Hunger Games in Pune: Back in her hometown, Meghna Roy Choudhury serves an uncomfortable reality about the people around us

Roy Choudhury transposes her grandmother’s experiences with her own hunger from the time when she was going through days of having very little food in the darkly satirical play, Kheyechish? (Bengali for Eaten?), which will be staged at Shreeram Lagoo Rang-Avakash on April 26, 7.30 pm. The play is in Hindi and English, with a smattering of Bengali.

One of the highlights of Kheyechish? is that Roy Choudhury cooks on stage the entire time as the audience sits in a circle around her and, at the end, serves them a meal of fena-bhaat and aloo posto, the former is humble, the latter very expensive, but both foods originate from the Bengal famine. Live cooking during a play is a challenge, it might become a gimmick or, worse, the audience might choke from the fumes. Among those who got it right is Seema Pahwa, whose solo performance in Saag Meat, written by Bhisham Sahni, could hold audiences in a thrall and give the dish an added flavour of meaning.

Hidden population of India

Kheyechish? turns the torchlight on a hidden population of hungry people in India – those who have migrated to big cities in search of a better life and find that they have very little money to buy food. Unlike the familiar images of starving populations, they are impossible to spot, although they live in plain sight as classmates in college or university, colleagues in the office or flatmates with a dream.

Roy Choudhury, for instance, had “escaped” her comfortable home and safety in Pune to go to Mumbai and “make something of my life in theatre”. A postgraduate in Physics and a degree from the Drama School, Mumbai, she found work as a theatre teacher in schools and began to earn Rs 18,000, of which Rs 11,500 would be spent on rent. After expenses for commuting and necessities, such as sanitary napkins, Roy Choudhury had almost no money for food.

“I started talking with my colleagues and hunger was a reality for them. My colleagues would not go to a doctor because they did not have money. They would not eat. Nobody would talk about it; they were ashamed to express the hunger because, in our head, it was that we chose this life. We fought for this so there was shame in being hungry.

This play came out of this question, ‘Is my hunger even valid?’” she says.

Kheyechish? touches upon multiple influences, including Bertolt Brecht’s poem, The Shopper, about an older woman, who had escaped the Nazis and finds pleasure in shopping for vegetables and fruit.

But, once her pension is stopped, she just goes to the shopping centre, gets everything and, then, at the billing counter, she says, ‘I don’t have money to pay’.

Questions to the powers

This is the only play of hers in which Roy Choudhury is also acting. The story is about a day when the protagonist, an autobiographical version of Roy Choudhury, is determined to cook a meal of fena-bhaat and aloo posto. A lot is unpredictable, the pressure cooker whistle that can go off at any moment. The smell and sound of cooking are characters in their own right.

As she cooks, the protagonist discusses episodes from her life, such as a visit to the sea, what happens in classrooms where she teaches, and her feelings for the crow that visits her every day.

Ultimately, what the play, like all thoughtful theatre, aims to serve up are questions to the powerful. “Shouldn’t a country, with a growing population of youth, make sure that people have basic needs met, that they have insurance and can afford certain essentials to survive?” says the writer-performer. An empty stomach, after all, can crush dreams.