META-winning production Hunkaro came to Calcutta recently for its debut show whetting the appetite of city theatre enthusiasts for more. Staged at Kolkata Centre for Creativity and produced by Ujaagar Dramatic Association, a theatre company comprising of performers based in and out of Jaipur, it won in multiple categories including Best Production, Best Script, Best Lights, Best Costume, Best Set Design, Best Director, and Best Ensemble. And Calcuttans savoured each aspect of the 85-minute multi-lingual play with its six-member cast who used their oratory skills and held the attention of the audience throughout.
Hunkaro, meaning verbal affirmation or response from the listener, is an intriguing weave of three stories that talk about strength and migration and hold on to the element of hope tightly in its script. Out of these three narratives, two are from young contemporary Rajasthani writers Arvind Charan and Chirag Khandelwal while renowned Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha’s story lays the foundation for the production. Mohit Takalkar directed and designed it while Hakam Khan Kesumbla lent music to it.
The first story talks about a farmer from Marwar who loses his wife and is left behind with two kids and a piece of barren land and then he and his second wife decide to kill the children and leave for Mumbai in search of a better life. The second story brings back memories of the lockdown and the exodus of migrant workers from big cities to villages, from hopelessness to hope. The story is that of Amar who has no food, no water and no money on him and yet he is hopeful that sooner or later he will be home. Enroute, he meets a half vulture-half crow who becomes his fellow traveler, friend, foe, and philosopher. The third story Maai by Arvind Charan is another lockdown story of two brothers, Birju and Mandu who live with their physically challenged mother in a small chawl in suburban Mumbai and have hopes, dreams and a mundane life to bind it all together. When lockdown is declared, they both decide to leave their mother behind in Mumbai and go back to their native village in Rajasthan.
With similarities to the tradition of dastangoi, Hunkaro is strong on the oral aspect of storytelling and knowing the attention span of an audience, it masterfully weaves the story often involving the audience in the narration. Performers Ajeet Singh Palawat, Ipshita Chakraborty, Puneet Mishra, Bharati Perwani, Mahesh Saini and Bhaskar Sharma’s technicality in bringing out the emotions and irony in the story is worth lauding. With mere words, powerful and at times lyrical, Hunkaro pushes one to picturise the story in the mind and feel the pain and helplessness of the characters holding on to the last string of hope in the heart.