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THEATRE

TEESTA PAARER BRITTANTO (Story of the banks of river Teesta)

About the play

Suhas has come to the banks of Teesta as a settlement officer for Operation Barga. Once upon a time he had joined the Naxalbari movement, now he is a bureaucrat, a government official; once he had dreamt of a total peasant revolution and today he is participating in a project of land reforms. During land survey peasants and workers assemble around Suhas and he notes in that crowd too an elusive entity named Bagharu is present. Suhas ponders, map between his teeth, who is this, map-like man? Suhas feels Bagharu doesn't belong there, in fact, he is too much of a misfit to belong anywhere.

Bagharu knows, knows in his bones: 'Everything is Gayanath's, that Teesta there is Gayanath's, those lands there are Gayanath's, this Bagharu here is Gayanath's.' Gayanath - the lord and master of Bagharu - had once ordered Bagharu to tie trees to his body and let himself to be carried away by the waves of flooded Teesta. Later when he hit a spot surrounded by water he was rescued by villagers. One of them, an expert boatman of the region, was Kadakhoa. He was like a mirror image, a look-alike of Bagharu himself. Though the two came very near each other, no exchange took place between them, at least that's what the rest thought. Does this mean that the Bagharus are incapable of entering into dialogue with other Bagharus? Are they really so alienated, so lonely?
At the very beginning, while wading through a river with the local MLA on his shoulders, Bagharu had requested the elected representative to give him a human name. Towards the end, ten years after the talk with the MLA, Bagharu is left with just a monosyllabic utterance, a word that he employs as a fixed reply to all questions: No. No, he isn't anything, he isn't Rajbonshi, he isn't English, he isn't of any party, and he has no festoons or flags.
Bagharu is negation personified. And this 'negative essence' ceaselessly intervenes, interrupts steady flows, and makes messy all a-priori designs. The society and the state keep him outside of history and for the same reason he remains irrepressible, he 're-turns' again and again to point towards the unrealized potentials of history, towards open- ends.

Director's Note
It is a difficult task to make theatre out of novel. Especially if the novel in question happens to be Teesta Paarer Brittanto - one that adds a fresh horizon to the very history of the genre, creates a new paradigm of narration. If the production can express merely some sparks of thought from the infinite contemplative universe in which the narrator in the novel immerses us, then we will have succeeded. In the language of our theatre, we have tried to hold on to the problematic of which Bagharu is the epicenter. However much may the forces of history and the state try to push him to the margins, Bagharu perpetually arrives at the center, rocking the concrete foundations of the state. But Teesta Paarer Brittanto is not just the story of Bagharu's.

When I first started drafting the play, I had to think out a makeshift model of the stage, a formative sketch of the chain of events and movements of the actors. The elaboration of the play gradually took place from those nascent, disordered and fragmentary impressions. Of course, one has had to cover a long distance since to reach this present production. But I have been enriched with a radically new sense of theatre by the experiences undergone at every stage in the genesis of this play. It demanded different conceptualization, physicality and language. I have tried to remain completely faithful to the novel while adapting it for the stage.

Hiran Mitra, the man and the artist, excited our entire team with his zest for life. His art is not overtly apparent anywhere, yet it is undeniably expressed at every nook and cranny of the stage. Debojyoti's modern intellection has added a new register to the music of this play. It seems as if all of them were indispensable for this production. Above all, I should mention the actors and actresses of this play. Through relentless labour, covered with dirt and sweat, they have, with their bodies, begot silt islands on the stage, been adrift in the waters of the flood. After writing the play, my mind was filled with doubts about who to involve in the production, and how. An urgent desire to improve theatrical skills lead to starting theatre classes. It was during this period that Teesta Paarer Brittanto was being manifest in a visual language.