Once I was struck by a curiosity bug carving to know the
difference between music and literature.
After a lot of thinking, I came up with no answer. There was no difference – they we both
cognitive desires of human. Giving voice to that thought welcome to ‘Club
Desire’ – a play which so realistically gives words to our ideas of desire.
Placed in a night club, it revolves around the concept of love, tradition,
possession, order, anarchy, where music and words form the driving components
of the act. On a larger note it is the contemporary version of the 19th
century opera ‘Carmen’ – premiered at NCPA, Mumbai on 24th of
October 2103.
Adapting ‘Carmen’, the plot of the play remains the same
while the values at stake fall in line with today’s world. Chahat, the female
protagonist of the play is a dazzling singer at the club. She calls herself a
‘rebel’ and has a strong sense of self-identity and freedom which comes from
her spontaneous singing. Jayam is a poet, who falls in love with Chahat, and
has complete faith in the beauty and order of the world. Compared to the gypsy
Carmen, Chahat is more complicated a story. She is out front, bold, and yet we
see she has had hard time with her foster family as she breaks down after
recalling them in her song.
She is feminist character with respect for woman’s
occupation. We can relate her to the intervened fictional character within the
play – Gulabo. Chahat sustains justifications for Gulabo’s position, who ‘Loves
a man, yet sleeps with another’. She believes that Gulabo is not cheating on
the fictional hero, but is obliging to her occupation as a ‘mujhre wali’. Chahat’s
brave, ruthless temperament defies all stereotypes linked to women. She doesn’t
adore beauty or order; she is wild, crazy, and outspoken.
A very power statement comes from Chahat as a reply to
Jayam’s argument about her hidden pregnancy. She says “You are the father
Jayam, when I tell you that you are the father”. And in that scene she takes
the goodies away, lust like in some other scenes too. In her favorite song about an Armadillo,
which is her connect to her true self and family, she shares the fate of the
Armadillo who can not sing. Chahat knows that she too is not free from
possession of love; she too can not sing and be what she wants. Yet, in an
attempt to achieve her freedom, looses her life and attains her desire just as
the Armadillo. Such manifestation of Chahat brings a female protagonist and her
deep dug issues to the forefront of our mind.
Jayam is an organized,
beauty lover ‘buzzing bee’. A translator and a poet, he utters his memoranda of
love at first sight with Chahat in a beautiful Hindi poem addressing is mother.
While reciting the poem ‘Chahat Kya Hai Ma?’ the actor Rashid Faisal, allows
himself flow with such exacting expressions of love. Many other poems of the
play receive like wise treatment from him, mesmerizing the audience into the
scene.
As a character, Jayam
is a man with feet in too many boats. ‘You can’t love and be in order’ this
Chahat tells him. In fact, his tragic story is prey to this feature of his,
where he losses everything he has at his own hands. He loves Chahat, loves his
mother, loves poetry, and he links all three together so tight that it leaves
him and Chahat breathless. His mother is old and sick with probably Alzimers,
she serves as his only family that he wishes to cling on to. Chahat becomes his
love and inspiration for his poetry similar to his mother and he wishes her to
follow protocol of women-cum wife and meet his mother. Obviously Chahat doesn’t
give in to him.
Motifs
Love – Desire
Club Desire explores the true and fatal nature of love and desire
in a man’s and women’s lives. It is a pigment that binds together Yin and Yan
such as Jayam and Chahat. For all that is known from their character, they
could have gone separate ways with out challenging each other’s existence. But,
alas! They fall so deep in love that it hurts Jayam to stay away from Chahat
while she too can’t resist his charms. ‘Mujhe to dard ho raha hai use dhoor
rehne se’, ‘Kya mein usse chu lu’,
Shayad na chunese hum dono adhure rehjaye’, all this composites the poetry of
Jayam. And for all we know the fire flares equally on the other side.
As the love blooms among the two, so does the feeling of
jealousy and possession. This, especially in Jayam , who tries to bar her from
drinking, and talking to DJ Abeer in the night club. He even grows insecure
when Chahat’s boss touches her in a casual bar habit. Jayam replicates the love for his mother in
Chahat, and with her being his source of happiness and inspiration; he goes to
an implausible extend of possession and finally kills her for not being
possessed by him.
For Chahat love is what does not cling on, it does not want
to possess. Her character would want to
be accepted by its lover and not changed. ‘He wants to enter her world and
change it, what crap?’ are her words in referring to the failed love story of
Gulabo and her lover. Love means more to her than just ‘exclusive sex’ which is
not guaranteed in Gulabo’s case. She has
had great time with Jayam who soothes her familial wounds and is there in the
happy moments where she recalls her dead father’s song. That seem a neutral
position to be in and beyond that is beyond Chahat’s capacity. Her sexuality,
her pregnancy and her sexuality does not change her definition of love.
Family
Jayam’s father had left his mother and him. His mother lost her memory in depression.
This left Jayam in haywire to figure life on his own. So he does, and he tries
to grasp on to what every family ties he has got, even if they be the ugliest. In
fact it is his family that bestowed upon him the passion for poetry. His
mother, an ex-Hindi literature teacher, responded to him for the first time
after he recited a poem to her. Further on Jayam is exploring the field he
hopes for his family to mother to return back to him.
The case of Chahat is different, because for her family has
been a ‘catastrophe’, and she a ‘veteran’ of it. It is lost, yet she too is in
search for her origin as she recalls her father’s song. And she too is inspired
by her father to pick music as a career. But unlike Jayam she isn’t obsesses
about her past, she has let it go and relishes the world of today and now.
Jayam on the other hand cherishes am imaginary order of life where family is of
chief importance. Dedicated to that thought, he has no hobbies, no habits, and
no life. He seems ‘some kind of slave’ as Chahat frames it. Asking of Jayam to
choose between his original family and Chahat, the play marks a contemporary
split between modernity and tradition.
Words and Sounds –
Order and anarchy
The protagonists standing for their own profession highlight
the contrast between their tastes. Words and sound both compliment each other
but when they fight against each other in form of Jayam and Chahat a massacre
is bound to occur. Jayam doesn’t like Chahat’s music and refutes her
unthoughful use of words in them. ‘All words are precious’ he says and Chahat apparently
flings them out, distorts them in her songs. This contradiction and love
between the two leads to death of one of them.
Conclusion
Club desire entertains a very rare but capitulating theme of
life and death, Music and Literature and the love for them. It gives a kick to
the audience and gives them a desired illusion of love at the stake of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment