Weaving in the personal and the political, a play features performative readings of correspondences between Amiya, Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhash Chandra Bose with Amiya (extreme right) in Austria, 1937
Be a good boy and attend diligently to your studies and at the same time look to the comforts of your grandparents and your mother." Part of a short, affectionate letter penned by Sarat Chandra Bose to Amiya or Ami, this sentence proved to be a father's way of comforting his son ahead of his matriculation examination, owing to Bose's sudden arrest by the British authorities in Bihar. Accounts such as these have been detailed in The Bose Brothers and Indian Independence: An Insider's Account, a book written by Madhuri Bose, Amiya's daughter.
Both Sarat and his brother Subhas staunchly opposed the British colonial regime as an eminent barrister and a leader of the Indian nationalist movement respectively. And thus, detention and imprisonment was a part and parcel of their lives. But even during difficult times, they maintained correspondence with young Amiya. And it is these words drawn from Madhuri Bose's book that will find space on stage this week, at a Bandra auditorium, before a performance scheduled at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) next month.
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Santanu Ghatak, Shaun Williams and Asmit Pathare during a rehearsal
Presented by the Playpen Performing Arts Trust, The Bose Legacy — "Inked Through Letters" features performative readings by Asmit Pathare, Santanu Ghatak and Shaun Williams, who are essaying the role of the three Bose men. Putting the event together took the team four months, but it was all stitched together with a year of research that entailed meeting the author in Calcutta. The book is a 300-pager and so, the play had to be constructed based on the essential elements. With events viewed through his lens, Amiya's character turns narrator. "Considering that this family has a national stature, the narrative expands to a lot more than their relationship as a family. At the same time, you can see how during the freedom struggle, Sarat and Subhas were trying to mould the youth in their family to take charge," co-writer Himali Kothari says.
Although the story is told via performative readings, director and co-writer Nikhil Katara states that it infuses all the elements of a play: props, costumes, movement and set. "While our homes are private spaces, theirs at Woodburn Park was not. That's our setting and we'll have a chest on stage as a metaphor for legacy. Then there's a wooden desk and chair — a majority of Sarat's editorials were written on them from his residence. We're also going to have a stack of books to just symbolise all that they've read," he says.
Nikhil Katara
Soundscape artist Keith Sequeira will be creating the mood for the event through instrumentation and vocals depending on the changing setting — a plane crash or imprisonment, for instance. The writers hope to take the show to more places in the future, especially Kolkata. And given how historical facts can be twisted according to the political climate, Katara asserts that given the format of the play, the onus of interpretation is put on the audience; they form a direct relationship with the author.
ON Today, 7.30 pm
AT St Andrew's Centre for Philosophy and Performing Arts, St Dominic Road, Bandra West.
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