Visiting Istanbul

Late October, the chill just beginning to make itself felt, a gathering of people from all walks of life and the staging of an amazing piece (I use the word Piece for calling it a mere play would be to confine it to the rigidities one expects in the genre). It was called Mein Istanbul Hoon.

The occasion was the celebration of the 50 years of the National school of Drama and the topic chosen was momentous too – a glimpse of Istanbul past and present as reflected through the various books of Orhan Pamuk – the Nobel Laureate.

The stage put up on the lawns of the Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts had as backdrop the huge peepul trees and the slowly growing dark winter sky.

It began with a beautiful musical composition which instantly took us to the streets of Istanbul as if on a flying carpet. The young Pamuk and his angst at being misunderstood by the world at large, his mother’s high hopes for her son, whom she wants to make an architect are beautifully shown. The tinge of sadness is not lost in the refreshing tongue in cheek dialogues. The mother’s feelings of being trapped in a defunct society and her son being her only hope since her husband finds solace in the arms of another woman are so close to Indian realities, that for a moment one realizes that something’s are just so universal.
A huge amount of junk that Orhan collects from the streets and the Bosphorous are a direct link to the protagonist of the Black Book. This junk while potraying the hopelessness and uselessness of his life also symbolise the various things that have left a mark on his psyche and made him what he is, a complex mix of the traditional and the modern, European and Asian, regressive and progressive thoughts. A through and through romantic who finds it very hard to move on even when all around him is in ruins.

Orhan’s meeting with Kochu, a writer of repute whose passion is the city of Istanbul takes us into the next stage. Where Orhan time travels to take on roles from the past and Kochu intervenes at times inorder to make his twelfth book interesting. When rebuked by Orhan for fanning violent flames in the community, Kochu says he is just following the trend set by the current day Media.

The story of a young couple in love in the backdrop of medieval Istanbul and their strategies and counter strategies to ensure their lives together form the second part of the piece. The girl’s father, an established artist and the teacher of the young man (Kaala) finds out about the affair and banishes the man from the city for twelve years. He returns to find that his beloved is now the mother of two young children and her husband has been untraceable for the past four years. She is the most beautiful woman in the city and each man covets her including close family members who in the absence of her husband feel it their right to claim stake on her.

She has found refuge in her old father’s home and has till now with great difficulty kept the wolves at bay. The subdued flames of love rise again when the young man returns. The old teacher who now needs the support of his erstwhile student well realizes this and though he fumes internally, he is unable to send Kaala away again, for this very love for his daughter makes Kaala his most trusted ally in his most ambitious project.

A gang of fundamentalists have now taken control of the city and are inciting fury against al that they deem unislamic and the artists find their lives and profession at risk from these hoodlums. The Teacher must finish a great piece of art that the emperor has himself sanctioned and there is no one he can trust more with this at once blasphemous and path breaking project.

In a freak incident while the girl is out to meet her lover and plan with him the ways by which they may devise their union one of her many admirers kills her father. Returning home she finds him dead and realizes that without her father’s protective presence her very life would be at extreme risk.

The glimpses into Turkish society and the undercurrents that make it what it – a sangam of European and Asian thoughts, cultures and way of life were priceless. One such episode was that of the Kahwakhana, a typical part of Turkish life where men young and old spend their day over discussions ranging from the profane to the profound. The episode also highlighted the famed dogs of Istanbul which rove the street in packs and terrorize all.

The stage design, without curtains and a slowly revealing stage which as the drama progressed took on many hues was beautifully done. Hope my pictures reveal some of the awe I felt to you too.

The direction by Sri Mohan Maharishi was beautiful and the acting by everyone in the cast was something to be seen to be believed.

Thanks NSD, have never welcomed winter to Delhi in a better manner.