Khache Kintu Gilche Na – An intimate theatrical performance based on texts of Bratya Basu

Best Of Kolkata Campus, in association with Drishya & supported by Alliance Francaise du Bengale & Culture Monks, present

Khachhe Kintu Gilche Na

Text-Reportage-Poetry-Voiceover: Bratya Basu
Direction, Design and Curator : Parnab Mukherjee
Movement-Speech Axis: Janardan Ghosh and Raja Bhattacharya
Installation: Baishampayan Saha, Sangat Haldar, Zaid and Gautam Bajoria

Date : August 4
Time : 6:30 pm
Venue : Alliance Francaise du Bengale, Park Mansions, Park Street, Kolkata

Curator’s Note:

Well, this play, never starts..and therefore also never ends. We, consciously, would not know how to end the play because conflicts don’t end and peace trickles down in small doses. How do you locate dislocation? What is an urban rupture? The journey of the texture and brittleness of memory..seen through body-images. Why images..why not straight forward narration ..this is because if we repeatedly cry wolf and shut the liminal spaces down, then any kind of dissonance is gleefully avoided.

Dry path, all through life

Having been born with a cry

In a hatred

Turning on itself.

Thus was the

Great absence.

Thus was

The story of the ruin.

If only freedom

Could sing a song

Small, smaller even …

Than the throat of a bird.

These lines by Ahmad Shamlu captures a sense of migration. The island within ourselves. The islands that are created with a specific socio-political agenda. The islands that are allowed to fester, perish and die.

In this suite of 40 photographs, we juxtapose two of Iran’s fringe areas. Fringe, here,
is not geo-political fringe, not your typical version of victimhood, not only a sense of prescribed and the proscribed..this is a tale of crafted alienation.

Who crafts the alienation?

A typical answer would be both political and social forces. If you are sold to a little more Spivak-Said topography you would then dissect even the mindset. But what if a society is crafted in such a way that you slowly allow spaces to shrink, consciously and then let loose controlled violence in those shrunk, disappearing spaces.

These dichotomies and dialectics, these dissonances and departures permeate the frames. What do I struggle with these multiple faultlines of memory…I have plugged in my hard disk. Memories float. I have plugged it out now. In this arid landscape, I am trekking with a bag full of 400 terabytes. Two portable hard disks of 4TB each, in addition to the 1 TB of my laptop and my memories of childhood and those sepia tinted photographs inside numerous albums all over my house and memories of another million snapshots that are etched in my mind but never recorded manually or digitally. The selective wear and tear of this memory, the convenient modification of this memory and the inconvenient trek of the memory from the deepest pores of angst…all this makes me a memory junkie.

There are so many memories in my backpack. Memories, I plug in. Memories I plug out. Memories with whom I am fighting this boxing match…each of us want to deconstruct dissent. Both thinks that we know the way. Do we? In this scrapheap of broken shards aren’t we constantly bleeding…don’t we realise the extent of the haemorrhage.

What can a memory junkie do? Saving files…text, data, jpg, nef, tif, pdf, scans, more scans, flv, torrent downloads, applications, trial pack…saving and saving more..so much that accumulation is the key. So much that the micro-emotions of reaching out becomes an easy casualty in this race of knowledgability (sic).

I am tracking and trekking with memories. One day, I will die. Soundless. No bullet. No knife wounds. No heart attacks. No extended spells of coma. Nothing..simply dropping dead.

Call me a memory martyr.

We have used four texts of Bratya Basu, one of the important urban chroniclers of post Independence Bangla theatre to create this production. One of the mist defining features of Bratya Basu’s non-theatrical writings is his ability to converse both with the reader and with himself at the same time. So. you do not to need delineate his dialogue from his internal monologue. Invariably, these writings (along with his significant theatre corpus) deals with a sense of urban dislocation. Be it is Aranyadeb, be it is in his translation of Five Finger Exercise, be it in Chatushkon or his amplification of the central kernel of Baburer Prarathna or Krishnogohobar which I find an important milestone in Bangla theatre..right up there with Ekei Ki Bole Sabhyata, Debigarjan, Nayan Kabirer Pala, Archimedeser Mrityu, Namjibon, Latakhamba, Sukhopathya Bharoter Itihash, Bagh, Dansagar, Hanua Ka Beta, Pap Punyo, Raktakarabi (of Pathasena-Kanchrapara), Bibhab, Julius Caeserer Shesh Saat Din and Captain Hurraah.

Four of Bratya Basu’s pieces are being produced for the first time and this immersive theatre experience is a peep into the mind of the playwright and his inner processes. So, the Atanu Majumders, Haradhan Bags and the Ghosh of Company theatre leaps out of the page as actors wrestle with the truant subtext.