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Of love and revenge

NANDINI NAIR

“Bombay Black” deals with horrific realities and difficult choices.



In the grip “Bombay Black” convincingly shows a leap of faith

It is a play that proves the strength of love over hatred and the power of dreams over the desire for revenge. “Bombay Black”, was staged recently at The India Habitat Centre as part of the Matrix Old World Theatre Festival. Directed by A nahita Uberoi, it deals with horrific realities and difficult choices. Centred around a mother-daughter relationship it is set in the dark abyss of Colaba.

In the opening act, the mother is set up as a razor-sharp lady abrasive with sentimentalities. Her daughter Apsara is a dancer with skills that match only her mother’s wit. The plot is furthered with the entry of a mysterious blind man at the door. Kamal reveals to Apsara that he is her husband and she is the cause of his blindness. Kamal however is not convincing in his blindness. He succeeds in being fidgety but not blind. Even the moving incident as to how he lost his sight, leaves little impact.

But Kamal does succeed in helping Apsara to dream. While she is averse to love and fables, he helps her to hear the thud of horse and makes her believe that the Gateway of India has set sail. Dancing for a livingsince childhoodit is this world of fantasy that first draws Apsara to Kamal.

The first act ends with a clincher. The moment is created with eerie suspense. Feeding her pet vultures, the mother threatens Apsara. Apsara must be the bait to help her mother seek revenge.

In the second act the questions of the first are answered. The mother, with searing frankness, tells Apsara that she was married at the age of three. Child marriage, she explains, was a better option than female foeticide or being molested by other men. Identified as a ‘daayan’, the daughter is made into a devdasi by her priest-father. The play hurtles from one macabre truth to the other, but the real blow is yet to come. In a devastating enactment, Apsara tells Kamal that she was raped by her father at the age of seven.

It is this violation, which explains her mother’s nemesis and Apsara’s hatred. Their existence has been hinged on this inhumanity. It is also tragically the tie that binds mother and daughter. The play reaches a frenzied pitch as the father’s murder is plottedwith Kamal’s knowledge.

But the most poignant moment of the play is when the mother is denied her revenge. Stolen of her agenda for revenge, she loses her strength.

Her helplessness is thrown in the face of the audience as she smears herself with her deceased husband’s ashes. She tries to even convince her daughter that she has been forever polluted by her father and can never know intimacy, let alone love. But the mother’s bitterness arises from repentance. The beautiful resolution of the play is when Apsara forgives the mother.

Acted with skill and genuine emotion and produced by Shiamak Davar, the play succeeds in being both grotesque and poignant.