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Legitimising Violence: A Reflection on Satish Alekar's The Terrorist(Atirekee, 1990)

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  The Terrorist originally Atirekee written in 1990 is a pathbreaking, sensitive, and thoughtful play that revolves around the family of Bapurao, Bhavna and Babu. The play reflects on the idea of power and forces us to reflect on the conspicuous idea of what power actually is, how power can be created and how power controls. As in the earlier plays, like The Dread Departure and Deluge , The Terrorist also asks questions and leaves it for the audience/reader to answer. These are the intentional gaps left by the playwright which provokes reaction and change. Whether the anticipated change is definite is impossible to be determined for Alekar’s expected change is not in the collective front but at the individual level. The attempt and the dramaturgy are commendable and highly respectable. The Terrorist is definitely a seminal text. The play finds Bhavna crying one foggy morning as her husband Bapurao and Babu are supposed to have left the house. She is met by Manda and her h...
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Revisiting Satish Alekar's Deluge (1975)

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  Deluge is the flow, the flow that takes everything along its course -the good, the bad, pride, hatred, envy, anger, success, failure and what not. Satish Alekar’s play Deluge , translated from the original title Mahapoor is thought provoking, critical and highly engaging. It raises questions that shake the very essence of ideological indoctrination and asks one to revisit one’s decisions which might appear to be idealistic but are in reality shallow. Govinda Raghunath Kavathekar, in this play is a young man of around 25 years whose idealistic view of the world collapses as his expectations and understanding of the promised world fails to meet the world of reality. Govinda is us. We are Govinda. But while in our everyday existence we continue to maintain the garb of sanity, Govinda fails to accept the simulated world of survival and hence faces the ordeal. Govinda 's language is meaningful at one time and fragmented, mismatched at the other. As we read the play we begin to q...
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Reading Satish Alekars 'The Dread Departure'

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  Satish Alekar’s ‘The Dread Departure’ (1974), talks about a lot of things, subtle yet poignant. If the stage is to be imagined, it looks like a cluttering of characters - Bhaurao, Nana, Rama, the neighbours, the neighbours acting as a chorus, the body, the soul, the invisible yet present man in ‘suit and sunglasses’; Alekar’s message and storyline, however, is lucid and the boundaries clear. Death is the ‘Mahanirvan’, the original title of the play, the ultimate salvation. Every religion of the world has its own rituals connected with death. The entry and exit of human beings is ritualistically observed. Things that one should follow, observe so that a child’s stay in this world is fruitful or an exit in the form of death does not mar the peacefulness of those who continue to live even after. The text begins and continuously reiterates the Hindu concept of the atman, the soul being distinct, and different from the body and that the body has to be cremated religiously for a di...
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