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loving the imperfect : ismat ApA ke nAm

amitabha mukerjee
[thoughts while watching ismat ApA ke nAm, three short plays performed by naseeruddin shah, heeba shah, and ratna pathak, based on ismat chughtai stories - chuimuI, mughal bacha, and gharwAli ]

at one point while watching naseeruddin, rachna and heeba perform ismat

ApA ke nAm i found myself thinking how the relation between theater and
cinema is like that between a painting and a photograph. each painting is done by hand and is unconsciously distinct, just as each stage performance must be. brush strokes and mixing of paints in the palette differ, as do voice inflections, stage layout, lighting, etc. more profound, though subtler, may be the effect of light on canvas, time of day, conversations with estranged daughters, all affecting ultimately the mood of the artist and converging onto the hand holding the brush. on stage, the type of audience, the nature of the introductions, the imperfections of travel arrangements, all affect the overall mood of the performance. even as i was watching the energetic heeba execute the childbirth sequence in chuimui, and the gentle dignity of ratna pathak as the spurned beauty, gori bee, i was conscious of my own situation, the front of the balcony like a precipice dropping off into nothingness, the angle of the lights, the dark mass of audience heads below, and how this atmosphere, this vast expanse opening in front of me, can lift one's mood, and alter one's receptivity to the same unfolding drama. every execution of art by a live artist, and every instance of a person observing it, is a distinct event, full of its individual characteristics. it is through these differences that we celebrate our human-ness. in every small imperfection lies the seed of our mortality. but differences can also be deleterious. the brush wavers, the voice falters,

and the viewer becomes disgruntled. technology's response is to seek the manna of perfection, which it tries to freeze forever. by distilling repeated performances the cinema seeks to capture the elixir of immortality. everytime you play the record, chandralekha devi's ras ke bhare tore naina moves through the same meers and gamaks, without a single mis-step. it is this inexorable perfection itself that is the anti-thesis of creativity, and while we have become inured to it, somewhere perhaps, the human spirit rebels against this uniformity. is that why we value our van goghs and our live rashid khan concerts, for their human variation, their minute imperfections? by cloning perfection, technology devalues its own offspring, and we rebel against its facelessness. or is there something about perfection that alienates us, just as kale miyan is alienated by the searing beauty of gori bee? to him, does she come across as an ethereal beauty, and is he afraid that his mere presence may corrupt her perfection?

but by now, we have moved beyond gori bee. from beyond the dark expanse, naseeruddin shah's voice comes to me as the servant girl lajo in "gharwAli". something resonates in her disdain for the trappings of wifehood; is it the same rebellion that i hear, the rebellion against ordered goodness, the rebellion against the un-human-ness of perfect laws? the lights come on, one set of stories come to an end, but the other goes on. in the crush of the audience near the exit, i can feel the urge of human spirit seeking escape. escape from the pressures of tradition, the humdrum, the banality of achieving things exactly as they are expected. pedalling into the cold kanpur fog, i too seek my freedom in the imperfection of kanpur traffic, in the vastness of the open road.

[performed at: kanpur university auditorium, 2008]