Conductor’s cut!Kafir by M.A.D.

If Rabindranath Tagore was writing his masterpiece ‘Bisarjan’ today, would he have written it in the
exact same way? If your answer is yes, Kafir will scar you. And honestly, theatre is not for the weak.

If you possess an intelligent mind which understands the need for change with time, you would be
spellbound for 90 minutes as a great work by our literary genius is unfolded under the deserving
light of the present.

Kafir might make you angry or you might just go ‘Exactly my point!’ But Kafir will tantalizingly slip in
through the cracks of your psyche and leave footprints. Now, it’s up to you to measure the success
of a play and we are not here to discuss that.

We are here to explore M.A.D.’s Kafir and we have found the best possible person to help us with
our goal. Meet Aritra Sengupta, the writer and director through a short conversation which will try
to bring clarity to what happened at GyanManch last Sunday.

BongRong: So how did ‘Kafir’ happen to you?

Aritra: The starting point of the idea of re-imagining ‘Bisarjan’ ...to tell you very briefly, throughout
my history as an audience member, not just as a theatre practitioner or director – I have always seen
that whenever someone approaches a Tagore text today, be it a play, be it a poem, be it a song –
there is a tendency of forcibly modernizing it. And in the post-copyright era, trying to modernize
Tagore is not a big deal anymore. However, what most people do not realize that the man himself
was far more “modern” than most of us, and he seems “archaic” to some people today, because the
nature and style of performances have remained archaic.

But in the course of modernization, somewhere the entire essence of Tagore remains very
conservative. The way it was performed 20 years ago, the same essence remains and I saw not one
attempt that really moved me. In all the Tagore productions I have seen so far, I didn’t see an
attempt which changes the very aesthetics of performance itself. It was always modernizationing by
changing the context, by adding a lot of modern references, by changing Tagore’s words and I felt
that it kind of beats the point. If you have to modernize then you have to change the form,very
essence, the treatment, and the politics of performance.

And that was the starting point. Specially, because ‘Bisarjan’ was one of his the earliestrplays among
all that he had written, I saw a lot of inherent scope in the text – lot of possibilities that could be
explored by adopting a completely different performance style and aesthetic than the ones that we
have always been associating associate with Tagore’s plays. Not by reinterpreting, not by
deconstructing but reimagining the text itself. What if the world words of ‘Bisarjan’ was were
different? Hence, we used another modern master to evaluate Tagore, and by using Brechtian
alienation, we managed to explore the raw, visceral and gritty undertones of Bisarjan.
BongRong: From the audience we saw you Conducting a play rather than Directing it, because you
were also on stage making all the pivotal changes in Kafir’s plotline. With great power comes great
responsibility. What responsibilities did you carry with you when you went up on stage that evening?

Aritra: Because we were performing Tagore’s text in Tagore’s homeland, there was this added
burden that I wanted to do away with. I have always felt that while doing a Tagore text we should
approach it as organically as we do a Shakespeare or a Brecht or a Miller or a Bernard Shaw.

The entire point is, if we have that emotional and sentimental bias towards the author, it will be
reflected upon in the performance. We will never be able to negotiate Tagore properly. Obviously,
there was a sense of this responsibility. But it didn’t come from the fact that, ok, I have to do justice
to Tagore.

The point of doing a timeless text or adapting a classic is raising new questions which might not have
been explored in previous performances.

Sometimes I feel you need not do justice to the author’s vision but re-negotiate and challenge the
author’s vision, which Joysingha does in our version of ‘Bisarjan’.May beJoysingha tries to break out
and say, somewhere down the line, it was the author’s cowardice that in the text the character
couldn’t break out of.

Obviously, whenever you are saying something, there is a responsibility. But we have always
maintained it as a group that our responsibility is not giving alternatives or solutions to problems. A
few audience members did ask that what the possible alternative to Jaysingha’s death is.
_________________________(completely inaudible due to honking). Our responsibility as an artist
lies in raising pertinent questions. Our job is to simply point out what’s wrong, not give solutions.
Because that becomes preaching . and we are not here for that.

Now we will leave it to the audience to decide whether the questions which we raised were right or
wrong and or what’s the answer to them. At the end of the day when they go back home, they will
can think about it this. They might agree or disagree with the questions. They might think and not
take the text as it is. But the point is simply creating an atmosphere of proper discourse, that’s what
epic theatre eventually wants to achieve.

BongRong: What is your perspective on religion?

Aritra: If I talk of religion at a personal level, I have always felt that when religion becomes
something regimented, something very structured, it takes away the very essence of faith. I feel that
the essence of faith is in the fact that we form a very strong spiritual connection with something.

