Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Sept 19: ‘Khoya Hua Gaon’ , Moti Lal Kemmu’s latest Kashmiri play staged in Hindi by ALG (Aalav Lassav Gindav) Theatre group, at the Abhinav Theatre, here today, can be taken as a swan song of the relentless champion who in last fifty years had tried to infuse new life into the Bhand Pather actors/performers in Kashmir. Alas, the folk form that has been a beacon of secularism, other than the lackadaisical support from the State, got final nail in its coffin when after 1990s militants put a blanket ban on Bhand Pather performances.
Translated in Hindi by Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani, and directed by Ravi Shanker, today production was a mixed media production in which as compared to the enacted portion, the video dominated the presentation.
What could have been otherwise an independent screening of a film on the ‘The Lost Village’, today presentation was started by a duo of clowns (Sutradhars) who narrate the story of a village which does not figure in any map. The inhabitants of the village are Bhands who live merrily with their art of entertainment. A newly appointed postman sends one rupee as a money order to this village which has received no post so far. The elder of the Bhands remembering how during his childhood, Bhands were rewarded by the rulers, makes his group go to the modern day ruler and present him the nazar of the same rupee and then to entertain him. But new ruler- the district collector, insults the Bhands. The shock kills the elder and Bhands return back to their Lost Village.
The connection between the documentary and the actors on stage gets established through the narration of the clowns who also appear in the film as actors in different roles. Especially when Manoj Bhat who acted as the Sutradhar on stage, appears in the last scene of the film in the same costumes looking for his Lost Village on the map and fails to find it. The production like the last ones, Re-Lolre & Jadugar, had been financially supported by Department of Culture, New Delhi.
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