Review: Aaj Rang Hai
It was hard to believe the two old ladies on stage were, in real life, about thirty years old. It was also quite tough to believe that the two little girls on stage were older than eight or nine when they too, in real life, are young ladies in their late twenties. The cast of Aaj Rang Hai were immaculate. Possibly some of the best performances I’ve witnessed. Everything about the play spelt beauty, yes, even the bitter end toward which the lives of the characters moves toward, for even in sadness, there is promise of color.
The play is a celebration of Amir Khusrau’s poetry. Khusrau was a 13th century sufi poet. His poems span time, language, social relations and emotions. Most of his poems are recited in either Hindi or Urdu, some also in Farsi. His poetry becomes central to the play as the characters are located during a time of social upheaval, and it is in his poetry that they find both escape and solace.
The play is set during the very after-years of the bitter India-Pakistan partition. Communal tensions sore high, yet, in certain communities, as the play shows, there is complete harmony. There is an attempt at depicting westernizing influences as characters try to come to terms with a changing world and the growing influence of English while following traditional patterns of livelihood. The attempt becomes even more complex with its depiction of family practices that span both Islamic and Hindu social mores.
The story follows a romance between a Muslim boy and a Hindu girl who try to keep religion at bay from their love – a sort of Romeo-Juliet take on the partition. The ending is sad, love is lost, life is lost, life is strife-ridden because of the growing rift between communities. However, through the play, both the audience and the remaining characters come together.
The sets have been crafted intelligently. They provide a feel of history veiled by yet another history – that of Khusrau, that of music and that of poetry. In effect therefore, there are two demarcated spaces, one in which contemporary history plays out and the lives of the characters unfolds, the other which connects them to a distant past. In the play, the balcony on which the young boy’s lover appears becomes elemental. The quintessential element of any love story is the balcony from which the girl gazes down upon the boy and in his absence, upon a starry night, reminding herself of him. The sets, stage space and lighting (used aptly to depict a rainy day in which the girl dances and through which both boy and girl become acquainted) infuse into one beautiful play.
