Review: Tichee 17 Prakarne
A sketch of woman we barely know, she may have been a terrorist, she may have been a mother, she may have been a prostitute, more importantly – she may be alive, she may not, answers to these questions and others, we may never know. What we do have though is a sketch, a sketch that paints seventeen versions of her, seventeen confusing, contrasting and intriguing sketches of a woman known as Aashee. Thing is, Aashee may just be any one of the thousands of women whose houses have been burnt and destroyed, whose families have been killed, she may even be a terrorist at large.
Tichee 17 Prakarne, loosely translated meaning ‘seventeen scenarios of her life’, consists roughly of seventeen one-act plays. It moves from the political to the cultural, from the social to the psychological and then beyond. This becomes testimony to the fact that a story like Aashee’s is universal. There is a scene, possibly the fifth one, titled ‘Mummy Daddy’ where you see a couple of federal agents questioning the parents of the alleged terrorists, the questions themselves are scripted to border on the slightly-ridiculous. The scenes preceding it explore the concept of Aashee as part of a Yoga room conversation, as part of a rumor spreading through a cyber cafe, as part of a film shoot and so on. The scenes succeeding it do the same. One of them provides a sketch of family life, another of a photo-archive depicting certain atrocities before a peacefully lived life.
To suit the brevity of each scene, the fluid nature of the play, the sets are changed between each act. At times the scene becomes elaborate, at others it consists solely of a chair. Each scene transports the audience into the melting pot that is any country, that is the psyche of any people. In its own, each scene also holds value in terms of exposing the kind of language and ideas that the youth of today use to understand a changing socio-political landscape. What is also interesting is that all the other characters and locations remain unnamed except Aashee.
