Premiered by Pancham Vaidic under Arpita Ghosh’s direction in the tiny Tripti Mitra Natyagriha in 2022, Debasish’s surreal Gharer Madhye Bāri now appears in a revival by his own group, Theatre Platform of Khardah. In his career studded of late with theatrical gems, this production might well occupy the position of a crown jewel, without the noticeably glittering sound and fury of many of his works, yet a mesmerising miniature nevertheless.
Always interested in dilapidated old buildings and their denizens, Debasish presents such a house on the brink of demolition, abandoned albeit still inhabited by (nothing new in our lives but startling when we see it) a spider, cockroach, rat, gecko and ant worried about their impending homelessness. His choice of domestic biodiversity pleasantly surprises since these five belong among the unlikeliest on the likeability ladder of nature’s creations, though I would have ranked a mosquito and termite above the spider and ant in his hierarchy of household horripilation. Meanwhile the human owner returns periodically, searching his abode in vain for something that he evidently values.
The critters’ mutual conversations, and with the man himself, expose hominin as violent exterminators of other species, compared to themselves, designated by men as vermin but who have gone about their business on this planet from prehistoric times with respect for all life forms. To top it, they reveal that they were people in their past births. Simultaneously, therefore, Debasish references reincarnation ironically as well as characterizes the “pests” lovingly in zoological details. He infuses their dialogue with great human humour—for example, the rat reports that during uninsured surgery for tail reattachment at a government hospital, the gecko lost his backside. He implicates Homo sapiens finally, in their quest for immortality, as not just guilty of the genocide of nature but also as homicidal by nature.
Debasish directs his play with near-perfection. Raju Dhar does a star turn on all fours as the wise, hirsute, ancient spider addressing his fellow residents formally by their Latin nomenclature, and now ready to meet his own death. Bhaskar Mukherjee, the old man, looks, moves and mumbles fittingly like a relic of the past himself: both of them pictured in the photo above. The others in the cast complement the central duo, though the actresses (in the parts of the bandicoot rat and sari-clad gecko) wear clothes more normally feminine than we expect.
6 January 2025