Just a day with Heisnam Kanhailal

Jyaneswar Laishram *

Heisnam Kanhailal - Padmashree Recipient (Theatre) :: July 2009

It was my wife who informed me first the 'death of veteran theatre icon Heisnam Kanhailal' week before last week as she got the information from a social media network. She's is a hardcore networker; I'm not. I had double-checked the news, because I'm a non-believer of all these social media musings. Then I found it true, but sad. Sad because the loss was indeed a loss of a bold luminary from the world of Manipuri theatre, which is rather appreciated and popular outside than in our own home-ground or state. In this, down the memory lane, I have the reminiscence of my first rendezvous with the doyen of sensible theater - Heisnam Kanhailal of Kalakshetra - and it was last too!

It was on the 14th of March in the year 2000, more than one and a half decade ago, at Shri Ram Centre for Art & Culture in New Delhi, I was with a friend waiting for another friend who would bring us entry passes for Heisnam Kanhailal's play Draupadi. The play was part of the ongoing national theatre festival Bharat Rang Mahotsav - and it was about to begin in a few minutes; but the another friend, who was then a student of National School of Drama (NSD) and who is now director of a prominent theatre group in Imphal, was seen nowhere around. Finally, after a long wait, I saw her running to us with a bunch of entry passes and apologies for being late.

"This play is totally different from those of oja's earlier plays that you must have seen," she informed us. But it was my first ever play of Heisnam Kanhailal; I hadn't had seen any before. She continued, "There's nudity! It's something the protagonist, a rape victim, does throw her phanek in anger at the face of an Indian army officer, exposing the butt in full view." Her words drove both of us, me and my friend, baffled in thought of what the story would be. We had little time to further ask her to elaborate the storyline or theme of the play as she suddenly disappeared rushing to the backstage where Kanhailal's troupe was gearing up to unfold the opening scene of Draupadi; and we crawled towards the last seat rows where some still remained vacant for those who came late, like us.

Curtains lifted and the play began. Draupadi, based on eminent Bengali writer and activist Mahasweta Devi's short story of the same name, apprehended the breathe of audience in the full-packed auditorium. The play delivered a poignant message echoing stark atrocities of Indian armed forces - rape and molestation of women, killing of innocent civilians, fake encounters - particularly in the regions of the country where dwell marginalised people and the government (at the centre) calls the regions 'disturbed areas' and everyone around terrorist or militant or naxalite, whatever they wish to.

The play ended. And I saw a herd of people, predominantly non-Manipuri, greeting and congratulating Kanhailal in the backstage for the play they had ever seen in the Indian theatre scene. And the host of crowd around the playwright got thinner after a while. Then it was my turn to greet him. He smiled at me as though we knew each other or met before when I introduced myself in Meiteilon; and requested him for a brief interaction. "It's noisy here. Why don't you come down tomorrow to the hotel we stay; it's very close-by," he said, pointing at a direction. "Let's chat there comfortably." I noted down the hotel name and address.

The next day morning was cloudy, and no traffic jams on roads because it was a public holiday. I reached the hotel located near Connaught Place in central Delhi where Heisnam Kanhailal and his troupe checked in. The first thing he explained at the beginning of our conversation was the resemblance and non-resemblance of his play's protagonist with that of the Mahabharata. He said that Draupadi in the Hindu mythology eventually sought help from a divined male agency while the one in his play fought alone to take vengeance against her oppressors.

In the Mahabharata, Draupadi was disrobed in public by a group of Kaurava molesters. In turn, the angry lady left her hair untied, vowing to tie it only when she could wash it with the blood of her molesters - which was fulfilled in her case with the help of brawny male agency of her five Pandava husbands. But in Kanhailal's play, or Mahasweta Devi's story, Draupadi never sought help from anyone, nor picked up any weapon for revenge. Instead, she unclothed her body to make it into an act of rebellion. It was her nudity that eventually frightened the licensed killers and rapists called Indian army.

Originally in Mahasweta Devi's version of the story, Draupadi, or Dopdi as her tribal folks called her in their tribal tongue, is a Santhal woman who along with her husband Dulna fought against the atrocities being illicitly committed by the armed forces in Jharkhand. Dopdi Mejhen, a 27-year-old tribal woman, was announced 'wanted' in murder of a village jamindar named Surja Sahu and his son. Army unjustly framed her naxalite in order to bring her to the custody where they would torture and rape her repeatedly.

But the stark differentiation between the tribal Dopdi and Draupadi of the Mahabharata, according to Kanhailal, was the verity that the latter could never be the former. In case of the tribal woman, there was neither the power of patriarchal protection nor miraculous fortification by an endless flow of sari from Lord Krishna to cover her bared body, he explained to me, during our day-long meeting. Regrettably it was my first and last meeting with the man of substantial theatre movement.

Yet the irony of Draupadi, I mean the play, today is that ABVP, the student wing of BJP and religious rightwing RSS, just recently condemned the staging of the play, not Kanhailal's version, at Central University of Haryana in Mahendragarh. The saffron group of youngsters alleged that the play was anti-national as it presented the Indian army in bad image while the men in uniform were suffered in Uri attack. I happened in Haryana!

Wish I could meet Heisnam Kanhailal just one more time and report him all this.