This writer’s story is stranger than fiction

CHANDIGARH: The threeday seventh Chandigarh Theatre Festival ended on Saturday with the play ‘Atmakatha’ by Mumbai’s Padatik group. Featuring veteran television, film, and theatre actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda as protagonist under the direction of Vinay Sharma, the play debuted in the city after 45 shows.
It is one of the wellknown works of veteran playwright and screenwriter Mahesh Elkunchwar.“In the play, everything is recorded, everything recorded is distorted, everything distorted is recollected, everything recollected is recorded, and the cycle continues,” director Vinay Sharma said, who added that it was different from his earlier productions because of the use of a projection technique between the scenes to flash moving images of future dialogues. It’s a play about relationships and their different realities for different people. It is the story of a husband, a wife, and a sister’s regaining contact after 30 years. It is about the deceit of memory.
Atmakatha is the story of nationally acclaimed writer Anantrao Rajadhyaksha, who once had a wife (Uttara), a short-lived affair with his sister-in-law (Vasanti). In his free time, he studies astronomy. Almost 30 years after Uttara and Vasanti left him to his stars, he’s helping a young researcher, Pradnya, write a thesis on him. When Uttara (played by Chetna Jalan) and Vasanti (played by Kalpana Jha) exchange notes on what went wrong, they come across difficult realities about each other and self.