New Delhi: Sita, a home-based, piece-rate worker and Janvadi Mahila Samiti (JMS) activist, along with her comrades, was beaming with excitement as she entered Max Muller Bhavan (MMB) to watch Do You Know This Song?, a play created and performed by Delhi-based theatre practitioner Mallika Taneja. Sita had travelled all the way from Nand Nagari, a resettlement colony in East Delhi.
Like many others who came to watch this show, Sita’s only exposure and access to theatre so far has been of street plays that she has organised and watched in her colony.
This interactive, musical theatre piece is about loss, grief and love. Taneja quite unreservedly shares the memories of her childhood desire to become a singer. Using some toys and everyday objects from her childhood, she presents a story that is deeply personal, filled with fragmented memories and immersed in enduring grief about the loss of a person she lost at a tender age. A voice from her childhood was gone. Interestingly, throughout the performance, she never mentions who the person was.
With her harmonium and microphone and by combining archival songs from iconic plays like Yahudi Ki Ladki and Meha Ujli, with newly written and composed pieces, Taneja foregrounds the everyday struggles, predicaments and desires of women while navigating through her personal memories.
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Taneja opened the show last year and since then it has been performed across several cities across the world. The MMB show (non-ticketed) was specially organised for the women working with activist organisations and NGOs like SEWA, CEQUIN, Nirantar, Khabar Lahariya and others that work among the lower-middle class population in Delhi-NCR. Although Taneja has previously presented the show for a culturally diverse audience, this particular show was different in its purpose and feel. For most of the audience, it was their first time watching a show in a theatre-like setting.
Women from CEQUIEN and SEWA attending Mallika Taneja’s play ‘Do You Know This Song?’
Women were waiting in anticipation under the shed with no idea what to expect inside the performance space. An evening out with friends and comrades, an opportunity to escape the quotidian routine of their work and home life. Considering the demography of the invited audience, a brief synopsis in Hindi was shared beforehand with the organisations but how all that information would be translated into a theatrical experience remained a point of curiosity for them. Thus, while entering the makeshift black box space, their enthusiasm and childlike inquisitiveness were palpable.
As they were ushered into the space, trying to find seats, two women muttered to each other – dhyan se, andhera hai yahan (Be careful, it is a bit dark here). In that dimly lit space, standing among several small handmade dolls placed in an aisle in the middle of the performance area, Taneja greeted the audience, gently drawing them into the unfamiliar space of the black box.
‘So ja re, gudiya re; sapno ki duniya mein kho ja re, gudiya re’ (Go to sleep, dear one; Be lost in dreamland, dear one), a lullaby playing on a loop in the background yielded an atmosphere of stillness and comfort, effectively dispelling the hesitation of the audiences about the unknown. Once they settled down, they pulled out their phones, swiftly panning over everything in sight – sets, lights, sound, and the performer. Perhaps, they wanted to capture the experience in its entirety that could be later shared with friends and family at home.
Taneja uses theatre workshop-like exercises to take the audience along while diving deep into her personal recollections, aspirations and hopes. She asked an audience member to read the lyrics of a song written in the brochure – ‘vali, tere mann mein bhi koi na koi armaan hai kya; bol tu mann ki ganthein khol tu’ (Vali, do you also have a dream in your heart; say something, undo the knots within). Then the rest of the audience is asked to repeat the lines.
In other parts of the performance, she invites the audience to repeat lyrics, lilts, patterns of stomping, patting, snapping fingers to collectively contribute to the music. Repetition as a literary and dramatic device conveys the never-ending rut of everyday life. Women participated in these playful exercises. Even if some of them wondered why they were doing it, they carried on with it enthusiastically.
Taneja improvised and built upon the audience’s responses which were both confident and uncertain at the same time. Laced with guided repetitions and gestures, the audience’s response was shifting and, in a way, generating a new performance text while invoking memories of years of subtle as well as intense gender-based exploitation. As the performance transitioned from athkeliyan (prankful mirth) woven in songs to sighs for unmet desires and ruined dreams, the narrative gradually expanded from her personal experience to shared struggles in women’s lives within a patriarchal system.
While the young girl sitting next to me was inconsolable, I could also hear other women sobbing as they listened to ‘amma mere sapne ko bhejo ri; beti tera sapna to tuta ri. amma mere raaste ko bhejo ri; beti tera rasta to chhuta ri’ (Mother of mine, send me my dream; dear daughter, your dreams are broken. Mother of mine, send me my ways/path; dear daughter, your ways are left behind).
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Creating another emotionally charged moment like this Taneja reads a letter – kaisi ho… ankho ke neeche gaddhe pad gaye hain, soti nahi ho kya… so jaya karo… kya hoga agar ek din roti nahi banaogi…? (how are you… why do you have dark circles under your eyes… don’t you get to sleep… do sleep… what will happen if you don’t cook just for a day?) It is at these moments that the otherwise consciously fragmented narrative of the performance came together for the women in the audience who belonged to a varied social and economic class.
Despite the fact that women came out of the show feeling emotionally overwhelmed, it is hard to measure the impact or efficacy of the performance in absolute terms. However, post-show discussion revealed the kind of resonance women in the audience actually felt. Some observed it as a depiction of their entire life and a reminder of numerous memories they had forgotten.
Scenes from Mallika Taneja’s ‘Do You Know This Song’. Photo: Special Arrangement
While some talked about how they were treated well in their parent’s house, a few others discussed experiencing exactly the opposite. They may have not understood everything that was said or happened in the performance but each one of them had found different moments, which resonated with their lives.
It has been established that art has the potential to contribute to socio-political discourse in a far deeper way beyond overwhelming emotions and catharsis. How do we envisage an alliance between activism and artistic expression in newer ways? What role could these organisations and artists have in fostering such engagements that can go beyond the existing discourse on the concept of solidarity? To my mind, Taneja’s work and her effort to organise this kind of a show illustrate her desire to go deeper into these questions.
The performance, or this particular show, doesn’t claim to find resolutions to the ‘women’s issues’, rather it seems quite aware that no one piece of art can change the situation. The piece is rather descriptive of the rarely spoken about various kinds of pain – mental and physical – that women go through in their lifetime.
The experience of the audience of this particular show also provides an opportunity to explore how we interpret the particular within the universal and vice versa. Would it work for the women who live on the social margins and without any class privileges?
“I have performed this show at many other places outside India. I have been surprised by how many women from many different parts of the world have resonated with the story. I wanted to see if I do the show for women from other than my own class, will it still work? Is this really a story of “all” women? Does it have a resonance with many, many more women?”, says Taneja.
Sita came out smiling pensively and said, vo chitthi to bilkul meri zindagi se thi (that letter you read was from my life). It instantly reminded me of our conversation with Sita last year when we interviewed her for a play Kabhi Naa Khatam Hota Kaam about women workers, directed by Taneja for Jana Natya Manch. We had asked Sita what she wanted to do in her spare time and her response was prompt – Main soungi. (I will sleep). Interestingly, she has watched both the plays which generated a similar feeling in her – yeh to meri kahani hai (This is my story).
Sita’s previous response when juxtaposed with the song ‘So jaa re’ in Taneja’s performance foregrounds the never-ending exhaustion and women’s desire to rest, sleep, or simply do nothing. Or maybe do something really unusual like travel across the city to watch a play in a black-box space with fellow comrades.
Komita Dhanda is an organiser, actor, director and writer working with Jana Natya Manch (Janam) in Delhi since 2004. She is pursuing her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at SAA in JNU.
