Je Janlagulor Akash Chilo: Longing and Belonging through a Sepia Screen

At its heart, Je Janlagulor Akash Chilo is about friendship. The play, in a sequence of dark, brooding mood boards and sepia-tinted jump cuts, follows the course of four childhood friends who grow up in the 90s - Shoma, Tatin, Buban and Tubai. It meanders through different timelines, from 1998 to 2025, fleshing out defining political events, societal flux, existential malaise, and economic inertia – all of which shape the interpersonal relationships of the four friends and the precarious balance their friendship must steer with the world at large.

Kolkata of the 90s is the presiding demi-god onstage; its enduring leitmotifs continue to hold in their grasp an indefinable sense of nostalgia for all of us 90s children who have experienced the incomparable, multi-layered megalopolis first-hand.  The load-shedding lanterns, the fevered pitch of ‘Maddhyamik’ (board exam) prep, the water carriers with their shoulders laden with shiny steel containers hung from wooden poles, heated arguments on politics, khoi batasha (puffed rice candy) treats at the evening adda, the annual Durga Bhashaan (immersion) – are elements that give the play its soul. They are part of the dramatis personae, testifying to the times, and brought to life by contemporaneous hit songs and TV clips played on a screen used as a potent backdrop.

Dramatized from Rahul Arunodoy Banerjee’s story, directed by Saurav Palodhi, produced by Icchey Moto, Je Janlagulor Akash Chilo chronicles, with both wry humour and intense feeling, the extreme innocence of a childhood romance, the ebb and flow of angst and grief, the myriad circumstances of fate – illness and death, falling out and making up, longing and loss - of not just the four central figures but, in extension, their dysfunctional families too.

It cruises in time, forward and backward, plots the divergent career paths that the four take, which often place them at ideological crossroads with one another, prompting both bitter taunts and tender revelations. Familiar Hindi film songs bring the melancholy into sharper focus, and audiences are drawn into the travails, triumphs, concessions, resistance and activism depicted through powerful performances by the actors. As we watch, we live vicariously and try to find our own window – our ‘janla’ to seek the sky that our childhoods left behind.

This impressive play will be performed onstage at the 21^st edition of the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (https://metawards.com/) on March 22^nd, 2026, at Kamani Auditorium at 8 pm. Booking links are live
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