Gujarati play Samudra Manthan is an ode to the sea and women power

A saviour is bigger than a killer, with this message the 37th enactment of Samudra Manthan, a Gujarati musical play by Jashwant Thaker Memorial Foundation written by Devaki Bharat Dave and directed by Aditi Desai was staged as a part of Sandhya Saurabh festival at the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay auditorium in Ahmedabad on Friday, March 1.
Inspired from the real life story of a Kharwa woman, Kabi Mithu Kashta, in the 1940s, the play is one of the first written by Devaki (enacting Kabi and male role of Teja) and transports the audience in the jam-packed auditorium onto a ship owned by the male protagonist Mithu enacted by Abhinay Banker.
The Gujarati play, that received ‘much appreciation’ even among the Hindi-speaking audience at the Bharat Rang Mahotsav last year, shows the struggle of Kharwa women with the patriarchal society while casting a light on nostalgia and longing faced by sailors who spend months out on a voyage. The plot of the hero suffering from tuberculosis knowing that the society won’t allow him to take his educated wife aboard his own ship manages to sneak her in but in the guise of a man is well delivered by the cast with several twists, turns and surprises which makes the audience applaud and cheer. The chemistry between Abhinay and Devaki looks natural on stage particularly when they try to steal a moment for themselves but are later caught by sailors for whom drinking and smoking aboard the ship headed to Africa is a daily ritual.
Harsh Thakkar in his anti-protagonist role of Bhudo is convincing as he brings out all things evil about the mankind on stage particularly the ego. The fear on Saumya Thaker’s face, in her role as a small girl who sneaked onto the ship petrified by her step mother but is eventually caught by men who want to throw her into the sea to punish her, arouses sympathy among the audience.
The seven beautiful songs by Mehul Surti though bind the feminist play but look a bit forceful. The play set in the 1940s does justice to the dialect of Mandvi and has contemporary social and managerial relevance.
Dialogues like, “This sea has both good and bad but it is my world, my life”, “Everybody should know every skill aboard a ship”, “How does it matter whether a captain is a man or a woman, we will go with the one who shows us the right path” received a thumping applause from the audience.
The use of metres of clothes in the opening scene across the length and breadth of the auditorium being swayed in the form of waves by the well-choreographed dancers accompanied with adequate sound and light transports you in the middle of a sea.
One feels the same during the storm scenes as it turned more realistic by the sound and light as the sailors move to the extreme left and right of a ship amid rough sea. The audience feels engaged when several actors get down from the stage at multiple points and deliver their dialogues.
The play imparts hope in dealing with daily life and is laced with several sea myths, metaphors like dhruv tara and saptarshi guiding one back home. This voyage of Samudra Manthan is worth taking.