This Republic Day the youth upholds morale of shading away snobbery – a parasite making the social structure hollow
The acting students of City Pulse Institute of Film & Television (CPIFT) are celebrating the Republic Day in a unique way. They have come forward with experimental drama presentation Hans Chala Kauve Ki Chaal (when crow assumes to be a swan) on the eve of the Republic Day – a social satire that voices that the lofty ideals that our society lived with in old times have diminished to reach its shallowest forms today and a change in this context is a must.
“The students have realised that they need a major change in the present social structure and hence they voice their belief in form of an experimental drama,” said Anwar Jamal, director of CPIFT, who is multiple national award-winning filmmaker and has made critically acclaimed documentaries on a wide array of social, political and cultural themes.
The drama Chala Kauve Ki Chaal which was enacted on the eve of Republic Day at Gandhinagar by a team of 12 students is an adaptation from The Bourgeois Gentleman, a comedy in five acts by Molière, gently satirizing the pretensions of the social climber whose affectations are absurd to everyone but himself. It was first performed as Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme in 1670, with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully, and was published in 1671. It has also been translated into English as The Prodigious Snob.
The play reinstates the old golden saying that one should have high thinking and simple living – which has been turned upside down by a large section of upper middle and elite class people who are tempted to follow a high living and primitive thinking life style.
Jamal said that by unmasking the hollowness lurking behind tall ideals linked with Indian identity, the team of students put forth a protest in subtle and artistic way. “The spirit of new nationalism celebrates simplicity, believes in action and demands change and the play aptly conveys these emotions,” said Feroz Zahid Khan who has designed and directed the piece. Khan, who has worked as freelance acting trainer with various organisations in Japan, Germany, Singapore, Bangkok, Malaysia, London and India for the performances and theatre workshops, at present works as a head of acting department at CPIFT.
The play Kauva Chala Hans Ki Chaal revolves around a middle-aged bourgeois character named Kumar whose father grew rich as a cloth-merchant. He has one aim in life, which is to rise above this middle-class background and be accepted as an aristocrat. For this, he orders splendid new clothes and is very happy when anyone calls him high class. He applies himself to learning the gentlemanly arts of fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, despite his age; in doing so he continually manages to make a fool of himself, to the disgust of his hired teachers. His intelligent wife sees that he is making a fool of himself and urges him to return to his previous middle-class life, and to forget all he has learned. The play ends on note of ridiculing a wedding ceremony – which mocks at the marriage of Kumar’s daughter Dolly to Kukku – a middle class boy who is disguised as Prince.
