“Kafan” Staged at Gaiety

Shimla (Himachal Tonite Bureau): It will not be wrong to say that without our language, we all will lose ourselves. Who are we without our words? Keeping the aforesaid statement in mind Department of Language, Art, and Culture, Himachal Pradesh to mark the celebration of Hindi Divas organized a play based on the story “Kafan” by Munshi Premchand.

“The main objective behind organizing the show is to bring people close to their rich heritage and literature as books and people are these days poles apart”, said Director LAC, Dr. Pankaj Lalit.

With the staging of this play, the ‘Mecca of Theatre’, once again brimmed back to life as theater lovers stepped in to experience theatrical magic once again. The story of the play revolved around lazy, dishonest, and superstitious, Ghisu and Madhav members of the untouchable leatherworker caste, the poorest and lowest in India’s highly structured social hierarchy. Madhav’s pregnant wife dies with the baby inside the womb and how the duo manages to collect money for her shroud yet uses the money for their drinks.

The narration is fast-paced, and the dialogue bristles with anger and irony, as it does in many of the stories Premcand wrote toward the end of his life. The solution the two men find for their sadness is only a temporary one. The next morning both will have to face the problem of not having a shroud for cremating a woman whose goodness they seem to acknowledge only at her death.

While executing the story on stage, it had its fair share of ups and downs. Gishu was able to capture the essence of the character but the narrator fumbled a couple of times that disturbed the smooth flow. Poor lighting in spite of no scene change reflected the lack of rehearsals.

Speaking on the occasion Chief Guest S.N. Joshi a well-known name in the field of literature emphasized the need to give due importance to Hindi literature too as in current times people are already shrinking away from books and especially when it comes to Hindi many might fail to even count 5 Hindi writers on their fingertips.

It is very important to stay connected with our roots he added.