Conversations in the Night

“The male protagonist is nameless,referred to only as The Dreamer. The woman is from Bangladesh,in search of her fiance who is somewhere in Delhi. Then,one day,they meet and he calls her by the name of Nastenka,the name of Dostoevsky’s heroine,” says Choudhury,a theatre veteran with two decades of experience.

The Dreamer lives a strange inner life,looking around at the activity around him — the Metro construction,the dug-up streets,the flyovers — and talking to his concrete surroundings as if they were animate and understood him. Nastenka talks in Bangla because she doesn’t know either Hindi or English and a live band renders her meaning into music in Hindi for the audience,the melody swinging from peppy to soulful. As the two talk through four moonlit nights,Choudhury begins to introduce elements from Ritwik Ghatak films,stressing on issues of migration from Bangladesh and climaxing in a scene that refers directly to Ghatak’s famous film,Meghe Dhaka Tara. The entry of Nastenka’s fiance,a labourer at a CWG site,reveals another facet of the Games — the dismal conditions in which men like him stay,but the play maintains a balanced approach,and refrains from taking sides.