Dharamveer Bharti’s story ‘Band Gali Ka Akhri Makaan’, a unique presentation in two styles, a new experiment in theatre.

Devendra Raj Ankur, former director of National School of Drama-NSD, has done another new experiment in the history of Hindi theatre. Recently, he had staged a play combining 7 stories of Mannu Bhandari and some excerpts from his novel ‘Aapka Bunty’, which was an innovative experiment in Hindi theatre. This time he did another new experiment by presenting a play in two different styles, which was greatly appreciated by the audience.

Usually, a play is presented by many directors in different styles. Many plays like ‘Andhayug’, ‘Adhe Adhure’, ‘Tughlaq’ were staged by different directors and their presentations were different, but Devendra Raj Ankur adapted Dharamveer Bharti’s long story ‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ written in 1969. Made a unique experiment by staging two styles together. One staging was in traditional style while the other was in modern style, in which innovation was seen. Both the stagings took place under the ‘story theater genre’. It is noteworthy that Devendra Raj Ankur has developed a new genre called ‘Story Theatre’.

Of the two plays performed by NSD Theater, one was staged in ‘Sammukh’ while the other was staged in ‘Abhimanch’. Both plays were played in different styles in two auditoriums at the same time.

Some people liked the drama of ‘Samukh’ and some liked the drama of ‘Abhimanch’. Someone liked both the plays. When director Devendra Raj Ankur was asked which of these two productions he was more satisfied with, he said, “I was satisfied with both the productions. After all, these are my two children. I can’t compare them. It is possible that some viewers may like the first and some may like the second. The script of both the plays is the same. Just the style is different. I have done a little editing in the story. When it was done for the first time in 1996, there was an intermission. But both are ‘story theatre’.”

NSD Rangamandal chief Rajensh Singh said that the play ‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ is being staged after 28 years. When it was staged for the first time by Devendra Raj Ankur, Dharamveer Bharti also saw it and liked it. Bharti ji had also recorded her response in the register which we have published in the brochure. After 28 years, there have been changes in the style, presentation, acting etc. of the drama which can also be seen in it. Obviously this drama should now be seen in this perspective only because the interests of the audience may have also changed in these three decades.

last house in dead end street
The story of ‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ is the story of a town lower middle class lawyer of Allahabad who remains unmarried due to the upbringing and marriage of his sister Bitauni and keeps a dependent like Birja in the house like his wife. This is not only the story of Munshi ji but also the story of Birja. This is also a story of a ‘live in relationship’. In fact, it is also a story of disintegration of a family and clash of values. While it is the story of the contradictions of a devout Munshiji, it is the story of misbehavior, neglect, insult, oppression and exploitation of a woman in the form of Birja.

Both the presentations by NSD Theater had different effects on the audience. The dynamism that Devendra Raj Ankur has created in the play through blocks in Sammukh is tremendous. Imagine if these blocks were not there, would the play have been so dynamic and lively.

Different effects of both presentations
In the presentation of ‘Abhimanch’, the drama relaxes in between and the dramatic tension is not completely maintained, whereas in ‘Samukh’ this tension is there from the beginning till the end. There is decoration on the stage of ‘Abhimanch’ but that decoration is not there in ‘Samukh’. In Abhimanch, Munshi ji is played by the same actor, whereas in ‘Sammukh’ this is not the case. Every character tells the story, he is also the narrator and the characters also keep changing. An actor transforms into another character. There is a movement in it which makes the staging dynamic. There is beautiful symbolic use of blocks and saree in this. Actually, Devendra Raj Ankur has adopted this style in ‘Kahani Ke Rangmanch’. He started this genre in 1975 with Nirmal Verma’s story ‘Teen Ekant’. He staged ‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ for the first time in 1996. In this way ‘Kahani ke Theater’ is completing 50 years. In this half a century he has staged more than 500 stories.

Dharamveer Bharti has been a very favorite writer of all of us. Therefore, there must have been a deep desire in everyone’s mind to see a play on this story. I am not a regular viewer of the play, so I am not qualified to comment on how this play turned out (from the theater point of view). But as a viewer, I definitely faced some problems while watching this drama.

Spectators searching again and again for the sources of the drama
We had read this story in our younger days, so we no longer had the memory of it and could not remember the entire story sequence. Obviously, as a viewer, I had to read and understand the story expressed in this play afresh, but as a viewer, I feel that when a work is staged, it should be kept in mind that its The audience should not have to put in much effort to catch the clues. That is, the play should convey its message to the audience in a very transparent manner and the play should get registered in the minds of the audience. The audience should not need to search or catch the narrative thread of the play again and again.

But as a viewer I had to wrestle more. Is this a problem with the drama or is there something like this at the core of this story? Actually, while reading this story again, I felt that the problem is that there are so many incidents in it and there are so many stories and sub-plots and they are all interconnected in such a way that sometimes the audience does not understand everything clearly. This story is full of details. It is full of incidents and is also written in a cumbersome manner. Perhaps this may have been the reason that the viewer had to catch the end of the story again and again.

The question is whether while staging a story, should it be edited a bit more from a dramatic point of view while staging long stories or should something be added or subtracted from it. Many times directors add and subtract something while staging a work. Story genre has different demands, and drama genre has different demands. The internal demands of two disciplines cannot be the same. Therefore, when we present one genre in another genre, we make some edits or add or subtract something to make it fit into that genre. ‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ is such a long story that it is very difficult to maintain it in the play. It is also difficult to maintain a kind of dramatic tension in it from beginning to end. There are many beautiful shorts in between the play and the acting of many actors is also very good. Many scenes have become very lively but all these scenes together are not that successful in threading the story together. Especially in the staging of ‘Abhimanch’. However, the team of Rangmandal is very praiseworthy.

Dharamveer Bharti
The famous Hindi writer Dharamveer Bharti was a versatile writer who proved his talent in the Hindi world as a writer of stories, poems, novels, plays, translators and editors. He not only wrote a timeless play like ‘Andhayug’. His poetic work ‘Kanupriya’ has also been staged many times and was also popular. Some of his stories were also very popular in which ‘Gul Ki Banno’, ‘Savitri Number Two’ and ‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ are also discussed a lot. He wrote many stories and three-four story collections were published.

‘Band Gali Ka Aakhri Makaan’ is the longest story of Dharamveer Bharti. Probably the longest story of that era. At that time, the trend of long stories was not like today. Today long stories of hundreds of pages are being written in Hindi. This story is actually like a novel. Dharamveer Bharti’s first story collection had come out in 1946 itself. Seen from this point of view, Dharamveer Bharti’s story collection came before the story collection of any writer of the Nai Kahani movement and his story writing continued for about two-two and a half decades.

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Tags: Hindi Literature, Literature, Literature and Art