For me religion is very personal. I feel if religion becomes something organized, structured and
regimented, it destroys kills the spiritual form of expression that one’s faith is supposed to be. the
essence of religion. For example the idea of Hinduism down the ages has been eroded so much that
now it has been reduced to a set of make believe rules; it’s fundamentally a very deep philosophy.
That philosophy has been converted into something very forcibly structured structured.right now.
One can practice Hinduism without practicing rituals. How I will pray to a God in my head is my own
choice. One can practice Hinduism and pray to their own personal God without having to adhere to a
set of principles or rules. Somewhere that choice is missing in how we interpret religion today. That
is my problem with religion. I do not have a problem with someone believing in something. That is
perfectly alright. But believing in social conditioning but not exploring the personal connection is
something that bothers me. But for a lot of people, their faith is completely dependent on their
social conditioning, and it’s no longer a personal choice.

BongRong: You have somewhat partly answered our next question. But we will go ahead and ask
you anyway. If we look back at our history, do you see a prominent line which differentiates
between organized crime and organized religion?

Aritra: That was one of my basic starting points when I was deliberating on constructed the
treatment of Kafir. When I see the dynamics in a gangster film and when I see a film about a
fundamentalist group, I can’t find any basic difference.

Over the years, the basic power dynamics and the basic ideologies of organized crime and organized
religion have come to reflect each other. So, nowadays, we see religious fundamentalism becoming
equivalent to terrorism. For that matter, On the other hand criminals, mafia lords, and gang
leaders are using religion as an excuse. It works both ways. So, somewhere the line of difference
between organized crime and organized religion has become more and more blurred.

In both cases, they rely on the blind faith of people towards them. Both of them propagate this faith
by creating an atmosphere of fear. Religion creates fear by saying that if you do not follow this, God
will punish you. s will be angry about it. If you do not pray enough, you will be punished. And
organized crime says the same thing.is the same. It says “if you don’t follow my rules, you are going
to get hurt real bad.” I think both the power structures has come to resemble each other so much,
it’s impossible to distinguish between the two in today’s world.

BongRong: In the socio-political context of today's India, if we have global economic progress on one
hand and freedom of expression on the other, what will you keep and what will you throw away?

Aritra: I think one of the major problems of post-globalization India is, we are very in-between. We
still refuse to cannot accept economic progress wholeheartedly. and neglect the after effect of
globalization. In today’s time, when there is an almost unipolar world with American hegemony
looming large over us,; the choices are very difficult.

As a citizen of this country, I think we need to stand on a firm ground where we accept that
economic growth is inevitable and we shouldn’t hamper progress. The hard-line left politics has
hampered the growth of economy in several parts of India. You cannot just neglect the fact that
globalization has several positive effects too.

But, we must try and counter the cultural hegemony of the American State or the cultural hegemony
of any goddamn country in the world by maintaining a firm ground. We must use globalization to our
economic advantage and social advantage and make sure development happens. We need to make
sure that a country cannot dictate terms for us but still we can take help from that country. And at
the same time also ensure that the development is sustainable. So, negotiating at a diplomatic level
is very important.

It’s very important for the people of India to be aware of how the economy is going to change in the
next 10 years so that we can hold a firm stance and not be caught in-between. We must try and
negotiate terms and not just accept them blindly.

BongRong: Where do you feel the need of evaluating a genius of the past under the light of
contemporary times?

Aritra: We have created icons out of geniuses. There is this one voice-over in the play where I have
actually written that Tagore was a mad scientist. And when we turn mad scientists into icons which
they never wanted to become, we strip strip them ofdown their very essence.

I have loved and appreciated Tagore so much.... only when you analyze and examine the genius of
that man that you realize we might not have explored all the possibilities. In Britain they are doing it
with Shakespeare, in Germany they are doing it with Brecht. If we can’t evaluate our own geniuses, if
we turn them into gods and become blind followers we will doing grave injustice to
RabindranathTagore. and Tagore was against this idea.

If we truly believe in his genius, we will consciously contentiously make it a point to negotiate with
him, to negotiate with his vision and to challenge him. You can only challenge a person you
appreciate, understand love and have great respect and admiration for.

And that is why I think we shouldn’t keep Tagore in the make-believe shift shrine that we have
created for him. May be we should bring Tagore to the streets and negotiate with his vision, re-
examine his vision, reconstruct him, deconstruct him, re-imagine him and only then, down the line,
we will be doing justice to Tagore.

The point is to create an atmosphere for debate. We accept with all humility that people are free to
disagree with us. We are simply trying to create the atmosphere for debate and in my humble
understanding of Tagore, he was trying to create that all his life – an atmosphere where people will
have passionate disagreements and have passionate debates about everything. and not just accept
every thing blindly.

BongRong: Thank you for those mindboggling 90 minutes and finding time to talk to us afterwards.
We hope after this chat our readers will have a better understanding of your version of ‘Bisarjan’.
We might agree or disagree with your ‘Kafir’, but we will always remember the evening when
Kolkata theatre took its first step away from blind Tagorism. It was our privilege to be among the
audience. Until next time then....