Al Komero

The Nagpur experience had made us aware that in a well-enacted play all the characters have to be good, it would not do have only one or two good actors as happened the case with our Solapur drama circles. Most of the other actors in our groups were aspirants with very little talent, and the this affected the overall impact of the play.

After we came back from Nagpur, we had a brainstorming session on this, and the one idea that came up was to combine three to four amateur groups together to make a team of only good actors, to get a good director and a good script to compete with the best the next state drama competitions. As I and Arwind had worked with about four groups in Solapur, we had contacts and could start working in this direction.

Not that it was all an easy task-it took a lot of effort to take care of egos involved in a joint venture, but we had an agreement. The next problem was of a suitable script. The new composition had four good actors (all heroes in their respective groups) and no sidekicks. There was not a single script that we could find which would do justice to this phenomenon. After a lot of deliberation, we decided to write a fresh script ourselves. We knew the agenda, so we started with a cast of four heroes and one heroine. As to the villain and a side-kick, we got an old friend to the villain's role, and Arwind graciously accepted to be the sidekick-he too, was a good actor.

Having settled the matters thus, we started the search of a heroine. As the competition rules allowed the team to borrow a professional actor for the purpose, we had no problems on that score. The only problem was the cost of importing an actress from Pune, and organising her stay at Solapur for the rehearsals. Prakash Yelgulwar (who later became an MLA from Solapur and is now active in Solapur politics) solved both these problems. He was also one of the heroes of the drama.

Writing 'Al Komero' was one of most enjoyable experiences in my life. Though based on the life of Patty Hearst, we had changed the location to South America, and did a lot of research into the happenings there. We did work on the people, economy, social life and many other issues. We inserted in the play authentic sounding place names like 'San Marco' and so on. On the whole, it was a rewarding experience. The play had to end a tragedy-there was no other logical end possible.

When we read the entire play in a sitting in the group, there were cheers all round. We staged it with enthusiasm, and I was very happy as a young writer would be-the director did not interfere with a single line of the script. The only thing I remember now, is that after a few days of rehearsal, we found out that the length of the play was slightly less than what the rules said-we needed to extend the play-either by adding a few scenes or revising the script. This was a problem as the script was very tight, and did not have any scope of extension.

We toyed with the idea of giving more insight into the life in Al Komero (the fictitious state) but found that it would need additional actors, and sets, both of which was not acceptable. After two days of heated discussions, Arwind hit upon the idea of writing a soliloquy for the heroine. I still remember the day. It was about 4.00 PM, and the discussion took place in the front part of first floor of our house, a place that was free from disturbance from the rest of the house. We talked about what would be the content and so on, and suddenly I hit upon the idea of writing it like a poem. Then I said, give me a day, and it will be done.

I spent a good part of that night in writing up the soliloquy, and it turned out to be the best part of the entire drama. I had written poetry earlier in my college days (I was actually known in JJ as 'The Poet", and I remember people trying to avoid me if I had as much as a piece of paper in my hand). The difference was I was writing this on a theme, and the theme here had to relate to the transformation of the heroine from the high society girl to a sympathizer of Al Komero activists.

Writing this brought me back to the question of politics. As I look back now, it seems that I was trying to put everything I saw as the new entrant to study circles-issues of unequal distribution of wealth, poverty & injustice and so on-and the vision of a new world order based on equality. It seems all a bit naive now, but the attempt was sincere.

I shifted to Aurangabad to start a different career, and all this suddenly came to an end. But my political career extended there in a way I had not foreseen.

Solapur days

Because of Arwind, I had joined 'Natya-pushpanjali', an amature theatre group run by Nandu Kirpekar, and we started moving about the amature thetrical circles at Solapur. Majority of the members of these groups used to meet in the evenings in a 'Satkar' a small Hotel opposite Solapur railway station. It was here that I met Chandrabhushan Kulshreshtha, a dramatist whose frail appearance bellied his heavy sounding name. He was a sensitive & creative writer. Unfortunately, he never got the break he deserved, and may not be known beyond the amature theatre groups in Solapur.

The amature theatre groups used to participate in two main competitions every year-organised by the Cultural Affairs Ministry of the State Government-one was open to all and the other was reserved for workers. As we could be fitting in both the catagories we competed in both. The first stage of competitions was the regional level, and the two best entries were selected for competition at the state level. These competitions have a lot of prestige, and have given many good directors/writers/actors to the professional theatre in Maharashtra. We had hopes of making it to the State level, by winning the first/second position at Solapur, which was our only chance of getting noticed-and to make a jump to the professional theatre.

