Who owns myths?

Mahabharata is a source of stories for theatre directors and writers of both South Asia and the West. Adherence to the storyline of the epic is considered to be the norm among writers and directors. Any deviation from the norm would be considered an unacceptable digression carrying a veiled sacrilegious intention. Such accusations become even more prominent if it is written or used by Western playwrights and directors. Peter Brook, an English theatre director and experimentalist, is widely known for performing a nine-hour long Mahabharata drama. His Mahabharata is a cosmopolitan play, which he performed

on a lovely yet non-descript chalk-rock face in d'Avignon in Southern France. Rustom Bharucha, a Bengali

theatre scholar, has critiqued Brook for violating others' culture in this manner. But several Indian scholars have other ideas.

The question is a tricky one. Who owns the mythological and epic stories of a particular land? Whose copyright is it? In today's world, when people have become highly sensitive about their faith and politics, it is always possible to raise questions about one's cultural narratives being misused or sacralised. Speaking at one such theatre meeting on culture in Delhi about a decade ago, I countered the argument of one passionate cultural nationalist by saying in a somewhat funny but meaningful way, “You have distorted our Nepali Mahabharata. Our Bhimsen has left his footprints on the tall flat stones of Nepal. Arjuna came to appease a Limbu Kirat god in my native area. But you mention none of those important sections in your version of the Mahabharata. That is unfair.” My rhetoric generated laughter on that occasion but the argument was, it is not easy to own mythic stories and legends. Bharucha's sensitivity, however, is understandable in so far as the postcolonial argument about cultural distortions is concerned.

Malla's Mahabharata

Ashesh Malla's Shakuni Pasaharu is a complete flip of the Mahabharata story. As the play opens, we see a game of dice going on in a somewhat tense but intriguing atmosphere. It is a metatheatrical use of the Mahabharata episode with massive intervention by the playwright. Yudhisthira, who loses the game of dice in the Mahabharata, is sitting with his brother Arjuna, facing Sakuni and Duryodhana—son of Sakuni's sister who is condemned to marry a blind king, Dhritrashtra. Yudhisthira tells Duryodhana and Sakuni in a somewhat loud voice that he is familiar with the Mahabharata story involving the insult of Draupadi, the common wife of the Pandava brothers. Then the story is given a contemporary political twist. Yudhisthira proposes Duryodhana to be prepared for an election instead of a battle. After the election date is announced, Yudhisthira and Arjuna convince Sakuni, the principal player of politics, to desert Duryodhana and join their ranks by promising him important ministerial berths and lucrative projects. Sakuni joins their party. Consequently, Yudhisthira wins the elections, leaving Duryodhana burning in the flames of betrayal and humiliation. But the election does not make any difference to the people wailing in the background. Finally, Dhritrashtra throws off his royal robe and declares that he, Om Mani Sharma, needs none of these. He would be happier living with his modest income, mainly his pension from Nepal Bank Limited.

Ashesh Malla, the writer and director, drives his meaning home by dismantling the normative mythopoetic use of the Mahabharata. He told me that he wrote this play to express his disillusionment with the greed for money and hunger for power among Nepali politicians, who interestingly believe in the electoral system. Malla's argument is that the binary between good Yudhisthira and wicked Duryodhana does not exist anymore. Yudhisthira can successfully play Duryodhana and Sakuni can change his allegiances according to the perks he receives. This playwright's vision has been dramatised at a time when election, not armed contestation, is been deeply rooted in South Asia.

Electoral politics

Nepali elections too mark a tremendous shift in politics. And the Indian election, projecting a party representing a rightwing wave in India, has created ripples among India's neighbours. But tomorrow's political scene may be unpredictably theatrical. No matter what the election results, predictions about its aftermath may not work. However, there exist some reasons to believe that the Indian elections will bring important changes. Nepal too may encounter dramatic turns that nobody can predict yet. As the play projects, elections may change political alliances but the misery, insecurity, poverty and uncertainty in the lives of the common majority will remain constant as long as the Sakuni allegory remains dominant in politics. The negative dialectic between political principles and the fate of the common people, the director believes, evinces the dramatic change.

The metatheatrical intervention of the playwright, a good performance by the actors, the effective but minimalist scenography, all provide ample room for the imagination of the audience, who carry their own political ideas into the theatre, to play freely. The performance was like a canvas with effective swaths of brush work in the actions of the actors and scenograph, leavings gaps that an audience has to fill up. Such is indeed the character of

political theatre.