My Interactions with Habib Tanvir Part XVII: Paradropped on stage

This was a very different style of inducting an actor in a play- simply tell him to enter stage as a character!!!Happened to me twice. Once in Mumbai when I was supposed to return back to Delhi after the show of 'Agra Bazaar' but my train ticket did not get confirmed and I had to stay back.And then again after Habib saab had passed away and a retrospective festival of his plays was on at 'Manav Sangrahalaya' Bhopal.

Normally an actor goes through various rehearsals before going on stage but as I mentioned before, for Habib saab theater and his show were most important and yet he would keep experimenting without compromising the quality of his show. So, after my bit in 'Agra Bazar' ( one of the plays which was part of the festival)at the Prithvi festival in 2004 I was supposed to return to Delhi. I could not for the reason mentioned above. 

The problem now was whether I would be allowed to stay with the troupe as my work was over and both the theater and the organizers knew that I would be going back. I was quite new to the theater then, so I was nervous. I walked up to Habib saab and asked him if he would mind that I stayed longer in Mumbai. This was at Horniman circle in Mumbai.(He was not in the best of moods that day) A show of 'Kamdev ka sapna' was about to happen in about three hours. He said, 'good you are staying, I have a problem, that just got solved'. So, in the play(sapna a translation of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream), during and at the end of the play performed by the 'villagers' for the royal couple which has just got married, there are  six characters watching who make some quips about the play and actors. I was to be one of them now. I was told that I didn't need to speak any lines as my character's lines will be taken by the other actors who are on stage and who knew the lines. ( These were sharp cues, you could not do it just like that) I should just sit there and enjoy the performance from up close. Which is what I did.

The initial entries though looked simple were complex and the costumes were difficult. The Naya Theater actors explain the entries and exits very simply ' go from here, go there, then turn, then sit and keep sitting and reacting'. Believe me , I was more nervous doing this than anything else, this was not how I ever went on stage apart from the informal skits we performed for house at school.

Needless to say I throughly enjoyed the experience and after the show Habib saab told me ' This time you were allowed to keep laughing, but next time you better know your lines.'

The second time I was paradropped on stage was after Habib saab had passed away and a retrospective of his plays was taking place at 'manav sangrahalaya' Bhopal. That day a show of ' Jis Lahore nahin dekhya wo janmya hi nahin' was to be performed. 

Now I come back to the first part of the series where I had mentioned Chait Ram style of drinking. The night before the tribal dancers from Bastar( Bison Horn) called me and offered me 'mahua'. This is not an honor easily received. Since I was Shalini's husband who was like a part of them, I was also accepted. They had called Chait too. They offered me and I had it with Chait, in Chait Ram style. Nothing happened!!!I had another small helping , again in Chait Ram style. See, we were all very emotional then. We were working in 'Naya Theater' after both Habib Tanvir and Moneeca Misra Tanvir had passed away. Needless to say, they were hugely missed. It was a long festival, we were talking about them, remembering them, laughing, crying and all this as a festival was on. Usually my drinking indiscretions don't happen but this night was different. 

'Manav Sangrahalaya' was a government organization, and since the government has money, we were hosted in a hotel. Shalini and I were sharing a room. By the time I got back to the hotel, the mahua hit me. At that point, I could go off to sleep and nothing would have happened but then I heard some noise from another room. I could hear Ram talking about Habib saab. And then I also heard 'mausa'.( just to remind anyone who is reading this that mausa is Amar Das, the tabla player for the troupe, he has been with the troupe for ever, every time you meet him he says- now I want to go back home, I am tired, but he never goes back home. I haven't seen him now for a long while and I fear that like Chait he will probably go without me being able to meet him. Mausa and me were also friends. I enjoyed teasing him and he loved the attention he received. When teased by the younger lot he does all the drama- laughs at himself, then screams at us, then shows that he is angry, then complains to the others that today the younger lot has no respect for age and then get back to provoking the younger lot to tease him.) When I got to know that mausa is also there, I told Shalini that I will just go and see him, sit there for a bit and then come back and sleep. Since I was not going on stage the next day, I could allow myself a late night. Unlike the Naya Theater actors, I would go off to sleep early when I had to be on stage the nest day.

