To be born into the world of intellectuals who profess their principles and expects the world to follow them, is being born chained where one has no freedom of movement of thoughts in the direction lead by one's heart, guided by one's soul and powered by one's desire. I refuse to be chained though I refuse not, to be born. There's something that Khalil Gibran said in his famous work The Prophet, that is true in the very sense of it, especially in the control freak world of today, where one's sole purpose seems to bind people, chain them, strangle them and refrain them to explore the world the way its never been explored before. He said :
" Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of life's bringing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.........."
Last Saturday I witnessed the free spirited man, dauntless and inculpable. Dreams of Taleem is a play that is in spirit, everything that this man stands for and everything that we can only hope to be in the world today. It was the first play that I saw, oh no, experienced is the right word, cause it was so much more that seeing. The play celebrates the unyielding drive of the people associated with theatre and homophobia faced by the parents who would rather abandon their child than accept him with his reality. Its a sensitive portray of the struggle that a mother undergoes when she finds the truth about the homosexuality of her youngest and most beloved son. The story is in fact, more complex than the issue itself. Before the start of the play, the director Sunil Sanbhag introduced us to the background of the play. This play is essentially a tribute to a supremely talented theatre personality Chetan Datar who died young in 2008. This play was originally written by Chetan but much before it could be produced, his news of sudden demise sent waves of sadness, anger and futility down the spines of many a theatre personalities. The play, a masterpiece, was left lifeless with its playwright gone. That's when Sunil Sanbhag got in touch with a young playwright from Pune, Sachin Kundalkar who breathed a new life into this play, interweaving Chetan's story with the struggles of a theatre personality who relinquishes the cliche and strives for the acceptance of originality and crude reality. It is a tribute to all those people who have refused to compromise on the scripts they believe in and turned down lucrative offers to be a part of senseless cinema.
The play stars Anand Tiwari, who plays Yash, an actor by choice, an engineer by force, and the love interest of Anay, played by Suvrat Joshi who is a director working on Chetan's script and hasn't produced a play for the past 6 months. The moments of intimacy of the two has been handled very sensitively and asthetically. Anay struggles to find an actor for the role of the mother who deals with the homosexuality of her son in Chetan's script. That's when a convincing actor Divya Jaglade who plays a forgotten actress Sita, enters and saves the day for Anay and Suvrat. But the best is still to come, as they say, the strongest performer of the play is Geetanjali Kulkarni, who plays a handicap, mother of Sita. Geetanjali keeps blabbering throughout the play in Marathi, gives the audience moments of chill and leaves them in splits at other times. She emerges as an actor whose presence hides the weak links in performances and the jinxed scenes. Between the rehearsals of the play, where Divya falls into many a monologues, Anay is striving to save his relationship with Yash who is scared to break the news of his sexuality to his parents and is slowly falling under their pressure to get married. Anand, who plays Yash is not convincing enough as his performance lack the efforlessness that Suvrat brings in his performance. In a conversation that Anay has over the phone with his "Aai", he is so convincing and believable that it almost moves you to tears and leaves you feeling as helpless as Anay is at that moment. There are many such moments in the play which lead you to reason the principles you live by and the adamant nature of human beings who resist anything that's unconventional and brand it as evil.
Dreams of Taleem does full justice to the extraordinary script of the two playwrights. With good actors, average background score and intelligent direction, the play turns out to be a Taleem that's one of its kind. I would endorse it to everyone who enjoys live performances and wants to go on a roller coster ride of emotions, cause that's what the play offers you together with a deep sense of reality.
