''Peele Scooter Wala Aadmi' staged in Patna on 29.4.2017 in Jashn-e-theatre

Materiality of insignificant queries

(हिन्दी में यहाँ पूरी समीक्षा यहाँ पढ़ें- http://biharidhamaka.blogspot.in/2017/05/20.html?m=0)

Manav Kaul's story 'Peele Scooter Wala Aadmi' raises many points in one go - Why after all a bit of information is concealed from some member of family? Why people do not respect the natural inquisitive instinct of others? Why people do not feel for the sentiments of others and live a life devoid of human sentiments and that too only in a mechanical manner. The theme is so abstract as hardly to be imbibed by a lay viewer and I feel myself one of them even after twenty  years experience of an avid viewer. 

    There is everything in the life of the main character (hero) except the peace of mind. Two ultimately simplistic but unanswered questions haunt him day and night- One is "Why Dadaji was not intimated about Indira Gandhi's death?" and another is "Why his father rode invariably scooter of yellow colour?" His father was very concerned and careful about him though he never felt necessity of answering these insignificant questions. And these very questions are those which have taken away all happiness from the life  of the hero. There is a lover girl of the hero who always starts her talk with her lover as ".. then, should I take off my clothes now?" The hero is bemused of this bizarre love relationship in which there is nothing to do except to go for physical intercourse. 

    The mother of the hero is very affectionate towards her son but obviously a stern woman for her father-in-law i.e. Dadaji. Dadaji is fond of watching TV and he does not watch the program, actually he lives the viewing experience of them. He submerges his identity into the scenes of the program. Unfortunately he loses speech after some years, still he likes watching TV. This is not liked by the hero's mother because of some very superficial reasons. Ultimately she bans her father-in-law (Dadaji) to sit the room where TV is installed. Now that senile man has to live in complete loneliness without any implement for his entertainment being confined into his small room. Even the hero avoids entering his room as he fears  that if Dadaji tried to speak some anger about the atrocities on him then he would not be able to speak even "meal' and 'water' as he could speak only three-four words in a whole day.

   After some days, Dadaji dies and the hero is still unable to get answers of his simplistic two questions. Though he knows the answer. The answer of the first question is "Dadaji was not intimated about Indira Gandhi's death because he could have insisted on watching the funeral and 'bhajan' programs telecast on TV and thereby could have disturbed the hero's mother."  The answer of the second question is "His father used only yellow scooter because he did not like to scooter in 'bhagwa' (ocher) clolour which might have denoted extreme faith in one religion and he did not like the green colour as well for that might have denoted him as the supporter of extreme faction of other community."

REVIEW: The director-cum-producer Swaram Upadhyay must be applauded for showing the guts of choosing a play of extremely abstract theme. His manner of showing sequences of soliloquy and dreams were fabulous in which the inner mind of the hero was being acted by the supporting actors around him.  The actors Vivek Kumar, Abhishek Arya, Saurabh Kumar, Vinita Singh and Swaram Upadhyay were fine with their roles and the remarkable ones included Hero, Dadaji, beloved of the hero, father of the hero and mother of the hero. Jafar and Rajiv Roy gave their valuable support from back of the stage.

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