Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 12: Balwant Thakur’s new Hindi play ‘Jaal’ staged here today under Natrang’s weekly theatre series ‘Sunday Theatre’ at Municipal Park, Resham Ghar Colony under the direction of Neeraj Kant.
In a very effective manner, this powerful play innovatively showcases as how the drug-menace is ruining the generations like a rapid fire, crippling the developing nations like India.
The play was not based on one story-line but as an experiment: Balwant Thakur has woven multiple stories in one theme, focusing the spread of drug menace like a mesh, thus taking the toll of the strongest work force of the country.
In a sequence, a young boy is shown struggling for a good company after passing the school and entry in the college. He is isolated for not being the consumer of intoxications. All around him treat him like a child which really frustrates him and to prove that he has grown-up as a young man now, he finds the easiest way and demonstrates his coming of age by consuming a variety of intoxications.
In another sequence, a rural inhabitation particularly the men-folk is shown drowned in the menace of alcohol. The daily routine of a villager is shown who consumes the whole of his daily earnings seeking alcohol. Being drunk completely he loses his way home. By the time a local escorts him to his place and in the night this drunken man starts beating his sleeping wife and kids for not receiving him on his arrival. When the escort intervenes to save the poor lady and children, he is blamed for having ill intentions towards his wife. This fight further messes up when a drunken man after losing senses damages his household belongings as well.
Through this play, Balwant Thakur has tried to make an appeal to save mankind from this dragon.Actors who performed in the play included Neeraj Kant, Mahikshit Singh, Aadesh Dhar, Aarti Devi, Vishal Sharma, Sheryaar Salaria, Kushal Bhat, Amit Brahmi and Sumit Bandaral. Meenakshi Bhagat did the presentation.