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Tribune News Service
Amritsar, December 2
‘Amamba leibaki mathong Huktaba ningthau’, when translated means ‘Andher Nagri Chaupat Raja’, a popular play by Bharatendu Harishchnadra, who is considered as the trendsetter of contemporary Indian theatre and prose. His plays were highly perceptive, relating to the changing times with changing mindsets.
Manipur-based theatre group Deal Repertory presented an adaptation of the play, set in a village and a group of disciples of a religious leader. Director Pukhrambam Khogendro Singh, who is an state awardee and acclaimed in Manipur, retold the story about a mismanaged leader, his high-headed decisions and the fact that there is a price to everything.
The play starts with a sadhu visiting a city along with his disciples. The king of that city has ordered that everything is sold for one rupee, whether its food or any other commodity. One of the disciples, impressed with the cheap prices and abundant rich food available, is happy to settle down in the city. Against the order of his guru, he continues to enjoy the free welcome, until one day the king orders a man to be hanged to a crime of stealing. Since the man accused of the crime is thin and cannot fit in the noose, he orders a fat man to be brought and hanged instead. The disciple, becoming sedentary and fat now, due to excessive eating, is brought in and about to be hanged when the guru comes to his rescue and announces that he be hanged instead of his disciple.
The king, who is God fearing and is made to believe by the sadhu that if a godman be hanged, it would bring curse to his land, eventually decides against the hanging. Thus, the sadhu saves his disciple’s life and they leaves the city, never to return again.
Considered an excellent political satire and themes of greed, gluttony and socialism, the play was highly appreciated by the audience. The Manipuri play used folk music and songs to narrate the story and the humour, as mostly done through physical comedy.
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