Plays/Theatre

I have been interested in playwriting and theatre since I was 10 years old. I used to gather my friends and put on plays for our families and charged them money – a few paisas, as I recall. The whole process was very exciting: finding the script, collection the actors, getting together to rehearse, then putting it on, having two children hold a bed sheet which served as curtain and stage. My first role was as the king of Piff Piff Land, and my line was, “I’m the king of Piff Piff Land. Where can that daughter of mine be? She must be home in time for tea.” There was a prince, too, called Prince Charming, and his lines were: “I’m Prince Charming and the ladies call me fair, and they all fall for my raven black hair.” And that’s all I remember of the plot and characters.

My childish and childlike interest bloomed again during my college days when in addition to acting as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, I wrote short plays — skits, mostly — for college functions. From that I graduated to full-fledged plays in 1974, most of which were published in the now defunct New Delhi based theatre journal, ENACT.

Though I got two awards for playwriting in 1979 – The Sultan Padamsee Award for Playwriting in English – I was unable, for one reason or another, to attend the performances of my two plays performed in Chandigarh and New Delhi in 1982 and 1984 (?). Kaamiya, produced in 2014 in Mumbai, was the first time I watched one of my plays being performed.