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Photo Sandeep Saxena

The story teller Mahesh Dattani

This much acclaimed play by the winner of the Central Sahitya Akademi award (the first Indian playwright in English to get this award), did offer interesting theatrical moments, making visible the playwright in the director’s cap.

“Final Solutions” is a play about our own times. It unfolds in the house of a middle class Gujarati Hindu family with three generations encountering their own trysts with the past and the present. Contemporary resonance of “Final Solutions” is in addressing an issue of utmost concern to any society –– the issue of communalism. The play reveals to the viewers their own hypocrisies and double standards in relation to the question of religious fundamentalism. Dattani’s dramatic script with its craft of irony and understated humour needs consummate acting skills. However, the student actors of LSR College and The Hindu College gave their best in an attempt to realise the difficult emotions on stage.

The play moves from the days of partition to a contemporary situation when a communal riot breaks out as a result of a religious procession in a suburb. The protagonist of the play, Hardika, a grandmother, is obsessed with her father’s murder during the partition turmoil and the betrayal by a Muslim friend, Zarine. Her son, Ramnik Gandhi, is haunted by the knowledge that his wealth is founded on a shop of Zarine’s father, which was burnt down by his kinsmen. Hardika’s daughter-in-law, Aruna, lives by the strict codes of religion and the granddaughter, Smita, falls out of a relationship with a Muslim boy. Babban and Javed, the two Muslim boys who seek shelter in Rammnik’s house carry the dramatics of the play.

Dattani’s narrative techniques were finely blended with his own stagecraft. A horseshoe shaped ramp in the rear of the stage formed the backdrop of the action. The chorus, all dressed in black, stood for the inner thoughts and conflicts of the characters as well as the symbol of the crowd and the communal mob. The aesthetically designed and executed masks held on long poles by the chorus added to the visual impact of the play. In all, the set design and the spatial divisions did justice to the multi-layered plot.

Dattani’s own direction added a new dimension to the otherwise amateur student production. The rendering of dialogues in Indian English, without being self conscious of their accents, did elicit periodic responses from the audience. Javed as Babban and Heena Khan as the religious Aruna, were the better performers amongst the otherwise average histrionic talent on display.

The play drove home the message that it is the presence of deep seated prejudices in us that causes fundamentalism. The different levels of the play touched the audience and captured the bitter realities of identity in our society. The solutions are within us.

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