The morning of 28th October 2004 was an extraordinary one for us at Prithvi Theatre. The Prithvi Theatre Festival was four days away, and Naya Theatre was due to arrive. Crossing paths with Habib Tanvir and Moneeka Misra a year earlier—as full of theatre spirit as ever, but definitely frailer—it had occurred to me that we should celebrate them while they were still around. Sanjna Kapoor, then director of Prithvi Theatre, concurred. When we approached Habib with this proposition, he came back with his own—Naya Theatre would perform seven plays at the festival. Six of them were current shows. The seventh would be his first hit play Agra Bazaar, which he would revive once again. These seven plays would span the 50 years of his career—Agra Bazaar (1954), Ponga Pandit (1970), Gaon ka Naam Sasural, Mor Naam Damaad (1973), Charandas Chor (1974), Kamdev ka Apna Basant Ritu ka Sapna (1993), Sadak (1994) and Zahreeli Hawa (2002). It was madness, but it was wonderful. Of course we agreed!

Seven plays needed adequate rehearsal time. So, for four days before the festival, we were handing over the Prithvi space to Naya Theatre. On the morning of 28th October, Naya Theatre trooped in, bit by bit. The core team of the Tanvirs and the Chhattisgarhi performers. The Raut and Panthi dancers, who joined Naya Theatre performances for special occasions. Actors from Delhi, Bhopal, Mumbai and other cities, whom Habib had summoned to recreate Agra Bazaar. Slowly but surely, they took over every imaginable space at Prithvi, lounging, hanging out, chatting, waiting for their turn at rehearsal. The air at Prithvi transformed into the air of Naya Theatre—a relaxed relationship with time mixed with a clear sense of purpose, a sense of being home everywhere. It was intoxicating. As the days progressed, another extraordinary thing happened. While Habib ran his rehearsals, the auditorium started filling with people who had come to simply watch. People had heard that Habib and his troupe were in town. They came, without fuss, without fanfare, to take this opportunity to watch him at work. I had never seen anything like it—four rehearsal days packed with people watching intently. It was astounding. 

Sudhanva Deshpande said to me, ‘People know that this is in a sense his last hurrah. Halls are filling up everywhere he goes. It’s happening across the country.’ They were not wrong—Habib was 81 that year; he passed away five years later. Needless to say, halls filled up for him as we travelled the festival through Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Everywhere, he got standing ovations. At Prithvi Theatre, when he made his appearance as the mantri or minister towards the latter half of Charandas Chor, the audience spontaneously burst into applause. The play paused for a while as they continued clapping and Habib graciously acknowledged their applause. Once it was over, he nonchalantly turned back to the actors and continued the performance.

What was this man and his theatre, which had touched people’s hearts so deeply? What had he and Naya Theatre given to us that we came in droves, eager to receive whatever we could while we could? Through the Prithvi Theatre Festival 2004, I had wanted to celebrate him, to celebrate Naya Theatre, but I had not imagined this outpouring of emotion. Once we provided the platform, it seemed like a dam had burst—innumerable people came forth, eager to mark the occasion and applaud him. They had clearly received something precious from him and were taking this opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you. The entire experience was enormously moving.

‘A Life-Affirming Theatre’ 

In order to better understand the special bond that Naya Theatre had created with audiences, we can do no better than to turn to Charandas Chor, Habib’s most famous, best-loved play. As we know, drawing on a Rajasthani folktale by Vijaydan Detha, it tells the story of a chor or thief who gives up lying but not thieving. It keeps you laughing throughout with the antics of the chor—and here, the Chhattisgarhi artistes, drawing from their Nacha background, excel. Be it the hapless policeman chasing the chor, or the villagers gambling and smoking while pretending to have given up both, or Charandas weaving his way through the temple crowd to hide—the artistes have us in splits with their perfectly timed, perfectly played comedy. They assay their roles with ease, confidence and exuberance—the stage is their home, and we, the watching audience, can feel it. Over numerous casts and numerous chors, Naya Theatre’s Charandas Chor has managed to have this enthralling effect on viewers. We have a rollicking time, enjoying the chor’s intelligence and wit and Robin Hood-like behaviour, until the sudden climax, when the Queen orders his death. In an instant, we come crashing down to earth, unable to comprehend this turn of events. The actors who keep you in splits throughout perform the death and its aftermath perfectly, never holding a moment too long, never overplaying the situation. There is no drama, no dramatic outpouring of grief. Just the dignified procession of Satnamis, transforming the platform of his death into their chowk with their white flag, paying tribute to Charandas as an upholder of truth. Satya hi ishwar hai, ishwar hi satya hai is the last refrain that rings in audiences’ ears as the play comes to a close. I have seen other Charandas Chor performances which draw on Habib’s script, but I have never seen one that manages this juxtaposition of comedy and death as perfectly as the Naya Theatre actors do. I had initially used the word tragedy in the sentence above, but have replaced it with death, because the Naya Theatre production does not play out Charandas Chor as either comedy or tragedy. The comedic nature of the play comes up against the shock of death, and then there is the acknowledgement of what remains. Death transforms the life of an ordinary man, who has simply taken a vow not to lie, into an extraordinary legend. ‘[I]t is a measure of the success of Habib Tanvir’s production that one starts out thinking Govind Ram’s hero is simply a village rogue and ends up believing in him as a palpable moral force.

