Director :	K S Rajendran
Cast :	Imran Raza, Ashima Khanna, Neelesh Deepak, Asif Qamar, Priyanka Sharma, Kumar Vaibhav , Mahendra Mewati, Sushil Kumar

AURANGZEB

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When Emperor Shahjahan fell ill in 1657, a war of succession broke out among his four sons, Dara, Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad. The main contenders were Dara and Aurangzeb while Shahjahan's two daughters Jahanara and Roshanara, supported Dara and Aurangzeb respectively. The Emperor himself lent his support to his eldest son Dara, who alone of the four brothers, was present at Agra and sympathetic to Shahjahan's dream plan of building a black-marble-mahal for himself on the other side of Yamuna facing Mumtaz's Tajmahal.

The play begins with a conversation between two of Aurangzeb's spies in Agra Fort, who tell us of others spying on them, indicating Aurangzeb's suspicious nature as well as his attempt to be in control. The play telescopes and fuses events to capture the fissures as well as the peaks of a significant period of history. Shahjahan symbolises a decadent, self-indulgent, romantic astheticism; Aurangzeb articulates and fiercely fights to establish an Islamic fundamentalist state; and Dara projects himself as a philosopher-statesman striving to preserve a pluralist society and nation. Shahjahan dreams about a black-marble-mahal for himself, Aurangzeb dreams of 'one nation, one language, one religion', while Dara fears that Aurangzeb will destroy the precious heritage of Akbar.

The play's theme is about the struggles and the contradictory dispositions of its key characters: Shahjahan and Aurangzeb; Dara and Aurangzeb; Jahanara and Roshanara; and finally Aurangzeb versus Aurangzeb. Shahjahan lives in the past, Dara in the future, and Aurangzeb in the present. Aurangzeb's success is the triumph of pragmatism but he has to pay dearly as we find him in the last scene sitting not on his Peacock throne but beside it on the floor. His loneliness becomes his tragedy. The play ends with him asking himself the question: 'Am I a devout Muslim or a fanatic?' He is left awaiting the judgement of history.

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