Drama thus became a major activity for me. In the competition season, there would be rehearsals every day, and discussions on the actual enactment of play, while for rest of the year there would be heated debates & discussions. And apart from the competitions, there were many other opportunities for presentation of the plays for various events, which kept us all very busy.

It was thus I got into the play "Prompting" by Chandrabhushan Kulsreshtha. I was hero's sidekick. Actually Chadrabhushan Kulsreshtha had written a one act play "I say no prompting" which had this hero rejecting "prompting" of any kind, was a rebel, and wished to move ahead in life with original thinking. The play "Prompting" was an extension of this.

We competed in the Workers catagory, got second place at Solapur for play, and got a chance to compete in the finals at Nagpur. I remember carrying all the drama property-the sets, drapery and son, with all the members of the team, and the long train journey to Nagpur. At Nagpur, somebody told us that the venue (Dhanvate Rangmandir) was very near the railway station (which was far from truth-as we found out later) and we walked all the way with all that luggage.
We did not win any prizes at the finals, but had a chance to see good plays staged by other amature groups, and there an ambition was born, which resulted in 'Al Komero', the first & only play conceived & written by me with Arwind Kulkarni as co-writer.

Grooming for Realpolitik

My next encounter with politics came in much later, when I started my practice at Aurangabad. But the background preparation for my entry in politics was done in Solapur, where I spent the two most happening years of my life. It so happened that after my graduation in Bombay in 1975, I went to Solapur to stay with my parents, and started working with Ar. V. T. Kota & Associates.

It was in Solapur that I met Arwind Kulkarni, who stayed across the street, and had a lot of friends all over the place. Through Arwind I got in touch with the study circle of Yukrand (short for Youth Revolutionary Forum) and an amature theatre group called Natya-Pushpanjali (drama as an offering of flowers to God). And then there were other groups too, consisting of his friends from the school & so on. My friendship with Arwind thus facilitated my entry into Solapur beyond the small group of architectural & building construction industry.

The study circles were a boring affair to start with, but taught me a lot about the Marxist theories. There I had my first brush with 'Das Capital' and the theory of dialectical materialism. Eventually I found out that the theories were not important, what was important was that they dealt with a hope that someday the poverty, the inequitable distribution of wealth & resources and all the ills that plagued our world, all this would some day be conquered by the revolution. In fact the theories actually suggested a way to deal with the situation.

There is a saying that if you live in third world, you get attracted to communism when you are young & have a heart, but if you continue to believe those theories at thirty it proves that you do not have a head. I have now passed from both these stages, and as I no longer believe in communism, I can claim to have a head.

But as a young intellectual, the Marxist theories about the world captured my imagination. The Utopian dreams of Marxism were enough to spur us to change the world. I remember the animated discussion on how China & Russia got the common man liberated from the clutches of the wicked rulers (both the feudal lords & the capitalists) and how a similar revolution is not only possible but inevitable in India. It all seems so ridiculous now, but then, in those study circle groups it was indeed a matter of life & death. I have seen people fighting over meaning of a phrase or the right way to interpret Marx in the Indian context & so on. But it was all politics of the naive, without a brush with reality.

That background served us well when we jointly wrote a drama called 'El Komero' based on a revolutionary group in a Latin American country. The story was based on a real one I had read, which dealt with kidnapping of Patty Hearst . When the kidnappers were caught finally by the police, they were surprised to see Patty helping the gang to fight with the police. It turned out that she had fallen in love with one of the members of the gang. We found the story dramatic enough but had no sympathy for the kidnappers. Hence after much thought, we decided to convert them into freedom-fighters & the father as a capitalist who helps the tyrannical dictator of 'El Komero', a fictitious south American nation. This, we thought, would generate sympathy for the kidnappers and make them heroes in the eyes of both the heroine and the general public.

I used a lot of communist theory I had heard in the study circle to spice up the story, but as it happened, it was Arwind (who was a known communist) who got the credit for that part of the drama. But we enjoyed writing the drama, putting all that we had learned in the study circle, and our two years of working in Natya-pushpanjali. We had sought to create a dazzling drama (almost on the lines of 'Sholay'), and saw ourselves as the new team of 'Salim-Javed'.

When we read the script to our group for the first time, there were cheers all round, and we started day-dreaming about the possible state level award for script-writing. We even succeeded in getting together three amature theatre groups to stage the play-creating a history of sorts in the amature theatrical circles in Solapur. But that is another story.

Close encounters of the political kind

If politics makes strange bedfellows, mine were the wierdest. As a student of fourth year architecture in J. J., I was lured with the promise of a free trip to new Delhi (from Mumbai-which was called Bombay back then). The catch was that I was expected to become a member of the Youth Congress by paying the membership fee of some twenty rupees. Little did I know of the strange things that were in store for me and my friends in that fateful trip.