In other Charandas productions that I have seen, there is a tendency to overplay the grief, to play the chor as a hero. In Naya Theatre’s Charandas, truth is the hero. The chor’s commitment to truth drives the entire arc of the story. The characters populating the story simply play out life according to their circumstances and their understanding of things. Every person has his or her place, his or her logic. You as audience understand why the policeman gives up trying to trap Charandas and becomes his ally—the policeman is neither reviled nor celebrated for this. You understand that both the Queen and Charandas are trapped by his vows—he cannot marry her nor can he keep secret her proposal to marry; she cannot let her proposal and his refusal become public knowledge. The play does not present the Queen as a villain and you do not receive her as such. In Naya Theatre’s Charandas, life happens with all its twists and turns, sometimes amusing and at other times deeply sad. This type of theatre is reflective of Habib’s own perception of life:

I find that there is a sad element present in most amusing moments. If you look for reality in life, you will find amusing moments in the face of death, you will find amusing traits in the most serious character. 

And as a director, you try to give it another dimension, a fuller form, closer to life, closer to reality, richer in texture, appeal, plausibility and communicability to the audience. That is my understanding of the comic. 

Author Devdutt Pattanaik articulates beautifully how Indian stories do not fall into the model of heroes, villains and victims. Instead, characters fluctuate between states of being, depending on contexts and situations: ‘For the prey, the predator is villain but for the predator’s starving babies, the predator is the hero who provides food. For the predator, the prey is the villain, denying the children their natural food.’ No one can be easily categorised, nor is that categorisation necessary. Instead, Pattanaik explains, what these stories explore is our choices of action in different situations, where no choice is an easy one.

Charandas Char and, I would argue, all of Naya Theatre’s plays, fall into this type of storytelling. There are no easy villains or heroes, only choices. Charandas has to choose whether to give up his vows or risk drawing the ire of the Queen. He chooses to keep his vows, which leads to his death. Good and evil are not the point; exploring and understanding people and life, in a nuanced manner without judgement, is. Naya Theatre serves up this contemplation of life in an easy, inviting manner—turning the lens on ordinary people, their quirks and choices. It’s delightful, it’s compelling, it’s eye-opening, and we can find ourselves easily in this world.

The remarkable extent of Charandas Chor’s richness, appeal, plausibility and communicability became globally apparent with its success at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1982. Charandas Chor took the Fringe by storm. This play in Chhattisgarhi, performed for an audience who had no access to the language, moved people profoundly. Newspapers, critics and audiences waxed ecstatic over the production:

Never before in the history of the Fringe has The Scotsman newspaper awarded its much-coveted Fringe First prize in the middle of the first week, but the Naya Theatre company of India broke that convention. It took an award for its triumphantly exuberant production, Charan the Thief, a performance of such vitality and interest that the official festival made clear its own wishes to honour the company.

Another rave declared, ‘It is a coup for the Fringe to have introduced them to European audiences.’ Reviewers described it as ‘a life-affirming event’, ‘a kind of theatre, at once sacred and profane, totally accessible as spectacle and resonant with political and private meanings.’ Charandas Chor had leapt over the language barrier to capture the hearts of Fringe audiences: ‘Afterwards, when the bows and encore were over, a small boy behind me turned to his mother and said fervently: “I would like to go on stage and see them and shake hands with them all.” There could, I thought, have been no greater tribute.’

This is an excerpt from Habib Tanvir and His Legacy in Theatre: A Centennial Reappraisal, edited by Anjum Katyal and Javed Malick and published in 2024. No part of this excerpt may be quoted or reproduced without prior written consent from its publisher, Seagull Books.