Mohit Takalkar: ‘In each of the three stories, the essential fulcrum is hope’

Director Mohit Takalkar says 'Hunkaro' is built on the premise that "we have lost the capacity to listen during the lockdown. We are just consuming visuals and not listening to what’s happening in front of us, not listening to each other and not listening to ourselves."

A couple leaves behind their children at home to look for work in the city, a migrant worker befriends a strange fellow traveller on his way home during the Covid lockdown and two brothers reach their native place, hoping that their physically challenged mother survives alone without them. These stories of migration and hope are part of director Mohit Takalkar’s play Hunkaro which is being performed in Mumbai this weekend at Prithvi Theatre.

In association with the Ujaagar Dramatic Association from Jaipur, the stories are in Marwari, Hindi, Haryanvi and Awadhi, and the music is helmed by renowned Manganiyar musician Hakeem Khan Saab. Edited excerpts from a conversation with the director.

During the lockdown, I was part of a couple of web seminars and talks where I was vocal about the idea that whatever we create after the pandemic on stage has to be a new work. We can’t pick up from where we left. Also, during the pandemic, people were glued to OTT platforms and digital content, so we need to create something that is so special that you get to see it only in theatres. It started from that thought.

Sometime before the pandemic started, actor Ajeet Singh Palawat had read out Vijaydan Detha’s moving tale Asha Amar Dhan which is about a couple who leave their children behind at home in search of work. It was written somewhere in the '70s or '80s, so the question was, how do I interpret it now? We wanted to interject it with contemporary stories and tap new voices in writing.

Members of theatre company Ujaagar Dramatic Association wanted to attempt writing them. In a week’s time, we had six stories out of which we selected three. They were also encouraged to write them in a format unlike a normal story. They could change the syntax, the grammar or the style of the writing. We worked on them for almost six months.

I wasn’t interested in dramatising these pieces. I didn’t want actors to assume characters. My entire premise was that we have lost the capacity to listen during the lockdown. We are just consuming visuals and not listening to what’s happening in front of us, not listening to each other and not listening to ourselves.

So, we thought of just telling the stories and seeing how people respond to it. We decided to not even use our bodies or expressions. Eventually, we found out different ways of storytelling.

For instance, the play starts with Marwari, which is a difficult language to understand. The audience grapples with it, and we try to explain it to them later that every language has a few similar words, and if they listen carefully, they will be able to understand it.

We also included music from the Manganiyar community but we did not use any instrumentation.

It is hope. Asha Amar Dhan literally means hope is eternal wealth. Along with that, there is a thread of migration. What happened during the lockdown with thousands of Indians was deeply disturbing. I am privileged. I have a roof over my head and food on my plate. I was sitting at home, watching Netflix and trying out new dishes from YouTube, but there were people who were walking to reach home with hope in their hearts. In each of the three stories, the essential fulcrum is hope.

Not sometimes, all the time… (laughs). On a serious note, there is no extra effort to make any of the work that I do inaccessible. In fact, a lot of effort goes into making it accessible. Whether it’s my work, or any art, the audience should also make an equal effort to absorb and understand it.

I function out of the notion that I am not going to spoon-feed you. We both have to be participants, only then it will reach where we want it to reach. That’s the verbal affirmation – Hunkaro – that we need from you. We will perform for you, but we need you to tell us that you’re with the story.

To be honest, we really struggled in the first two shows because people were not able to grasp what was happening. There were obviously difficulties with the language part of it but the audience were like, ‘what is this?’

Surprisingly, things just changed from the third show onward. We received an overwhelming response and people even came backstage to tell us how emotionally connected they felt with the play. They admitted that though they did not understand everything, the stories moved them to the core.