Decades after it first aired, Susmita Mukherjee is still recognised best as Kitty, assistant to the carrot-munching, desi detective, Karamchand. She remembers the time fondly too. “Back then, we didn’t have phones or anything, but we were so popular that we couldn’t travel by bus or go out to have coffee. It was a strange conundrum, but we took our chance with television,” she says.
However, before she hit the small screen and progressed on to movies, Susmita dabbled in the theatre, and is getting back to her roots with Naribai, a solo play she will be performing for NCPA Centrestage tonight.
The story, explains Susmita, is about the narrator, who meets an estranged friend after 35 years. The friend’s life, in turn, had changed drastically, after a chance encounter with a Bedhni prostitute of central India. “There are three women in this play, and they have their own narratives,” explains Susmita. “They talk to each other, they talk to the audience, and they talk to themselves. The play is actually about feminine energy.”
Susmita elucidates that this was an idea for a novella that had been fermenting for a while, but given her angst with her other assignments, she decided to put this into a play format. “A line in my play goes ‘whether it’s menstrual blood, or blood when we deliver children, or white blood (breast milk) we’re all connected at a very subtle and collective unconscious level.’ Feminine energy is so powerful, I felt compelled to write this down as an emotional expression and not an intellectual exercise.”
Since her husband, Raja Bundela’s family belongs to Bundelkhand, Susmita says that her primary research about Bedhni women happened first-hand. “I knew the milieu I was talking about. The other research was just Google to make sure I had my facts right,” she says with a throaty laugh.
This isn’t Susmita’s first solo play, though. “In 1988, I performed a solo play; it’s been 28 years! My classmates Atul Tiwari, Madhushri Dutta and I formed a play group. Atul adapted Dario Fo’s A Woman Alone as Ek Akeli Ek Subah and I performed it all over the country. With due humility, I was one of the first people here to do a one-woman show, as these were not as popular as they are now,” smiles Susmita.
Ask her if being alone on the stage after so long will be an unnerving experience for her, and pat comes the answer, “I love solo plays! In fact I have to curb myself, saying to myself calm down. I just go with the flow. I have no set, I need a chair and props I carry with me. I don’t need multiple lights; I can do with one halogen light too.”
Naribai will be performed at Dance Theatre Godrej, NCPA, Nariman Point, tonight at 8 pm. Tickets: Rs 250
