Synopsis
The protagonist of the play, KASHMIR KASHMIR is a hotel in the middle of nowhere. The multiple story lines are borne along by a shadowy narrator who seems to represent historical influences. The play plods on. Mysteries are never resolved. Anecdotes are all there. Freak or banal events happen simultaneously, inform each other and poignantly keep the wheel turning. There is no logical end to the play because there is no solution in real life.
Director’s Note
The play tickles my palate because of Ramu’s discordant writing. For starts, it differs drastically from the contemporary playwriting of Tendulkar and Elkunchwar and the philosophical Sufi writing as well as the writing of Ashutosh Potdar. What stands out is the play is an example of ‘process writing’, a text which will be presented in the very act of creation and change. This offers possibilities…
Also, the play is a rejection of realism. Instead it questions the objectivity of external truth to examine inner states of Kashmiri consciousness through the VOICE. Again lots of possibilities…
And finally, the play escapes from the clutches of stereotypes and easy generalizations. The audience will have to fathom what fiction is v/s reality, narrative v/s truth. Again, lots of possibilities…
All these possibilities interest me as a director. The fact that the writing self-consciously points to itself as an object in order to question the relationship between reality and fiction.
Ramu is certainly not alone in critiquing the occurrences in Kashmir. There are hundreds of experts and scholars who would do a better job. However, what makes the play interesting is, the methods of narrative construction and exploring the fictionality of the external world.
