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Contd From Part-1
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NM:Â What inspires you to write such plays?
SB: (laughs) This is a tough question. I look around, these things are happening around me. And then I start thinking about them and develop them into plays. Like Baanaprastha, where I met this guy Pranay Dutta, an AIDS activist in Kolkata who is trying to spread awareness through music, documentaries and performing arts. He believed in the power of performing arts. He told me many stories about how this disease was spreading fast between the urban middle class. This fact struck me the most. He requested me to write a play on this issue. But I didn't want it to be a play only about AIDS. If you look at American history of HIV/AIDS, its not different from what it is in India now. After writing Phera, I thought why not connect it to a guy who is a virologist here and goes back to India and finds a close relative to his suffering from this disease. Hence Baanaprastha evolved.
I do cartoons and illustrations too, so ideas are around us one just needs to pick them up.
NM: What do you think are major issues and concerns of the immigrants in this country. How about cultural identity, is it not difficult to lose it in the sea change that one's lifestyle goes through?
SB: IÂ have been trying to explore this issue for long. I was recently reading a novel in a Bengali magazine, where they publish novels in a serial manner. The novel turns out to be about a doctor from Boston who goes to Kolkata to run a hospital and the challenges that he faces there. I could make out with the way the novel was written that it was by an Indian in America. You can just relate to the apathy.
I was laughing with a friend of mine the other day that we NRIs are like Dhobi ka gadha.. na ghar ka na ghat ka.. We can never be American in a real sense and also we are now so estranged from our roots and culture. We are in a space where we just don't belong.This is a strange phenomena. And this is what I have been trying to explore all this while.
My grandfather and father were displaced from East Pakistan, they could not identify their life in India. Tumhara Desh Kahan Hai, this becomes an eternal question. They felt it in that generation too, they didn't have a choice then-- it was political. But we had a choice, and we choose to come here. We have the same feeling, that is the crux of the matter. How people are put in two scenarios, you are pulled apart and that tension will be with you all your life.
NM: Are there other issues as well?
SB: I will tell you about a play Taconic Parkway that I wrote and then you decide for yourself. It is about an old Bengali veteran actor who has brought a play to US. An affluent family brings him home to honor him. During the conversation the father who is a multi millionaire, suggests that he wants to make a movie with this actor and want his America born daughter to be the actress.
The mother gets very angry and its revealed later in the play that the mother suspects father to have an incestuous relationship with his daughter. It also comes out that the mother herself was victim of incest at some point in her life.
The play was very well acclaimed, most people were appreciative. This play has been translated in Marathi and will be staged in New Jersey. This was a very different theme. So the issues are many, loneliness, mentally people are very lonely here.
NM: The youth of today is really torn between Indian and American. Much has been said about it, infact you have even worked in a movie which dealt with this grave issue—The Namesake. What do you have to say about it.
SB: My play Ron was about a character which belonged tothe second generation here in US. In Ron, Amitav Ray played the lead role. This man is born and brought up here. When he went to Kolkata, people just loved him. He went on stage to tell people that I am Bengali but I cannot speak Bangla. I have lost it. This is a part of our conflict and our children will have to bear it.
I had written a play on teenagers here in US, BSL, which dealt with a guy who was doing some scientific experiments. He made a software where anybody could learn any language in seconds. They experimented it on a friend who was of Bengali origin and did not know how to speak. The machine taught him in seconds but because of a bug, he was not able to speak English. When he fixed the bug in the software he was neither able to speak nor understand English. But as it turns out it was just a nightmare.
The play was a comedy but you do get the message. How they are torn between language and culture.
NM:Â You also stage many of your shows in India, what are your thoughts around taking something like Banaprastha to the major metros in India. Social issues such as these need to be socialized and the community should be drawn into looking at it.
SB : We get a lot of request and invitation to bring our play to India, but the problem is of logistics. All of us have full time jobs here, to stage a show, it gets a lot of team effort. We all pool in money to keep our show running. If somebody sponsors us we will go. Banaprastha would be done Ashok Mukherjee in Kolkata. They have taken my permission on it.
Read Part-1
For information about venue and timings of Baanaprastha click here.
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