Sohaila Kapur’s Mahim Junction spoofs ‘over the top’ 1970s Bollywood
With long sideburns, a colourful scarf and flaring bellbottoms, he lopes around, trying to embrace his love. She simpers, giggles and bites her lower lip. He grabs her. They kiss. They part. She looks coy. He looks delighted. “Radha,” he breathes. “Rahim,” she responds. “Uh-oh,” says the audience. These lovers are in for trouble.
No, this isn’t a 1970s movie. But it’s close. Mahim Junction, playwright Sohaila Kapur’s tribute to Mumbai, is inspired by the cinema of the 1960s and 70s, complete with over-acting and stereotypical characters: right down to the vamp named Mona (Darling). The heroine’s mother is the surprise package — her Bangla accent so perfect it might be real. This Anti-Mother would rather sell her “bhargin” (virgin) daughter to the lecherous film-maker than let her marry for love.
For Kapur, it was a challenge to get the young actors, some in their first ever play, to try over-the-top acting. “My heroine watched clips of Sharmila Tagore and Asha Parekh to get into character,” she says. In fact, part of the play involves Sohaila walking onto stage and interrupting the ‘natural’ acting. She insists on “over-the-top acting”, 70s’ style. To demonstrate, she flutters her eyelashes, pirouettes to “Raat akeli hai…” and asks “get it?” They nod, rewind, and proceed to ham it up.
The play also pays homage to the overdone theme of communal harmony. The opening scene has the call of a muezzin, followed by church bells and Hindu hymns. The heroine prays Muslim and Hindu style for her jailed lover. Still, the scene where the slum-dwellers heckle the campaigning politician reveals, in what Sohaila calls a contemporary touch, “a cynicism for the system that is very recent.”
It seems like a recipe for success: the background score comprises 60s and 70s chartbusters; the producers include film-maker Shekhar Kapur (Sohaila’s brother). The lead pair, Jyotsna Sharma and Rachit Behl do a good job and Neeraj Yadav shines as wicked producer DDLJ Kaladhanda, glugging VAT 69 and “sexploiting” innocent actress wannabes while spouting crude Punjabi dialogues.
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Unfortunately, the play remains a medley of stereotypes. Ninety minutes is a long time to watch over-acting without a strong plot. In attempting to spoof Bollywood, the play ends up as a spoof too, a superficial song and dance about nothing. Agreed, that was often the flaw in movies of that era, but in 2010, sitting in the prestigious Tata Theatre at NCPA, it doesn’t quite work.
Though it premiered in the UK in 2002, 22nd July saw Mahim Junction’s first performance in Mumbai, the city that inspired it. “It’s very expensive to stage a production here,” says Sohaila. “The NCPA invited us now, so we can finally share this play with Mumbai.”
An evening of Kathak at NCPA builds bridges and gets feet tapping
There’s something about feet tapping to a rhythm. Enhance the beat with the music of ghunghrus, and the music takes on an additional dimension of delight. On July 21, the Godrej Dance Theatre at NCPA, Mumbai resonated to the brisk beats of Kathak during Bridges, an evening of storytelling through the medium of the Indian classical dance form.
That the dancers were led by American Charlotte Moraga deepens further the significance of titling the programme “Bridges”. Moraga, dancing since the tender age of nine, was formerly a professional jazz dancer. Exhilarated and challenged by Kathak, she became a disciple of Kathak virtuoso Pandit Chitresh Das in 1992. Pandit Das himself had begun at the age of nine. His guru, renowned Kathak exponent Pandit Ram Narayan Misra, trained him in the grace of the Lucknow gharana and the dynamic rhythms of the Jaipur gharana. Moving to the USA on a Kathak fellowship in 1970, Pt Das popularised the dance form there, even establishing it as part of the curriculum at San Francisco State University.
He set up the Chitresh Das Dance Company & Chhandam School of Kathak in 1980 in San Francisco. Kathak’s fast pace attracts newcomers and lends itself well to fusion and experimentation, as Pt Das has proved. Following the mantra of “innovation within tradition”, Pt Das evolved “Kathak Yoga”, which isn’t really Yoga but more a mind-body-spirit approach to the dance itself — singing, dancing and reciting taal, often simultaneously, in the same composition.
As the costumes swirl and the beats pick up, it’s easy to see a trance-like hypnotism in the dance. But the dancers never forget the real world. Back in Pt Das’s long-ago hometown, Kolkata, Chhandam, through its local arm Nritya Bharati and in partnership with the New Light Foundation, is committed to empowering children of sex workers to break out of the cycle of abuse, teaching them the dance as a form of self-expression. The word “kathak”, after all, comes from the Sanskrit “katha”, or “art of storytelling”, and Chhandam recognises that everyone has a story which needs to be told.