It all started with the dear old Chandrashekhar Prabhu, who was in second year in J. J. then, marketing this idea of a free trip to Delhi to everybody who would listen. The year was 1974, and Sanjay Gandhi was the new son on the political horizon of India. Chandrashekhar Prabhu came from a family of politicians (his mother was MLA), and he was already a youth congress leader. It was to proclaim Sanjay Gandhi as a national leader of the youth, that a rally was organised in Delhi, and congressmen all over the nation were called to collect as many youths as posible and send them to New Delhi for the rally. It was to be the biggest show of strength for Sanjay Gandhi who had ambitions to become the next Prime Minister of India.

So the Youth Congress leaders all over India organised special trains from all over India to take these youths to Delhi for a free ride-it included free transportation to the place of the rally on the first day, free lodgings and a conducted tour of Delhi on the next day.

From J. J. we collected a group of ten-I only remember Gokhale who was in second year then and think that Chandru (R. Chandrashekhar) & Sarang Belapure were also there but I am not so sure now. None (except Prabhu) was keen to join the rally, and we decided to leave the congress youths immediately on arrival to Delhi, go sightseeing for two days, and join the train on its journey back to Bombay. Bombay Delhi train journey used to cost about Rs. 50.00 in those days, so we counted on a net saving of Rs. 80.00, and were happy with the thought.

But the onward journey proved troublesome, as we did not carry any food, nor was it organised by the Youth Congress. The entire train consisting of young men & women-not carrying any food, created havoc at every station that the train stopped. There would be a large crowding at almost all the food stalls, and we could not get through, and could not get anything to eat for the entire journey.

When the train reached Delhi in the early hours, we were all very tired, without any sleep, and very very hungry but all the same decided to catch the first train to Agra. This was a good train, with catering inside, and though our outward appearance must have seemed bizzare to the other passengers, we nevertheless enjoyed to food and the ride.

Getting down at Agra, we hired a taxi and had a tour of Fatehpur Sikri. It was raining very hard, and I remember saying that we should be thankful to the God that water is transperent, a comment that endeared me to my collegues who were (as usual) complaining that I talked too much.

In the evening, we came back to Agra and had our fill of Taj Mahal. In 1974 there were no hastles at the entry or anywhere in the campus. Taj Mahal in those days used to be open to visitors till late night, and I distinctly remember the moonlit Tajmahal even today. Back in Delhi, we had friends in Delhi IIT, and we stayed there as guests. The next day we spent going about Delhi, and before joining the train in the evening bought enough food for the return journey.

The return journey was not remarkable till we came to Balsad (a small station in Gujrath), as we did not venture out of the train-the onward journey had proved it was not worth the effort. But at Balsad, the train stopped for quite some time, there was a lot of shouting, and a whole army of policemen got into the train, arresting everybody. We had no idea what was happening, and there was no question of resistance. We were carried to the police station. The only thing that I remember out of the entire episode is that I tried to argue with the policemen that we did not know what happened at the station and had nothing to do with it anyway, and received a kick in response. That shut me off completely.

The police station was a nice little building with a small lock-up, but it could accommodate only about 5 people. There was no way they could put the entire mob of 2000 students anywhere, except in open ground, and then of course somebody must have intervened, as we were again escorted back to the train in the evening. In total we were at Balsad for about 5 to 6 hours.

When I went back to Bombay, I found out that the incident was very much in news as the opposition parties had taken it up. Newspaper reports alleged that the youths from our train had enjoyed the food on the railway stations along the route without bothering to pay, taking advantage of the chaos. Hence on the return journey, the stall holders were in wait for a show-down. The resulting fights must have led to police intervention described above.

The only thing I salvaged out of the incident was the model of Taj Mahal I had bought at Agra, which was dutifully posted to Bombay by the vendor. It turned out that the model of Taj Mahal had none of the glamour that we had witnessed in Agra. In a way, it was to serve as a metaphor for our entire journey to Delhi.

Late realisation

When I started this blog last year, it was to become a part of my autobiography, and somehow or the other I lost interest in it for that very reason-I could not think of why anybody would like to read about it. But since then I have come across many autobiographies-describing a world quite different from today-nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that a large part of it does not exist today, and then I realised that I too, had experienced this. The context of everything that I was a part once has changed dramatically in the last fifty years, and it is this-not my part in it-would be of interest today.

Secondly, when I came over to USA to visit my son in Jacksonville, Florida, it gave me the free time to think over things from my past. When you look back after 40 years, it is fun to recollect even the goof-ups. At this distance from the event, you can look at it all a bit dispassionately. At least I hope I have acquired that non-chalance now. Let us see.