Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, May 19: Drawing attention to male predatory behavior which resulted in death of the young gang rape victim ‘Damini’ in New Delhi recently, the play “Main Damini Bol Rahai Hoon” was staged by Shivani Cultural Society, at the K L Saigal Hall, here today.
Directed by Vikram Sharma and written jointly by Aditya Bhanu and Neha Lahotra, the play was a scathing attack on pervert male psyche that looms like a specter over the safety of females in our society.
The protagonist of the play was none other than the dead Damini, who rises from her pyre only to question the very morality and so-called place of honour for women trumpeted in scriptures as well as in the general ethical posturing in Indian society.
Narrating and re-enacting her physical agony and helplessness in face of animal like onslaught upon her body, and the aftermath, ‘Damini’, exposes the double standards of silent onlookers, after the event wise and active politicians and exploitative nature of media reporting. Damini, after asking one and all to look deep into respective psyche wherefrom such mindless primitive violence erupts and renders all daughters and sisters of the nation unsafe, again enters back into the pyre.
Alluding to actual events, the different personas of Damini were impressively enacted by Neha Lahotra. Her effective portrayal of great variety of emotions and agony that Damini faced during her struggle with human-animals in that dark night left many in the audience sobbing and crying. Aditya Bhanu and Himanshu Darshan as narrators also acted well.
The sketch of a hapless young crouching nude girl at the back of the stage, vertical fliers showing blood stained prints of human hands, a cloth in red color lying on the floor along with few logs of wood that symbolizing the ‘pyre’-all elements of the set design-added to the conceptual moorings of the play which not only left an indelible mark on the audience but also called for an introspection.
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