Once I reached that room and saw a beer bottle in mausa's hand, I began to tease him - repartees came. I did nothing but soon I don't know how I found a glass with whisky in my hand, which soon went to my lips, whisky entered my system and whisky and mahua formed a lethal concoction in there, which went to my brain. I finally left that room at 4 in the morning. I am told that for about three hours I kept telling those present Habib saab stories and it was quite a performance. Maybe it was Habib saab's revenge. There were times that I would refuse to drink with him or go absolutely quiet when he would be talking or would be in a mood to talk about something. At night I think I vomited a few times and woke up in the morning with a bad headache. Shalini had already left for the auditorium. 

I reached the venue at about 4 in the evening. As I reached there I was told by Ram that I had to go on stage as a refugee in the beginning- as part of the crowd and then again as a rioter. Being part of the refugee crowd was easy. We had to enter from one of the wings , go down the stairs into the audience, walk towards the stairs at the other part of the stage , go up and exit playing post partition refugees. Very powerful opening to the play and I enjoyed being a part of this crowd but the riot scene which was otherwise fairly worked out had to be timed. I had to kill someone with a knife( fake one of course). This had to be timed so that it happened in the middle of the stage. We rehearsed once or twice in the space behind the auditorium and then I had to do it. I t happened quite smoothly. I killed with finesse. So, that was about being paradropped on stage the second time in 'Naya Theater'.

My Interactions with Habib Tanvir: Part XVI,Rehearsals: Pee break and you are caught

What was it about Naya Theater rehearsals - you could be sitting there for the whole day waiting for your turn to go on stage- and nothing. Habib saab would be stuck with something or the other for the whole day, working with some actor on a specific moment, line or sometimes even word. You would be waiting. And then at some point your kidneys and bladder would revolt, you would move out to pee. And you would hear a roar- Himanshu kahan hai? usko bolo entry lene ke liye? And this was not just my experience. Any actor who moved out of the rehearsal space would be called in almost immediately. We figured that peeing was dangerous in Naya Theater. God knows whether he actually noticed you going out or it was just a sixth sense but Habib saab almost always called for the actor to get on stage who had stepped out for a brief break.

My Interactions with Habib Tanvir Part XV: Naya Theater back stage

An actor friend who had worked with some notable theater groups in Delhi came to Naya Theater once. He was playing a character in 'Agra Bazaar'. This is his story which tells us about Naya theater back stage and the difference between this troupe and other troupes that I have seen and worked with.( I do have a problem calling the naya theater actors 'rural' because it seems to signify that these guys were people who had no inkling of an urban life, in fact , these actors stayed and negotiated with city life since the troupe was based in the city. Though the distinction between the two categories is evident as the naya theater actors   had the advantage of the two worlds- village and the city. In terms of theater they had the advantage of having done 'nacha' and also negotiating the proscenium)


Now, backstage in 'Naya Theater' was even more exciting than what was happening on the stage. The theater ran on a shoe string budget. Habib saab ensured that the expenses were minimum. Costumes and properties from various old plays were used in the new ones. (As an aside , the first time when I went to Naya Theater , Habib saab asked me to prepare a role from a play, I got the whole script photocopied and spiral bound on theater's expense and Dhanno presented the bill to Habib saab, he told me that if I needed the full script then I could get it done through Anup Ranjan Pandey's office- the theater seldom gets the full script photocopied. So, there was a lot through which the theater saved its money. The first time I met Asad saab who played the 'taskiranavis' in 'Agra Bazar' and was a part of the troupe at its inception and had rejoined in 2004 after his retirement, I was astounded to find that he took a master script, sat through the night and wrote his portions of the script , copied from the master script, in Urdu…that is a world that was unknown to me)


I had learnt after a few shows at Naya Theater that there is pajama and chappal politics in the theater. If you didn't get your pajama, dhoti at the right time and hid it well then you would probably land a torn pajama or dhoti. And sign up for embarrassment. Especially in a play like 'Agra Bazar' which had a huge cast. There were times when the actors would do deals like this- okay so if you give me the chap pals for that scene when you are not on stage, you could use my dhoti in the later scene when you need to go without torn clothes. There was major micromanagement of time behind the scenes. You would always find a lot of action going on in the green room of Naya Theater.

