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True to Life “Stay Yet a While” presented an exchange between two great minds.

This year being the centenary of the Satyagraha movement, Gandhi Smriti offered Raina’s theatre group Prayog its hall in their office at 30 January Marg. Prayog accepted the invitation and it is amazing what Raina could achieve with a makeshift stage and a few video clippings thrown in for an audience of more than 200 people watching the play sitting on the floor.

As the lights come on the improvised stage, the narrator walks up to introducehimself and tells us that the performance puts together letters exchanged between Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore and incorporates some of their essays debating issues of national importance.

“They were great icons and we cannot dare to match them or imitate them. We only present to you the text of the exchange that took place between these two great minds. These letters, preserved in the archives at Vishwa Bharati, are of great historical interest.”

Of more than historical interest is the debate between Gandhi and Tagore over certain issues and questionswhich continues to be relevant even in this day and age. The narrator goes on to tell us that there were many striking contrasts between Tagore and Gandhiji. Yet, they found some common chord and there began a friendship which lasted till Tagore’s death in 1941. As early as February 1915, we find Tagore referring to Gandhi as ‘Mahatma’ and Gandhi readily addressed Tagore as ‘Gurudev.’

In some of his letters Gurudev uses beautiful poetry. Listen to the closing lines so beautifully delivered. “Give me the supreme faith of love, this is my prayer, the faith of the life in death, of victory in defeat, of the power hidden in the frailness of beauty, of the dignity of pain that accepts hurt, but disdains to return it.”

The scene is one of the longest and most difficult to perform in the play and Avijit Dutt plays it beautifully with complete control over his voice, movement and gestures. Avijit was indeed at his best and it was a delight to watch him and I would call him a complete actor.

Some of the articles or should we call them essays by these two great men included in Raina’s text not only provide greater depth to the presentation but also throws up a challenge that is well met by the cast. I am particularly referring to Gandhiji’s article “The Great Sentinel” which was a reply top Tagore’s “The Call of Truth” and it is once again a challenging piece for any solo actor and I am happy that Dhruv Jagasia in Gandhi’s role rendered it well.

The second part of the presentation covers the period of 1920s and its major theme is the controversy on the Charkha cult. Once again, Avijit carries the day with Tagore’s stand on charkha but a strain begins to tell on Dhruv’s forehead defending Gandhiji’s stand.

We now move to the next stage in the play that covers 1929–1933. The period is short and so are the events as also Raina’s treatment of carrying the chronicle forward. “Stay Yet a While” is the best presentation on the relationships and philosophy of Gandhiji and Gurudev Tagore. It must be repeated in a proper auditorium and the director should take a second look at some of the video inserts. Dansh Hussain is relaxed as a narratorand but then why in the opening scene do we have Avijit comment about the relationship between Tagore and Gandhiji as if he was the narrator while throughout the play he plays Tagore?

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