Separation Woes

Though the Partition is a well-mined subject in Indian theatre,it still manages to bring to the fore the scale of human displacement and the trauma suffered in 1947. On Tuesday,a primarily urban audience revisited the travails of the womenfolk who found themselves trapped on the wrong side of border in a play Aur Kitne Tukde written by B. Gauri and directed by Professor Kirti Jain at the Shri Ram Centre (SRC).

Drawing on four stories from Urvashi Butalia’s book The Other Side of Silence,the one hour-40 minute play in Hindi goes beyond the well-documented disappointment and disillusionment of the 1947 focusing on the plight of women with episodic narratives. There is the simmering communal prejudice in a crowded train compartment where a young Vimla,played by veteran theatre personality Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari is raped and the grim soliloquy of a young Sadia,played by Harvinder Kaur,who is abducted as a “war booty” and married to the brutish Raghuvir.

A brilliant monologue by writer-actor B Gauri explores the myth behind martyrism,harking back to the period when womenfolk were massacred to save or avenge loss of honour. The play focused on the trauma of these women and the thousands of others displaced through power-packed performances.

When India and Pakistan agreed to restore those abducted from both sides,as per the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act,1949,the survivors found themselves displaced once again,returning to a family that spurned them. “The play centres around memories,childhood,non-acceptance by families and the shame that surrounded the Partition,” says Jain,who teaches modern Indian drama at the National School of Drama. The play which is now in its tenth year was written in 2000 and debuted at Abhimanch as part of the Bharat Rang Mahotsav festival. Since then,it has travelled to Mumbai and Kolkata. The play was staged as part of the Sangeet Natak Akademi festival Natya Darshan.