Alternate Faith

In 1929,Mahatma Gandhi and his wife,Kasturba,were stranded in Kasauni for two weeks due to heavy rains,en route to Almora for an agitation against the British. During this time,they both revisited the Bhagwad Gita and he later published an adaptation titled Anasakti Yog. Akshara Theatre’s new production Gandhi’s Gita is set in the two week bracket and features the Mahatma,his wife and other characters from the Gita in an intertwining narrative. The play will be staged at Akshara at the end of March.

“The play has three points of focus. The main one being of Gandhi and his wife. The second one is of Krishna and Arjun,as they discuss aspects of the Gita,and the third focus is the two sutradhars,Gopal Sharman and me,who narrate verses from the Gita that surround the play,” says Jabala Vaidya,the director. It took Vaidya two months of sifting through old letters and records to adapt the book into a production.

Interestingly,Gandhi’s Gita uses a female actor to play the role of Krishna. “We’ve mostly used young actors in our play,and the idea was to reach out to a generation that is overloaded with facts about Gandhi. We tend to ignore the inner struggles of a public figure,” says Vaidya. The play works as a deep introspection into the lives of Gandhi and his wife. “When you think of how the Gita impacted Gandhi,you also tend to wonder how it would impact you,” adds Vaidya.