Education has become a central concern for several Bengali groups ever since our very own “School for Scandal” erupted in front of our eyes last year. Among recent productions, I have already reviewed Kolkata Playmakers’ idealistic dramatization of Narayan Sanyal’s Parabola Sir. Two older groups, Sudrak and Mangolik, now comment on the situation with newly written plays.
All of us share dramatist-director Debasis Majumdar’s indignation over the dark shadows that engulf West Bengal’s school system and declining standards at all levels. He decided to satirize it in Shikh ʎkhā Jātir Merudanda (replete with the misspelt Shikshā, redoubled by a correction inserted with a caret, symptomatic of the bad spelling in our times), subtitling it an “uneducated drama” and crediting himself as “chief education criminal”, the stage manager as “chief education businessman”, and the rest with other sarcastic epithets.
He targets primarily the corruption in the selection of teachers. Despite its importance, the play goes on for too long and requires major editing of extraneous scenes and jokes, such as the sellers of lottery tickets and tea setting up shop at the start, domestic squabbles among the characters and extending to their in-laws. Moreover, the ascending trajectory of the petty vendors’ careers is much too similar to Rangroop’s Spare Parts (which deals with another of our cancers, the health system).
Majumdar gathers a cast of senior actors experienced in comedy—Sanjib Sarkar (the lottery man), Kamal Chattopadhyay (the tea-man) and Shyamal Chakraborty (the protagonist), with miscellaneous jobseekers, relatives, lovers, political workers and even a priest orbiting them, but finally presents no glimmer of hope whatsoever.
Inspiration by way of what a single individual can do appears in Mangolik’s Return Gift. Saumya Biswas’s script features a retired widower living all alone next to a school. To see the students happy and talk to them, he runs a toy store outside his house which they frequent along with their guardians after school. He bestows even more at the end, when the personal reasons for his kindness to children are also revealed.
It is an uncomplicated, feel-good play helmed by actor-director Samir Biswas in the sincere lead role, accompanied by his loyal retainer. His birthday party in the second half, however, carries on rather listlessly with the parents and their problems. He could improve the text, without making it didactic, by adding conversations where the old man uses the opportunity as the kids’ friend to instil in them the dangers of processed snacks and drinks and plastic destroying the environment.
30 June 2024