Independence Day celebrations at IIMB turned a tad more special with the performance of the play, ‘The Prophet & The Poet’, at the IIMB auditorium on Tuesday evening.
Designed and directed by Prof. Vijay Padaki, the play, offers rare glimpses of the exchange of correspondence, spanning 25 years, between Gandhiji and Rabindranath Tagore, and takes the audience through the heart and mind of the stalwarts, their triumphs and tribulations, their glory and grief, their dreams and dilemmas, and their delight and despair. Poetry meets philosophy meets practical wisdom, in powerful lines, as the letters, and at times, their writers, travel from Sabarmati to Santiniketan. What stays with the audience, long after the last lines have been read, is the dignity with which the two personalities treated their differences.
The action opens with the narrator, expertly essayed by Minti Jain, offering a historical context of the setting of the play – pre-independence India and all the challenges the tumultuous time brought with it. Gandhiji has returned from his Phoenix Settlement in South Africa and has placed some students from there in Gurudev’s Santiniketan. The tone is set for a fascinating friendship as Gurudev remarks on the “obedience” of these boys and wonders if a questioning spirit would serve them better.
There begins a correspondence — and a friendship — that endures many challenges – ideological and philosophical, yet remains steadfast. The two great personalities have varying views on subjects ranging from education to economic empowerment, but their commitment to the ideal of a free India is total. Gurudev questions Gandhiji’s ‘charaka’ movement and Gandhiji’s rebuts his criticisms in newspaper articles; Gandhiji questions Gurudev on his “fund-raising” methods for Visva Bharati University and Gurudev writes that his travels to find paying patrons for his art does not amount to “begging expeditions”. This back and forth is always laced with “much love” and “deep respect” .
The stage design is minimal, emphasizing the dialogues between the two leaders through the content of their letters. Naveen Tater, the actor exploring the life of Gandhiji, and Karan Singh, the actor exploring the life of Gurudev, expertly talk you through significant episodes of Indian history. However, as one member of the audience observed, a little more context, especially for the millennials in the audience, would have helped. The last word did come from one such millennial who said he would never have known of such a unique friendship had he not watched ‘The Prophet & The Poet’.
