to, the, burning-pround ~ Gone to the kirtan Gone to have darshan As they always do : ‘The Brahmans have gone to Bavankhani This is full of sacrilegious juxtapositions. The ee whee athena: hove sence ence ante e Dhak ane \\ the burning ground’. (‘He's gone to the burning ground’ = a Fetort used in anger when the place a person has gone to iy too wicked to be named.) These iniquitous places are juxtaposed with the kirtan. In such places, the ‘kirtan’ would be the lascivious Songs sung by the dancing women. The idea of the Kirtan Teade— to darshan. “A” glimpse of the divine idol is its real meaning, In this case, the glimpse would be of the dancing women, Sex, death and worship are: thus all bound up together in the names of Krishna in unison, in the manner of a Tad who punctuates his narrative thus. ‘The religious association evoked here is very strong. Suddenly, then, the chorus returns to the ‘Bavankhani’ theme, Bavankha qualified this time by a brief celebratory line: “Bavankhani, where Mathura” has materialized.’ The Brah- mans’ nocturnal visits to the courtesans? qu to Krishna sporting with the milkmaids i "aposition is unsettling for those who im; The scene ends with a double visual the dancers in the courtesan's room. Sudde In great pain, he dances a few steps on asks a string of oni oi Nana is jumping. How did it hay Where did he fall? is 1 of the metaphorical association of falling. Suggests three different ways of falling, Pun. Nana has joined nly he sprains his foor. one leg. The Sutradhar d_questions about wh thymeprnnny s1RAM KOTWAL , vated by its singular theatrical who sav Ht Wer a caused_by it began to_be express disq carat cs self-appointed cultural watchdo, ne director and. actorsof thi roducers ’ unleashed upon hep it had to face two violent ce Ghashiram Kotwal unit Protests. The Ghashi | years of its run. The first came from the gj ing the initial yea " ’ during shih the PDA, including Bhalba Kelkar, who thought the ew be staged under his thus far morally unblemisheg play unc ito 8 it splitting from PDA to set banner. This led to the unit. sp inne GH ' how veteran Theatre Academy to triumphantly continue Ghashizam, saccessful run. The second violent protest came when the play was invited to Europe and the Shiv Sena swore not to allow the “Theatre Academy to take abroad this ‘scandalous and obscene play which would besmirch the fair reputation of the state? The cast went into hiding until they could be smuggled, under police escort, onto the plane that eventually carried them to Delhi, and from there to Berlin. The only concession that the law demanded of them was that they should precede every performance of the play with the following statement: j According to history, Nana Phadnavis was the chancellor of the Peshwas during the petiod 1773-1800. This was the time when the British were 4) eadually acquiring power in many States. The I details of documented by Deepak Gharay These proc | ere to indicate the extra-theatrical falloy si sain of the battle was t0 reveal to then unit, all of them from comfortable Ani of the theatre t0 challenge and ee ass was to throw open Fundam, ange. Th the freedom like the eae this storm have been fully are mentioned of the play. The first ungerIN cultu; te to be given phadnavis and Ghashiram Kote! rant ¢ names . So — never have cartied the politica menage OP MY oa was not a historical play was to quibble, Pa TO. say it Ghashiram is important historical moulds of Marathi theatrear = mould and the modern realistic ¢ hhow folk theatre elements coul jemporary significance. Tt Feiner peared after the Bhave school o As'a spin-off, it put rhythm in Id be integra ‘oduced dance, which had_disap- f theatre, with devastating. effect, ve flow of the plays. In Ghashiram songs_were_tein- tegrated into the narrative. The 'Y were no longer merely indicators of mood, but vehicles of comment, most often ironic an additional viewpoint, which had traditionally rested with the vidushak. Except for the dzvanis which accompanied Gulabi’s dance, the songs could not be separated from their context “As we have seen, they presented the audience with a series of conflicting signs which reveal their full thematic significance only through an awareness of their culeural associations) read in conjunction with preceding and succeeding actions, movements and gestures, troducing Unique as Ghashiram was in form and verbal idiom, bath in the history of the Marathi stage and in Tendulkar’ own oeuvre, it was nor deliberately so. Tendulkar had not consciously set oi h, ind an alternative to the dominant realistic mode, nor wa Feforging Links wiph, hig ‘roots’ inp che old Sapgectna baa Iz. ~ WAL =F his intentions were not the same as when he wrote Tughlag and Hayavadana or Bad when he moved out of the proscenium into halls and publ Ghashiram was not the declaration of a new aesthetics, Tendulkar, the combination of Marathi folk forms cl Sed ‘came in answer to his search for a way to tell thei he wanted to tell: Ghashiram started with a theme, then came the specife ‘story’ or j which was historical and then the search for the form began,’S The nuanced greys of socio-psychological realism would not served Tendulkar’s purpose. The form he evolved allowed to use bold strokes to delineate his protagonists. Moreover, was flexible enough for satire, subversion, humour, brutality pathos. However, Tendulkar has never again used a similar form, though his last two plays are non-relaistic.® It is possible that: the themes he wanted to write about did not call for such a form; but it might also be possible that he preferred not to use folk forms again because of the powerful impact music has on audiences: T have not used music in any play after Ghashiram, because I realized the dangers of doing so. I still feel the Marathi production of the play by Theatre Academy] has too much music. When the play was done the same songs were sung but less simply because these actors couldn't improvise. As a resils of the play came through more powerfully . . . Even the Hindi production in Delhi had minimal music and I felt it was a st play as a result, off-Broadway by an international cast, elaborately, the contenthim. He's in ‘ Bood voi, the sharpness of the struseae ‘ Bets rendulkar wanted to make a Serious political beat a | That was why he wrote 1 fement in Ghash; the play agaist Brahmans, as many Brahmi that to vent his'spleen the sanctity of the stage with lurid depletion’ 7 10 dese-crate por rake in money by entertaining audien of lasciviousness, ces. Wit nda scandalous legend about a historical with song and dance a) ‘ception many as a brilliantly mounted, encenai Re fiberal social moralist. This more. Pa ee Tendulkar with the most significant of his ae aoe Marathi stage—playwrights who wanted to force thelr cece es look at and judge itself in all its aspects, social, politcal, moral and personal. Forms of presentation for these playwrighe have been only as important as their potential to ‘cary the message + Notes All translations in this excerpt are by Shanta Gokhale. 1 Vijay Tendulkar, Ghashiram Kotwal, fourth edition (Pune: Neelkanth Prakashan, 1992). This was first performed in Pune on 16 December 1972 by Progressive Dramatic Association. 2 Nilu Phule in Mulye, Tapas, Naik eds., Zen Ami Anhi (Mumbai: Awishkar Prakashan, 1992), p. 57- 3° The difference between the Theatre Academy of the seventies, when it stuck its neck out and fought for what it considered to be a politically i i ineties, was brought important play, and the same organization in the mi : ival i in 1996. Out sharply when it organized an all-India theatre festival iOS yf the vet Presiding over the inaugural function was @ Young a Be ay political party which had opposed Ghashiram Kotwal vont al threats and lawsuits, both during its first run and again wi abroad. Deepak Gharay, Ghashiram Ek Vadal juction to this Granthali, 1996). haaiaaet in Bailala (Balls t0 (Ghashiram, @ Storm) (Mumbai oted by Samik Bandyopadhyay, Safar (Journey) and Nivelished. fap xy Tendulkar, in an interview with Chandrashe ar _ Sangoram, ‘Sangeet Natak Ani Ghashiram’ in Dr Shriran Vedh: Sangeet Natak Ani Natya Sangeet (Pune: Progressive Association, 1993), pp. 435-7.