All in good humour
C. SURESH KUMAR
|
A satire shows the true colours of our swamis.
|
FOR THE SWAMI A scene from the play.
Why does the Hyderabad theatre buff go missing whenever local talent performs, but makes his presence felt when troupes from outside perform?The average response to the Hindi play Goodbye Swamy presented by Sutradhar recently at the Telugu University, perhaps can be attributed to getting used to free passes given for other shows, whereas to watch this play one had to buy tickets.
Goodbye Swamy is a satire about gullible people of our country who blindly follow fraudsters who come in Swami's garb and presume that these Swamis can change their destinies. How the swamis take undue advantage of the situation, how they fool people who come in large numbers to get their problems solved and how the Swamis makes a living out of these innocent followers is the crux of the play.
A thief on the run enters an ashram by chance and sees that the Swami has a big following, besides wealth and an easy life. He thinks that instead of stealing and being on the run this is a better option. By a stroke of luck, the main Swami of the ashram intends to go into Samadhi for few days and he nominates this thief to run the show as the next in command.
The thief starts enjoying his new position as he finds that the followers blindly accept his fancy preaching and start worshipping him, apart from filling his coffers with money. His devotees are from different walks of life, like the politician who wants to know whether he will get a chance to contest elections, the gambler wants to know which number will hit the jackpot, the guy with an allergy who wants to get rid of it and so on and so forth.
However, the thief prefers to run away from the Ashram once he discovers that the original Swami was also a fraudster and was arrested by the police and they are looking for him too. He decides to nominate one of the followers as the next in command for the ashram and he moves on. The devotees accept the new head and worship him.
The play, written by Sushil Kumar Singh, was directed by Vinay Varma and Bhaskar Shewalkar. The imaginary scenes of the thief who enters the ashram were well depicted and showed the director's creativity.
The play evoked good response from the gathering for its satire, however the play was a drag at few places. The two main artistes, Arun Shendurnikar as the main Swamiji essayed his role with ease, while Vinay Varma as the thief gave a neat performance. These two also showed their skill in timing and dialogue delivery.
The others - Sandeep Hemnani, Krishna Gargi, Shravanti Paranji, Phani Eggone, Chakrapani, Sri Krishna Bharadwaj, Aditi, Rita Ghosh, and Chandra Kumar Khandat, played their parts well. The play will be staged again on November 24 and 25 the same venue.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
