Apu’s World

We went to see a play staged at Chowdiah yesterday, ‘The Invisible River’. I knew that it was a play about the Ganga and I expected to see something revolving around the pollution of the river. In a sense, it did, but more than that, the play used the river as a motif to talk about faith and how there could be more than one way of seeing things.

The play is structured around three differing perspectives. Dr. Ajay, a government doctor in Allahabad is the rational  environmentalist, seeing the river as a cesspool that needs cleaning up and trying to change the deeply entrenched belief that it is holy.  His mother is a woman who has given up on life and turned to faith instead. The third view is that of Uma, a private sector scientist, out to investigate the work of bacteriophages in the river that seem to cleanse it inspite of the terrible stuff that is thrown into everyday (remains of cremated bodies, bodily wastes etc etc).

Eventually the play seemed to suggest that Uma’s research could indeed be true. Of course that leads to a terrible sort of conclusion - why bother to keep the river clean, why bother to stop throwing stuff into it  - if it is indeed self-cleansing? In a weird sort of way, science seems to lead back to the conclusion that the river is holy and indestructible. The play stopped short of this stating this though, and the overriding message was that nothing is as simple as it seems. A politician who would like to use Uma’s research as part of her campaign further rubs this in - that what seems good and reasonable can be subverted. It can even be seen as useless, depending on the context - after all, her ‘phage’ therapy may never reach Allahabad, where Dr. Ajay despairs over children dying of cholera after drinking the polluted water.  

The acting was credible - the best part of the play was the characterization. The conflict between a seemingly illogical, devout mother and a rationalist son - the tension - was played really well. What jarred a little was the script itself - shouldn’t plays set in India have an Indian English feel to them? Even if we know that in reality, a lot of the action would have happened in Hindi, Indian English could have been a close substitute. The script, at many places however lapsed into strangely American sounding English. The accents of the cast too, sounded a little unreal, especially the little street kid who spoke with a city school accent. It seemed as though the director believed that only policitians and pujaris would speak in an exaggerated cowbelt accent.

Playwright: Gautam Raja; More info here.

Related Posts You May Like
1. The Origin of Humankind
2. A Visit to the Fair

apu The Literary life