Article
The Play
"HEY NUNGSHIBI PRITHIVI"
(My Earth, My Love)
Synopsis:
The wheel of time rolls on. The present is a small link connecting the eternal
chain of the past and the future. But, who knows what is there in store tomorrow
for us, the mankind. If we look at the mirror of the past to see the image of
the future, the future of the Earth, eaten bare to the bones by the humans, is
very bleak – an uncertain gloom hangs in air.
On opening the pages of the history of mankind, horrendous images of the past
unfold one after another. Closer at home, seven-year devastation of Manipur by
the Burmese is clearly etched in the history of Manipur. Hordes of children had
been suffocated to death with the smoke of burning chilies. Thousands of people
tied with cane-splits passed through slits in the ears and palms had been
dragged away as slaves. In other parts of the world, many more terrifying
incidents had happened. Hundreds of thousands of people had been packed in
concentration camps and starved to death by the Germans. They had taken rev!
enge for killing five hundred thousand men, women and children after raping
fifty thousand of their women at Stalingrad by the Russians. The Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbour. The Americans retaliated by dropping atom bomb at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki causing damages of untold magnitude, and injuring and
killing hoards of innocents. Genocide during the Khmer Rouge regime in Kampuchea
has also marred the history of Mankind.
There is no dearth of such horrendous incidents written with blood in the
history of Mankind. Prophecies of wise men for the recurrence of such incidents
in future reverberate in air. Isn't the duty of the present generation to
reform, and bring peace and harmony to the Earth for a better future of the
mankind?
In the play, seven sisters, celestial nymphs (mythological characters), weave a
cloth, the traditional symbol of love, peace and honour, in a loom for offering
to the Almighty with a prayer to put a stop to war and bring peace to the Earth.
History is personified as an old man. The nymphs, who can assume any form, fly
around the Earth as birds and incarnate as human beings to open the chapters
from the past, soaked in blood. They also fly to West Asia and Europe to see the
demolished Ottoman bridge on the Neretva River built by Suleyman, the Sultan of
Mostar.
The play ends with nymphs, symbolizing the peace loving citizens of the world,
offering the cloth they have woven so meticulously to the Almighty with a prayer
for peace and harmony. Assuming the form of pigeons they fly off to collect dust
from the place at Bamiyan where the colossal Buddha once stood peacefully and
sprinkle it over Ground Zero, twin towers of World Trade Centre once stood
firmly. History, crippled with the atrocities on women and children, is reduced
to an open book in a wheelchair. Are the flags of UN fluttering?
Directorial:
How far the human race is going to tolerate the atrocities of war where most of
the time women and children are the major victims? And when peace will really
come to this world?
This play does not tell a story. It makes an attempt to share human sufferings
and emphasize on the need of human understanding where a serious collective
effort is very much required to bring peace in this world.
Not a conventionally woven play, it crosses the barrier of time and space to
highlight a statement.
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