In the last of this winter’s international gigs, Sudrak hosted Aaloron from Keighley, Yorkshire, who anthologized four of Tagore’s love stories. The script by Kolkata-based Shailen Patro and Dilip Banerjee promised much, progressing in quadrants titled Ākānkshā (Desire) to Anubhuti (Feeling) to Anurakti (Passion) and Aprāpti (unattainment, not Desolation) through Shesh Rakshā, “Samāpti”, Nashtanirh and “Shesher Rātri” respectively. Under director Dibyendu Bandyopadhyay, the group of theatre amateurs showed considerable acting talent that deserves harnessing in a full-length production of a single text to challenge their development, rather than in half-hour abridgments.
Two aspects of their process of condensation damage the impact. First, the compression does an injustice to Tagore—with Aaloron’s express aim “to bring a classic text to a contemporary audience”, their reductions prevent non-cognoscenti from gaining the full flavour. Worse, the dramatizations not only curtail the storylines, but also distort them, especially the endings, which gives wrong impressions of the sources, misleading viewers (like in England) who don’t know Tagore’s works at all.
Furthermore, the equal time distribution imbalanced the originals. We can accept the short stories in 30 minutes each, but how can the four-act Shesh Rakshā and the novella Nashtanirh receive the same duration, putting them at par with short fiction? This affected the characterization, too; only Debjani Aich got enough scope and stood out as Mrinmayi in “Samāpti”, growing up from a “crazy” tomboy into a woman feeling love. (Of course, we reserve our judgment on Tagore’s apparent validation of child marriage.)
7 March 2026