A man wobbles past on a bicycle he can barely control, hauled along by two others clinging to its frame, while a fourth watches from beside a lamp post. It is a small, almost comic image — and it is also, in the world of Natrang’s newest production, a fair summary of where the play thinks society currently stands.
Teen Apaahij, written by Dr Vipin Kumar Aggarwal and directed by Neeraj Kant, was staged by Natrang in Jammu on 6 September, presented by Pawan Verma with lighting design by Neeraj Kant Sharma. The cast — Pawan Verma, Aryan Sharma and Krishay Bhatia, with Kushal Bhat and Neeraj Kant in supporting roles — plays three characters named Kallu, Khallu and Gallu, stationed for the length of the play at a single lamp post.
Their conversation looks trivial on the surface, but the script uses it to work through freedom, hollow political speeches, what it means to be Indian, the idea of the nation, and language and class — the playwright’s case being that modernisation, for all it gives a society, is steadily stripping away its “human essence.”
The production came under the direction of Natrang chief Padma Shri Balwant Thakur, who has been a consistent advocate for staging intellectually demanding theatre repeatedly in Jammu, arguing that it is exactly this kind of work — not spectacle — that keeps a city’s cultural life genuinely alive. Natrang runs this alongside its long-running free Sunday Theatre, which has kept a stage active in Jammu every week for 22 years, so a Jammu theatregoer with an evening free has more chances than most cities offer to catch work like this.
Source: Daily Excelsior.
