Actor ‘Manav Kaul’ talks about Tagore and his life

Q.2 How did your first introduction to Tagore happen? Any impression that it left on you?

In early 2000, I was reading a lot of short stories and that was when I read Dak Ghar(a 1912 story about Amal, a child confined to his adopted uncle’s home by an incurable disease) and got introduced to Tagore. After that, I read many of his other short stories. I found it amazing how child characters in his stories are interestingly trapped in different situations — either people leave them, or they are left behind. I never made sense of that, but I liked it. Now, when I started researching for the play, I realised that he was
very lonely as a child.

Q.3And is it because of that that his childhood is an intrinsic part of Colour Blind?

The discovery was very very beautiful. It was as if everything started connecting for me. His childhood has been a part of his writing throughout his life. It’s very symbolic. At the age of 63-64, he was writing about his childhood. It means he was carrying it allthrough his life.

Q.4Like his childhood, death is also a character in your play. Why was it important to connect Tagore’s life to death?

I have been really moved by the influence that death has been in his life, and how his writing has been affected by it. When I was reading Tagore, it was difficult to understand whether he is talking about death or love. He mentions death, love and life in the same breath. Death was an important part of his life because he started losing people since the time he was eight or nine. And that’s why it is present all the time in his works.

Q.5 While Tagore’s relationship with Victoria Ocampo is the major highlight, his relationships withmany other women has been shown very interestingly — an aspect people usually avoid. How did that come about?

I think since I am not a Bengali, I haven’t grown up with the baggage of Tagore. I had a third person’s perspective. And while we have shown the other women in his life, it is just the relationship with Ocampo that we have discussed as it is a very unique relationship of a 63-year-old man with a 35-year-old woman where nothing really happens, it is just the longing for each other. Interestingly, he wrote a poem titled, Videshi, much before he met Ocampo as if he was waiting for a foreigner to come in his life. It was because of Ocampo that he took to painting even though he was colour blind.

Q.6 You switch from the contemporary times to his childhood, to his youth and then to the Ocampo period quite effortlessly. Was it difficult to direct?

I felt Tagore’s story can’t be told without his childhood and youth being brought into the picture. We consciously took that decision to weave in everything into 120 minutes.
I wanted it to become enjoyable for even those who haven’t read Tagore. I directed the entire play as a painting that has multiple strokes. My direction has changed a lot. Initially, it confused the actors and it does the same to the audience, but eventually everything comes together.

Q.7 Considering you are staging the play across the country, weren’t you hesitant Bengali songs will make it very regional?

His compositions are so amazing. When I heard the compositions, I was amazed. I felt his story couldn’t be told without the songs. Even I didn’t understand the songs completely but I connected with them. And we got amazing singers. I also changed the songs a bit to fit into the narrative, and nobody has said that it is out of the place or they can’t comprehend.

Q.8 Our society doesn’t accept multiple relationships, but you have shown that…do you have an individual opinion on it?

We, somehow, give importance to sexual relationships, which I think is frivolous. There are relationships that you carry all your life just because of a connect that you have with the other person. And for me that connection matters the most.

Q.9 While you have directed the play solo, for writing, you brought on board Dwijottam Bhattacharjee and Kalki Koechlin. How did the collaboration work?

I am quite an instinctive person— if I like something I go for it. I wanted someone like a scholar on-board and that is how Dwijottam Bhattacharjee came. He is the main writer, who has brought in a lot of depth to the incidents we have used. Kalki came because I needed someone who could speak French and Spanish to play the part of Victoria Ocampo. I have seen some of her plays earlier and knew that she is a very good writer. When she started reading about Ocampo, she came up with a lot of insight and I asked her to write that part. They both have done the major share of the writing, while I have written the Hindi scenes and the mixed scenes. It has been one of the best collaborations.

Q.10 How big an influence is Tagore for you, considering he also wrote plays and you are essentially a playwright? Is there any other person whose life you would like to bring to life on stage?

For me, Tagore is a poet and philosopher. I have never seen him as a playwright because I think he was writing plays because of a social norm he had to follow. He never impressed me as a playwright but as a writer. Currently, I am adapting a story, Deewar Mein Ek Khirkee Rahati Thi by Vinod Kumar Shukla, who is my favourite writer