Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Mar 14: Well known Urdu writer Balraj Bakshi’s play, ‘Vatan Fry’ presented by Nav Durga Kala Manch, in ongoing annual drama festival, here today, came out as a highly entertaining comic satire on the overall degradation of moral values and national character.
The play in Hindustani, entrenched in our grand legacy of composite culture and laced with idiomatic dialogues reflecting Balraj Bakshi’s command and control over Urdu language, revolved around one Nawab, his servant and the disgruntled wife, who land up funny situations like the arrival a social butterfly Aasha in Nawab’s house and appearance of a Jinn from a lantern. During the chain of events that follow, the underbelly of so called ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’ is revealed in terms of public institutions mired with blatant corruption, dishonesty and also the criminal exploitation of environment and many other topical issues. The play ends with a plea to correct the systemic maladies otherwise be prepared to preserve rare honest human beings in society in museums as specimen references for future generations.
Directed by Shashi Bhushan Sharma, today’s presentation came out to be an entertaining play where many a truth were said in a jest. Dilshad Ahmed almost single handedly carried the play with faultless Urdu diction of a Lakhnavi Nawab. The actors who also gave noticeable performances included Anoop Goswami as Boota, Devanshu Sharma as Jinn, Avni Jain as Begum, Radhika Thakur as Aasha, Vinay Dagar as Inspector, Ganesh Singh as employment clerk and Rakesh Dogra as Sharabi.
Others in the cast were Sandeep Sharma, Nikhil Sharma, Ranjan Singh, Ashish Bhat, Shubham Sethi, Radhika Thakur, Sanjay Sonakar and Javed Ahmed.
Tomorrow, Rajneesh Gupta’s Dogri play Shah-Sahni will be presented by Sangam True Art Production.
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