The Indian Blogger

Vaidyalingam with Seth in Karnad's Bikhre Bimb

Manjula is a Kannada short-story writer, who hadn’t really made it big untill she wrote a best-selling English novel. The play begins with Manjula defending herself, on TV, against the allegations that she betrayed the Kannada language for international fame and, ofcourse, the money.

Manjula is waiting to be led out of the studio, when her alter-ego appears (played by Rashmi Vaidyalingam). During the next 50 minutes, a layered interlocution follows. Gradually, using facts, rhetoric, paradox and satire, Manjula’s bimb (image) reveals not only the writer’s pretentiousness, but also her hollowness that she tries to hide from the world, albeit unsuccessfully from her conscience, her bimb.

As the end draws to a close the crisis is at its peak. We are not surprised to find out that the novel in question was actually written by Manjula’s physically incapacitated (Oh sorry! ‘Differently Abled’) sister- Malini, now dead. Rather than a novel inspired by the former’s plight, it was Malini’s autobiographic fiction. The alter-ego successfully concedes through the characters in the novel, Manjula’s hatred for her sister and husband, who fell in love with each other owing to her continued virtual absence from their lives.

At climax, Manjula’s character epitomises greed, jealousy, hatred and all such immoral bedmates one can think of. Sadly, her ego and alter-go finally resolve that it is the living who is victorious and is to be credited and not the unnoted dead, though howsoever worthy and talented.

Seth and Vaidyalingam’s chemistry (or rather “anti-chemistry”) was enthralling, as the two were able to carry the entire play on their shoulders well. At some places though, especially towards the end (when the opposite should have been), Vaidyalingam seemed to over-shadow Seth. Both of them regrettably fumbled at a couple of places. (Maybe it was the rude, noisy Delhi audience, which ignores to put their mobiles on ’silent’ mode and often have of them seem to clear their throats simultanoeusly)

Lighting was one area where better could have been done. But overall Rajinder Nath was able to handle the ‘unity of opposites’ quite well. His orchasteration of characters throughout is laudable. And though the play begins at a slow pace, it imperceptibly catches on to give us an emotionally charged ending.

The play was also performed in 2008 at several theatres in Delhi. And its presentation was much better than the so-called satirical comedies of the Utsav, which lacked depth apart from the fact that their humour was inspired by TV and films. Probably meant for the masses.

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