‘Mithya’ and Some Factual Myths.

Somewhere in the middle of December, shivering under the coldness of the happenings around, I called up Rahul in greed of some warmth from his relatively hotter surroundings. Expecting ‘Hello’, my ears were instead greeted with a pretty long sentence. “I have found the script I was looking for. I am directing it,” said a loud voice from the other side, probably enthusiastic.

The satire which was being ferociously searched for had at last been found. The catch was Mark Twain’s famous short story, ‘Is he Dead or Alive.” The conversation didn’t last long. I didn’t want it to. Marx would have agreed with my action. But somehow I found myself back in Delhi after a couple of days and a meeting with Rahul ensued.

The idea of artist and the behavior of the society towards him did interest him a lot and that could be gauged by the zeal he showed while describing the plot. A day earlier, Anjini, Siddharth and Rahul had come to a table and, astonishingly enough, had come up with the basic structure of the play. I was handed the script and I began running my eyes through it. A story of a painter, who fakes his death in order to make survival for him and his friends possible, is really thought giving. The fabricated death leads the painter to enormous fame and wealth in the same society which was about to starve him and his friends to death. But all this also comes at the cost of his identity and talent.

‘Indifference of society’ and ‘recognition of a dead artist’ has numerous testimonies in India, the most prolific being that of legendary painter, M.F. Hussain. ‘The Picasso of the East’, as he was famously called, was forced into exile by the same society which garlanded him once he passed away. As the session came to a closure, I could visualize the play in front of me. I could visualize the story of Francisco Millet on stage. Oh! It’s Sabha. Sorry, it’s Rashid Siddique.

Soon the New Year had its first dawn and after two more commenced our college after the winter break. The preparation of the play started with it too. Everyone was busy in making what came about in the chilliness of winter break into a hot reality on the stage. Logistics and pre-production were the first to be set in motion. Room bookings, hall bookings, sets and props were initially decided and then foot was set on the ‘inevitable’ part – casting.

Casting took some time, as it was meant to. Basit, Ankit, Anushrut, Sukrit, Harshit, Rupesh, Shinjini, Christopher, Faizan and Siddharth were given the shoes to fill into. Some did that effortlessly, some had to wear additional things in order to fit in and for some, sizes were too large to handle. After a week of ups and downs, approvals and denials, shouting and advice, practice and more practice, visions and blindness, critics and admirers, despair and hope, the show was put up.

The shows went well and audience did seem to enjoy it. They also did, really, get a hold of the concept which the play was trying to portray.  This is a conclusion drawn from their applause, which I witnessed as a part of it. The brilliant concept and its successful execution received its due after all.

- Muhammad Mutahhar Amin