Onto the Stage – Slighted Souls and other stage and radio plays

This is a compendium of the author’s Indian stage and radio plays:

"Slighted Souls" is a poignant love story set in rural Telangana, beset with feudal exploitation of the downtrodden dalits. Besides forcing the dalits to toil in the fields as bonded labor without impunity, the land owning doras had no qualms in reducing the womenfolk of this ilk as sex slaves in the gadis, which leads to an armed resistance engulfing an young couple.

Men at work on Women at work" is a tragic-comic episode depicting the fallout of sexual harassment at the workplace in the Indian urban setting with its traditional cultural underpinnings.

"Castle of Despair", built on the slippery ground of man's innate urge for one-upmanship, portrays its facade of falsity on the grand stage of human tragedy.

The radio play, "A Love on Hold", lends voice to the felt anxieties of a man and a woman as their old flame gets rekindled and the dilemmas of possession faced by the couple in a conservative cultural background.

This free ebook, in multiple formats, is in the public domain in umpteen ebook sites.

Stage play 1, Slighted Souls

Scene – 1

Voice Over: Under the British Raj in India, the self-indulging Nizams of Hyderabad abdicated the administration of their vast principality to doralu, the village heads,    letting them turn the areas  under  their  domain  into  their  personal  fiefdoms.  While  the  successive  Nizams  were obsessed with building palaces and acquiring jewelry, the village heads succeeded in ushering in an oppressive era of tyrannical order. Acting as loose cannon from their palatial houses called gadis,  the doralu succeeded in  foisting an  inimical  feudal order upon  the downtrodden  dalits. Besides making these dalits  toil  for them as  cheap labor without impunity,  the doralu had no qualms in making vassals out of the hapless women folk. What with the police patels and the revenue patwaris in nexus with the landed gentry and the moneyed shaukars making a common cause  with  the doralu in  their unabated  exploitation, their  sub-human condition ensured  that the  dalits  were  distressed  economically,  degraded  socially  and  debased  morally.     Ironically, lending the privileged few the muscle power to perpetrate the inimical social order were their henchmen from the other backward classes. Moreover, given the British political pragmatism of an indifference to the Indian caste conundrum the downtrodden dalits had nowhere to run for cover. 

Though the merger of their province with the Union of India brought the curtains down on the  Nizams’  two-hundred  year  misrule,  the  exploitation  of  the  rural  dalits  by the dora-patel- patwari nexus continued unabated. And  that led  to  the formation of  'communes' as part of a peasant movement in July 1948 under the Telangana Struggle that didn’t take off any way. On the other hand  as  the  seeds of  egalitarianism began  to  take  roots  in  the urban Indian  soil, in time,  these  “slighted  souls”  too  began  to  envision  the  dawn  of  an  equitable  era  for  them. However,  the  nascent  upward  mobility  of  the  downtrodden  was  at  odds  with  the  vested interests of the feudal order, and to nip the dalit moral assertiveness in the bud, the ‘axis of evil’ saw to it that such were brutalized to make an example of them. 

“Slighted  Souls”  scripts  the  life  of  the downtrodden  of  Rampur  nearly a  decade after  the famous but failed peasant struggle of Telangana. Making cohorts with Muthyal Rao the dora in oppressing its  dalits are  Papa  Rao  the  Police  Patel,  Rami  Reddy  the  Patwari,  Papi  Reddy  the landlord, and  Shaukar  Suryam  the moneylender.  Beginning  with  the life and  times of Yellaiah and his wife Mallamma this play unfolds the urge of the deprived to unyoke themselves, and the desperation of the privileged to rein in them. 

[Curtains  up:  Mallamma  sits  in  front  of  her  thatched  hut  in  the  dalit  mohalla  weaving  a bamboo basket. 

Enter: Yellaiah, and seeing him, she goes into the hut to fetch some water for him, and he takes over the work.]

Mallamma [Back with a glass of water]: Why make a mess of it  maava.

Yellaiah [Taking over the glass]: Take it I’m giving them their due. 

Mallamma: I wonder how they’re harming you.

Yellaiah [Having empted the glass]: Aren’t they harsh on my darling’s delicate hands?

Mallamma [Taking back the glass]: I’m glad you’re still fond of your old woman.

Yellaiah: Who said you’re old dear. I’m ever scared that some dora or a patel might grab my Malli.

Mallamma [Taking the bamboo work]: You know it would never be the case.

Yellaiah: Well but still.

Mallamma:  Leave  alone  the  patels  and  the  patwaris,  would  the  dora  ever  forget  that incident in a hurry? Besides, I’m behind the bamboo curtain, am I not? ...