Why are you so emotional?
A review of Eigi Khongthank Lepkhiroi

Leichil Chanu *

Playwright and Director: Dr. S. Thaninleima.
In the official brochure circulated, the supertitle translates Eigi Khongthank Lepkhiroi as: I will not cease to go on)

Another title of the play shown as part of the 15th theatre utsav (Bharat Rang Mahotsav, National School of Drama, New Delhi) could have been Eigi Khongthank Lepkhiroi: A Study in Hysterics. The scene opens with the protagonist walking up and down, opening pages of a book and then giving up the book, for a drink, tired at what life had to offer her – shards of broken glasses and thorns in her path and then drunken she attempts to navigate the thorny paths of life.

The Director's note describes the play also as an experiment to express suffering in theatrical terms. There was no subtlety in the expression of suffering – suffering was expressed through the loud monologue of the protagonist, in shouts, and cries bordering on hysteria. One is worried if this would be the portrayal that people takes home of a suffering and resisting woman – as hysterical being.

The major props of the play are – aeroplanes, mobile phones and laiphadibi (dolls). They seem to form a continuum to suggest technology has been used as a tool to harass women, that men form a part of this continuum is suggested. One is lost as to whether the suggestion is that men harass women throughout ages and now have adapted themselves to using technology to that end. This however can be put aside because it does not seem terribly important to the plot.

While the scenes and props do convey the way the multiple ropes that bind the protagonist Apana (Apana in the play, the brochure calls her Sapana which is immaterial at this point or perhaps not – Sapana possibly signifying the aspirations of the protagonist) and the harassment yet each scene stretches beyond 15 (fifteen) minutes (I kept count) each so that the novelty of the props gets dragged and the audience are at the brink of exhaustion.

The constant drinking, referring to the good old drink being her best friend, this when the protagonist was clad in jeans and top and she moves around (as is told to us) among shards of glasses drugged and weary, the background scene showing her with her lover whom she met in the pretext of fetching water seemingly a far fleeting past which did not reach a happy conclusion What was the nature of the harassment could again only be speculative.

All one can glean from the play is that she has changed from the Phanek clad woman who comes to fetch water to a jeans clad woman who drinks in order to bear the possible actions of a man shown only as a silhouette and then metamorphose back into the Phanek clad woman but in a brave version. One will be surprised if the attire was only incidental to the plot.

The scene where the protagonist kicks and smashes and slaps the props (Dolls wearing phanek arranged in a way that it looks like a potloi (the wedding attire)) shouting or in a smirk saying "Women empowerment" either is a problematisation of the word 'empowerment' which is a point one could take home. Again this scene lasted another 15 (fifteen) minutes.

Regardless of the intention of the play the images seem to suggest a range of stereotypical ways of looking at women. The symbols are highly problematic – woman in Phanek with water pot, woman in jeans, lost and therefore, the alcohol and then like a Phoenix, rises from the shards of broken glasses to be a woman in Phanek (after dancing both the martial dance of thang-ta and a romantic soft dance to show the (...yawn) versatility of the Meitei woman who has all these avatars embedded in her) and then rescued by the two women (she refers to as both madam/teacher) who fed her laddoos! The scene might be suggesting the entry of NGOs.

One is speculating this from the previous scene where the protagonist finds the word women empowerment distasteful or could be actually teachers as can be speculated from the reference to Guru Dakshina. Two scenes later she runs to the arms of this two women whom she calls out as 'Madam' – the two sari-clad women speaking in English (both the attire and the language of her redeemer being again not incidental) who mouth the lines 'Why are you so emotional?", and gems like "Smile now" and "Eat some sweets" as interventions to help the protagonist pull herself together. This leaves a real bad taste in the mouth regardless of the presence of a plateful of laddoos. One is of course left wondering why was she so hysterical if it all could be solved by a plateful of laddoos?

But then one quickly realises that it all cannot be solved by the metaphoric saccharine intervention. Her ordeal does not end, there is a mudslinging fest directed at her. She cleanses herself in a fountain and emerges from a pond of lilies. In the closing scene she is consoled by a paternal God-like figure who gave her the inspiration as suggested by the light he passed on to her, holding which, she moves ceaselessly secure of God being with her confident strides.

The sudden conjuring up of God as a confidante and a redeemer at the fag end of the play seems typically like the police of the 70s in the hindi film industry, who arrives when all the fight is over. One has seen better in her previous play Rickshaw amasoong Thongmei and after one has seen Eigi Khongthank Lepkhiroi one can actually forgive her for the forced dream sequence of song and dance in the previous play.