Now coming to the original story where I had begun from. The actor friend was to play a 'sikh' who comes to a kotha ( a place where you would find not in the strictest terms 'prostitutes' but ladies who were trained in dance and music apart from the sex part of it)in 'Agra Bazar' and recites Nazir's poetry written in Punjabi by the poet. He needed a turban, which I think was there but he also needed a kurta and pajama which wasn't. He came inside the green room where the costumes' trunk was kept and asked udai ram for his costume. Udai gave him the costume , he looked at it and said- but this is torn!!! Udai said- this is what is available!!! otherwise manage…our friend was aghast, he looked at me, he was also very nervous because he had one line rehearsal on stage- Naya Theater had different ways of blooding you into performance- you could be sent on stage with just one rehearsal- since in scenes like this the others too knew your lines- somebody or the other would handle it if it went wrong. This actor in Habib Tanvir's den was lost initially with the goings on which he could not fathom- but then Naya Theater was a different world. Then he figured out a way to get a kurta- I think from Rana who decided to give him his kurta for that scene- I gave him the shoes which he needed to wear since he was a client who had come to a kotha.

Eventually the actor friend did a good job…but I am sure also learnt from the experience. While writing this am thinking, maybe there is a film in all these stories!!!

My Interactions with Habib Tanvir: Part XIV, Actor to Actor

Sometimes he would be challenged by his actors, to act!!!

Yes, that is true. Vijay Shukla is a legendary name in Delhi theater circuit. He is termed a lost genius. If you see 'Bandint Queen' , he appears in the film in one of the opening scenes. But it seems camera and film was not really his thing. It was stage.  I have been in scenes with Vijay bhai. In 'Agra Bazar', the scene that I was in, was between me and him. There is a lot about Vijay Shukla that one could write. He is someone you put him on stage and he will rule it, as if it his own space. Very difficult to find another urban actor on stage like him. 

So, Naya Theater had to do a short play called 'Sadak'. It is a farce which actually came from Nacha. The script is not written by Habib Tanvir. The artists from the village used to perform it, but they made a long play of it with a number of improvised elements. Habib Tanvir just tied it up and stuck to the story and the play reduced to about 45 minutes to about an hour of duration. 

This play is an interesting one- a word or two about it first- the scene opens in the court, there is a crowd of villagers and three industrialists on the opposing side. The case is that the villagers have broken the road  from the city to their village. The charge is made by the industrialists that this will block development- how can economic activity travel from the village to the city and vice versa without the infrastructure- in this case the road. The villagers respond that they have yet to meet 'development', they don't know how this thing looks or feels. They have broken the road because they don't want the road or the promised development- e.g. resources being taken away from the village and used for profiteering in the city ( well, that is just the story, it has got nothing to do with anything else going on in the country today..the land bill etc…I desist from commenting on the controversy because I don't understand the whole debate…since this particular naya theater incident is located around the performance of this play…I am forced to explain) A full case is fought. The judge is a farcical character, the performance hugely physical. 

Habib saab told Vijay Shukla to prepare the role. Vijay Shukla had done it before but in Habib saab's view it was Deepak Tiwary who had the done the best rendition of this particular role. Incidentally Habib saab himself had also played it. Vijay Shukla was not interested in doing it. At that point he had realized that he wanted to be a part of the music team, would sit with an improvised instrument of his own and play it- a bottle, a string tied at two ends or any such thing.To try and get out of playing the role, Vijay Shukla challenged Habib saab- why don't you play it? Aren't you also an actor? Habib saab said- Yes, of course, and also because I do this role a lot better than you. Vijay shukla retorted- No, you don't, I do it much better than you. Habib saab took it as an affront to his acting talent and said- Okay, if you think that, tell me, whom do you think has done the best as the judge, definitely not you, it was Deepak Tiwary. Vijay Shukla said - I agree it was Deepak who did it best but I did it better than you. The exact dialogue in Hindi was- Deepak bees tha, mein unnees , aap attharah( If Deepak was 20, I was 19 and you 18) Habib saab said- Deepak was the best, but I was second best and you third in the three of us. 

Eventually, Vijay Shukla did not do the role. Habib saab played it for that particular show, the debate continued at few other occasions.