Disaster from NSD: ‘Tajmahal Ka Tender’ Fails to Deliver Anything but Disappointment

Shimla, Nov 04 Ritanjali Hastir:

In an underwhelming start to the National School of Drama’s 60th-anniversary theatre festival, Tajmahal Ka Tender felt less like a professional production and more like a low-budget magic show from a village fair. Directed by Chittaranjan Tripathi, this rendition of Ajay Shukla’s satire on bureaucratic absurdity was a noisy, garish mess that somehow managed to transform what could have been biting social commentary into a painful, drawn-out ordeal for the audience. The first five minutes alone were enough to make one wonder if they had accidentally wandered into a Jadugar Samrat Shankar show—complete with loud, overstated performances that would feel more at home in a rural fairground than on the esteemed stage of NSD.

The premise of Tajmahal Ka Tender, which humorously imagines Shah Jahan’s dream of the Taj Mahal getting bogged down in endless red tape, should have been an incisive takedown of inefficiency and corruption. Instead, it became an unintentional satire on poor theater. Overpowering music and unnecessarily flamboyant costumes felt like desperate attempts to distract from weak performances and missed comedic beats. The actors rushed through their lines so fast that any humor or critique got lost, leaving the audience straining to catch the jokes that never quite landed.

This was not just a missed opportunity—it was a disgrace. NSD, a prestigious institution known for fostering serious theater talent, presented something closer to a C-grade film brought to life with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The satire was buried under the noise, and the message of corruption and bureaucratic bungling never came through.

If there had been an intermission, it’s likely half the audience wouldn’t have returned. In sum, Tajmahal Ka Tender was a theatrical disaster that stripped NSD of its credibility, and left viewers wondering how something so clumsy, tacky, and utterly devoid of impact could come from the very institution that claims to elevate Indian theater.