I always keep talking about my small village in mostly all of my blogs. Well it's not that small also. Almost 5000 people stay in my village. It's actually a very weird place full of weird people and weird incidents ( No doubt why I am proud to be one). A full epic can be written on the place and the people and would be a bestseller without any doubt (Someday, someday). As far as social, cultural, educational and moral value goes, my village holds a very respected position in the whole district of the southern part of West Bengal. People are culturally drawn towards performing arts and every week there used to be some kind of cultural program somewhere in the village.
My family owns a school there, so being a part of the school committee and the whole cultural jingbang all around, from childhood, I used to feel very culturally inclined and used to take part in arranging such kind of activities. Every year April-May used to be a super fun month for us as the annual cultural program of the school used to happen then. Other than the performances, we used to also sort out gifts for the winners in annual sports and used to award the good students. There used to be songs, dance performances, recitation, mimicry, but the main attraction was the drama performed by present students. All students, teachers, guardians, shopkeepers, local bigwigs used to wait for that one big thing.
The year was 1994. The date was, 24th May( If I'm not wrong). Before that, all the dramas used to be of 20-30 minutes, and mostly those were based on classic books. That year we broke two rules
1. We came up with a parody which was written by the great Bengali writer 'Narayan Gangopadhyay' and had no classic value whatsoever, and 2. We got two ex-students (including myself) and my friend Arya (who never was a student of the school) to act in the drama. It was called Bhim Badh ( The killing of Bhim: the second pandava)
The story was about a drama group who is staging a play called 'Duryodhan Badh' ( The killing of Duryodhan: the captain of Kauravas). But the actor who was supposed to play Duryodhan doesnt want the villianious role and doesnt want to die in the end, so he wanted to be Bhim and approached the director Kaluda, but the director shuns him off and forces him to play Duryodhan. So he takes his revenge by messing up the whole drama, creating chaos on screen and thus making it Bhim Badh.
We rehearsed for several days, almost a month and then the day finally came. My friend Sayan portrayed Kaluda-the director, Arya was playing Krishna , Bhim was Debashis, I was playing the prompter, Souvik & Mridul were two soldiers
(more like props, they didnt have dialogues), and my brother Inder was Duryodhan. All of us were quite well known child-actors in the locality, especially Sayan. So relatives and other people flocked the ground and the place were choc-blocked before we could even start the function
April-May is also the time in Bengal, when the Nor'wester storm happens on most of the evenings, and heavy wind with rains cause all the ripe mangoes to fall. We were all ready to perform and heavy wind started to blow. It was an open air performance, so all viewers ran for shelter. In the dressing room a visibly depressed Arya was actually wishing if his chakra could work and he could do something about the weather; fortunately the storm calmed doen in less than 15 minutes. We were all unhappy that most of the audience have ran away. But as soon as we enter the ground, we could see atleast 1000 people came that day to watch that drama. We started, We acted and we conquered. Well in between once the power went off, but Sayan, as brilliant an actor he was, didnt even miss a small cue. We had swept the whole crowd of their feets.
And then Bhim badh became a cult drama in the vicinity. I somehow directed Bhim Badh once more, when I was in class twelve. I did that play in my high school. This time I didnt act though :). But drama has always been something that held the village together. There are umpteen anecdotes about the dramas that has happened over the years, the local actors, imported actors ( from Kolkata theatre), the actor who was specialized in playing 'conscience', the actor who pronounce Mahatma Gandhi without a 'hi' and with a 'u', the actor who was the reason behind many dramas getting stopped in between and many more. In my village posts, I will talk all about them, all about my village, and all the weird experiences of my time there. Do visit in once before you lose the weirdness in you...
My family owns a school there, so being a part of the school committee and the whole cultural jingbang all around, from childhood, I used to feel very culturally inclined and used to take part in arranging such kind of activities. Every year April-May used to be a super fun month for us as the annual cultural program of the school used to happen then. Other than the performances, we used to also sort out gifts for the winners in annual sports and used to award the good students. There used to be songs, dance performances, recitation, mimicry, but the main attraction was the drama performed by present students. All students, teachers, guardians, shopkeepers, local bigwigs used to wait for that one big thing.
The year was 1994. The date was, 24th May( If I'm not wrong). Before that, all the dramas used to be of 20-30 minutes, and mostly those were based on classic books. That year we broke two rules
1. We came up with a parody which was written by the great Bengali writer 'Narayan Gangopadhyay' and had no classic value whatsoever, and 2. We got two ex-students (including myself) and my friend Arya (who never was a student of the school) to act in the drama. It was called Bhim Badh ( The killing of Bhim: the second pandava)
The story was about a drama group who is staging a play called 'Duryodhan Badh' ( The killing of Duryodhan: the captain of Kauravas). But the actor who was supposed to play Duryodhan doesnt want the villianious role and doesnt want to die in the end, so he wanted to be Bhim and approached the director Kaluda, but the director shuns him off and forces him to play Duryodhan. So he takes his revenge by messing up the whole drama, creating chaos on screen and thus making it Bhim Badh.
We rehearsed for several days, almost a month and then the day finally came. My friend Sayan portrayed Kaluda-the director, Arya was playing Krishna , Bhim was Debashis, I was playing the prompter, Souvik & Mridul were two soldiers
(more like props, they didnt have dialogues), and my brother Inder was Duryodhan. All of us were quite well known child-actors in the locality, especially Sayan. So relatives and other people flocked the ground and the place were choc-blocked before we could even start the function
April-May is also the time in Bengal, when the Nor'wester storm happens on most of the evenings, and heavy wind with rains cause all the ripe mangoes to fall. We were all ready to perform and heavy wind started to blow. It was an open air performance, so all viewers ran for shelter. In the dressing room a visibly depressed Arya was actually wishing if his chakra could work and he could do something about the weather; fortunately the storm calmed doen in less than 15 minutes. We were all unhappy that most of the audience have ran away. But as soon as we enter the ground, we could see atleast 1000 people came that day to watch that drama. We started, We acted and we conquered. Well in between once the power went off, but Sayan, as brilliant an actor he was, didnt even miss a small cue. We had swept the whole crowd of their feets.
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| The cast of Bhim Badh [ from left, Me, Mridul, Arya, Sayan, Debashis, Inder and Souvik] |
