ACTOR 1: Kali is leaving us. If Kali wants to leave, let her leave quietly.
This house is doomed. There will be no more Ranas, no more victories, no more Kali, no more Mewar. It is over!
ACTOR 2: The house of Mewar must live forever.
ACTOR 1: When you’re not going to live a hundred, why plan for a thousand.
You are going too, Jai?
ACTOR 2: Yes, Rana.
ACTOR 1: It is going to be quiet here with everyone gone. I can smell the emptiness. I am going to spend the rest of my days amusing myself by counting the spider webs growing from floors to the ceiling. Old age comes slowly, especially if you have to wait for it.
18. I’m Blinded
ACTRESS 1: Shh … my friends. Silence! I hear the flute. He has come. Oh look, he smiles at me. The time has come. I have waited all my life for this moment. The time for the play is over and I must leave. I am a bride today and I’m going to his home of infinite happiness.
He is calling now.
Dance, my heart! Joy! Mira is in the arms of her beloved.
Listen to His melody. O world, hear His divine Name—the glory of His Word. And see how the hills, the sea and the earth sway to the rhythm of His sound current.
(Mira’s Song.)
Mira’s heart feels so light. I am free—free from life and death and time. Look at his light, shining like a thousand, thousand suns. My eyes shrink from his splendour, brilliant like fire, blazing, boundless. Ah, it ravishes me! O light of lights! He outshines the brightest moon and star. I am blinded. But how I love my blindness. I’m blinded.
(Fade)
Note
The play is in one act to be performed in one sitting. All actors are on stage all the time; there are no exits or entrances. When actors speak their stage directions, they do not generally enact what they say. Action does not stop when a dance is indicated—the dialogue continues throughout the dance, as a visual and emotional aid to the actors’ words.
It is best to use Mira’s original songs. The best translation is by Shama Futehally (In the Dark of the Heart: Songs of Meera, Harper Collins, New York, 1994) from the original by Deshrajsinh Bhati, Mirabai aur unki Padavali, Ashok Prakashan, Delhi, 1962.
9 JAKHOO HILL
The first performance of the play took place on 6 June 1996 at Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi, with the following cast:
Karan Chand (Mamu)
Bhaskar Ghose
Chitra
Sinia Jain
Deepak
Rupin Jayal
Amrita
Kusum Haldar
P.N. Rai (Rai Saheb)
Ajay Balram
Ansuya
Shyama Haldar
The production was designed by Anjolie Ela Menon and
Produced by Joy Michael/Ajay Balram
Directed by Sunit Tandon
Characters
[In order of appearance]
MAMU (KARAN CHAND)
CHITRA
DEEPAK
AMRITA
RAI SAHEB
ANSUYA
The action of the play takes place over two days around Diwali in 1962 in an upper middle class house at Jakhoo Hill in Simla. The play is in four acts, divided by an interval during Act 3 when Ansuya and Deepak leave for her room
Act One
[Opens on Karan.]
KARAN: Thank you for coming this evening to watch the unfolding of the events at 9 Jakhoo Hill, Simla. The play is set in 1962. It revolves around two families of Lahore and what happened to them after Independence, or, more correctly, after the Partition—that great tearing apart, which reduced people to elemental, fearful creatures; desperate to survive, clinging to the vestiges of dignity.
Well, these two families survived. One of them consists of a lady from a fine old family, her young daughter and her brother. Her husband died in the riots; they lost all they had in Lahore and came away to Delhi, where they had a couple of mills and a big, sprawling house in the Civil Lines. But she and her brother were no managers and, after their father died a few years later, they were all at sea. As the losses mounted, they had to sell the mills, then their house, and they moved to Simla—to 9 Jakhoo Hill, once their summer residence.
This was all they had been left with, and a meagre income from bonds and shares, much too inadequate for their way of life.
The other family is of a young man, a successful executive in Bombay and his mother, who endured the terrors of Partition, and moved to Mumbai, where the mother, with an obsessive devotion, ensured that her son got the best education and then a good job in a good company. She has a husband, but he doesn’t count, so you won’t see him.
(Enter in a separate area, Chitra and Deepak, carrying luggage. They sit on a bench.)
Here they are, waiting at Kalka station for their connecting train to Simla. This is Deepak, the young man. He’s a bright, cheerful young man, eager to get on, and very, very conscious of his mother. His mother, Chitra, is a survivor: street-smart, calculating and unconcerned about her ways. She has one item on her agenda: to push her son up.
(Enter Amrita, in the upstage area, adjusting her sari, examining herself in a mirror, and obviously getting ready to go out for the evening)
The other family now: Amrita, over there, was born into a distinguished family, as I said, into a world of grace, refinement and good taste, and, of course, great wealth. That world is gone, but she clings to her memories.
(Doorbell rings. Amrita goes to the door and receives Rai Saheb, and ushers him to the sofa, chatting and collecting her purse, shawl and umbrella.)
Gentle and caring, she is trying to cope. She is talking to a family friend, Mr P.N. Rai, ICS, a Secretary to the Government
