Nilakantha

Great creators observe the society very precisely and in some of their creation they sketch the darker side of people in general which we deny in order to project our limitation as inevitable.

Somewhere in my blog I have written about the master Hrithik Ghatak in Meghe Dhaka Tara where he has nicely explored this cunning /unforgiving /ruthless/jealous /selfish human nature in the characters surrounding main protagonist Neeta. In fact this nature is in all of us and as in India –we are all some social creature so everyone has to intact the way society expect it to do so. And while performing your social responsibility you might lose your money, self respect and eventually your whole life.

Off late I was reading Natya Sambhar (নাট্য সম্ভাৰ)–the complete collection of plays written for moving theatre of Assam by master visionary Late Dr.Bhabendra Nath Saikia .

It’s a huge collection consisting of  24 full length  plays. Unquestionably all of them are masterpiece. As I started with the topic of uncivil behaviour of our so called community while I went through the plays in many plays I observed the same bitter observation as in Ghtak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara in completely different plots.

What runs parallel to Neeta’s life in the movie is similar to what happens in the life of Nilakantha (নীলকন্ঠ) - in the play by the same name. But Nilakantha was much stronger than Neeta .He had dream for himself, for his town, his family but all people wanted from Nilakantha was sacrifice. Nilakantha never minds giving, but appetite of a selfish surrounding was never satisfactory and fate had decided some other ending to his life.

But Nilakantha never bowed down to his fate but preferred to live the non existent life of monetary misery but his head still held high.

Terrific narration and as usual very illustrative dialogue with metaphor from daily life (the trade mark BNS dialogue) like

Nilakantha asks Radha after meeting her eleven years apart ‘How are you Radha? Any news?

Radha: What news can you expect from me, I am okay.

Nilakanth: Its been eleven years and still there is no news?

Radha: Even if it rains cats and dog have you seen water settling on duck's back, my life is something like that….

Dialogue like that hunts a spectator for many years .Nilakantha is notably one of the best drama from this collection. And that is the reason I believe we need more and more publication of plays and we should build up the habit of reading drama.

Because once staged a drama vanishes in the ambiguity of high speed life, and unlike movies and books never come back to public eyes even people want it to reproduce.