'The Play'

Hindi to English translation by Vaibhav Tibrewal & Rajeshwari Agrawal

Stage makes a human life much more beautiful. It helps you to stay alive. You are able to put out your beautiful moments to more and more people and the audience respects your feelings and through this medium they are able to recall their own moments. This is a medium to communicate your feelings to people and spread your thoughts throughout. One get to see the world from someone else’s life. It's just like a tree which one plants in one's garden or balcony, and give water, and once it grows one can pluck the fruits from it and let everyone eat; after which everyone starts talking about it. Campaigning, singing and dancing, you spread your thoughts through each media. Sometimes the participant can get depressed, but can still try to find out a lot amidst the misery as well. The key is to work hard, trying to find out the truth of life. What is the truth? Understand the intensity of one's life and in this while one finds out something that one had never imagined.

My father wanted me to become an advocate which I couldn’t. But when he saw me enacting that role on stage he must have definitely thought if I would have become an advocate, I wouldn’t have said those things which I said standing on that stage.

Every day is new and everyday one thinks of a new character. Keeping my personal life aside, I sometimes think what is there to achieve in all this. But it gave pleasure when I used to laugh and make people laugh, and at times people I didn’t know would cry with me as well.

This helped me a lot to understand what is the life so beautiful. Stage is really an ocean, whose depth is not known, but everyone wishes to have a surreal experience of drowning in it.

Off topic, I love writing poetry and quotes. I got the inspiration to write from Gulzar Sahab. He is an incredible personality, who has definitely inspired many people to write.

I don’t know about others but I can surely tell you about myself. I started doing theatre from Jammu and participated in lot of plays. I worked with an organisation called ‘Natrang’.

Here, studying in Academy of Theatre Arts, I got the opportunity to work with well known artists and know their experiences. There experiences gave me a lot to dwell upon. In my first year, when my senior asked me to translate Shakespeare’s famous play “Romeo and Juilet”, I just shut my eyes and said yes. Because of that, I again got the opportunity to translate Shakespeare’s adaption of the play “The Comedy of Errors” from Marathi to Hindi. My colleagues had requested our director Mr.Vijay Kankare to give this opportunity. He simply told me to take care of it and he’ll manage the rest. It was a very difficult task, since I didn’t know Marathi, but he endowed confidence in me. My friends used to explain the meaning in Marathi and I translated to simply pen it down. At time it would be difficult for me to literally translate meanings in Marathi to Hindi and and during this struggle I discovered how to make someone else’s work your own. It was even fun to complete this task.

When the casting for this play was done I was a bit depressed since I was not considered for this play. I wanted to work in this play as an actor and I had requested my director as well. I was ready to give my audition as well. He probably liked the passion and gave me a chance to enact in that play. Since then, I started enjoying writing even more since I understood how to make my thoughts reach the people and also since I had more knowledge of the subject.

Sir William Shakespeare is known for the enigmatic plots in his plays. He has written all genres of plays, based on different possible events. I always made sure while writing, that I keep the original plot intact in my adaptions.

I tried to write this play in a way that people could understand it easily and they could related to it easily. Since our culture and ideas are a bit different.

When I translated Romeo and Juliet, I created a character who managed the stage. His speciality was to keep the story intact in a poetic manner.

He says,

““God has blessed them with love,

They are angels of love and love is how they converse.

Societies can’t endure the image,

When all’s vain in splitting them apart.

("खुदा ने नवाज़ा है उन्हें इश्क़ से

वो इश्क़ के फ़रिश्ते है इश्क़ की बात करते है।

देखकर बर्दाश्त नही होता ज़माने को

वो उन्हें जुदा करने में जब अक्सर नाकाम होते है")

While writing this play I could do both the things; I could write my poetry and make it reach the people, and did translation in the process.

Shakespeare in his plays, has used a lot of poetry. My purpose was to maintain his character of writing. It was important for me to bring his quotes to our masses.

I feared that the translation into Hindi might diminish the essence of original, that was written so beautifully in English. I somehow managed to not shy away and tranlated his famous quote as following-

“He that commends me tomine own content

Commends me to the thing I cannot get.

I to the world am like a dropof water

That in the ocean seeksanother drop,

Who, falling there to find hisfellow forth,

Unseen, inquisitive,confounds himself:

So I, to find a mother and a brother,

In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself."

I wrote,

"मैं मेले में आकर भीड़ में ये सोच रहा हु

मिले चेहरा आपना कोई इस फ़िराक हु

जैसे बारिश की बून्द कोई तलाश रही हो

दूसरी बून्द का सहारा

दोनों बुँदे जैसे समुन्दर से जा मिल गयी हो।

मैं ढूंढते हु माँ और भाई को चोराहे पर आ खड़ा हु

इस मेले में तलाशते हुए अब मैं ही कही गुम सा हो गया हु।"

Director Vijay Kankare has also seen theatre in London Broadway and he enlightened us about the same, which was of much use to us. He even used to share his experiences with us.

His knowledge of plays was praise worthy and he never let the smallest things go unnoticed. There used to be big debates on every topic and now I had started to understand how difficult it was to manage plays and what were the smallest of things that would be considered.

Working with him was great fun, because he never spoke to anyone like other Directors spoke to their artists. He used to talk about his friends, about cricket and that an artist should perform with such concentration which we usually see on a player’s face while playing cricket.This was his individual style.

I was a little worried on the show day because i worked both as an actor and a director for the play. Lord showed mercy.

I really enjoyed writing songs for the play as well, along with translating those Marathi songs to hindi. I even wrote songs for the play, which were later on translated from hindi to Marathi. For a writer of my experience, this is a great honour. I don’t come from a music background, but I am deeply connected to music. During this whole process, I got an opportunity to learn Marathi music, which was a ‘cherry on the top’ moment for me.

As soon as we finished our play, I/C Director,Prof.Mangesh Bansod, Academy Of Theatre Arts announced that this play will be published in the form of a book and soon people will be able to read it. This was sheer happiness.

Lastly, if you could only convey Gulzaar Sahab that a boy from Jammu wants to meet him,I wont be able to thank you enough.

Jai Mata Di, Roheet Vermaa