Direction : Om Katare Writer : Om Katare Cast : Sahil Ravi, Vidyagouri Honavar, Prashant Upadhyay, Aditi, Sailee Gaikwad, Master Naman Sinha, Naman Mukharji, Arun Kumar, Peter Anthony, Harshal Singh, Rhythm Mohad, Advaaiith Shetty, Anup Balyan, Heme Kanoi, Vijay Mukh, Kajal Sonkar, Charvi Ojha, Hitesh Bhatia, Akanksha Gupta, Raj Kumar
JEENA ISI KA NAAM HAI Review
JEENA ISI KA NAAM HAI was performed as a part of the Yatri festival. Yatri is the theatre production that Om Katare started 44 years ago. The play justifies being opening play of the festival on various fronts. It is a story of successful entrepreneurship, which is very contemporary concern in India. It is an elaborate production with several settings as well as a presentation of visuals. It is one of the few plays that have been made in the recent times that is also a biographical sketch of a living personality. Overall, the play provides a wholesome experience with a lively script delivered by exceptionally well-trained actors.
The play is the story of Dr Mukesh Batra, who is the founder of Dr Batra healthcare centres. The play walks the tightrope of sticking to drama and story while also not being a vehicle of propaganda. There is only basic publicity for Dr Batra. He is only mentioned after the play is over. Due effort has been made to tell the story with reasonable integrity. The autobiographical element brings several interesting nuances to the story.
The play charters the story of his life wherein his parents survived through the ravages of Partition and build their medical practice. The story also deals with the sensitive relation that parents have with their children in a business family. The story highlights the conflicts and how unwilling the two become to work with each other. The play takes us through the life of a boy who grows up quite normally with episodes of sacrifice in childhood due to working parents and difficulty with peers in school.
The play is abundant in dialogues and tests the actors quite thoroughly. Almost all actors have dialogues that test their articulation and clarity of speech. The actors emerge victorious in this skill. The protagonist is played by Sahil Ravi who excels at both English and Hindi dialogues. He is aptly cast in the role of a person who is highly educated yet very rooted and ordinary looking. The play also uses multimedia presentation to depict background of the various scenes and does so very befittingly.
There are some interesting lessons on entrepreneurship shared during the play. For example, when the doctor builds a centre in Mauritius, he comes to know before the operations start that homeopathy is not legal in the country yet. However, he convinces the minister by curing him of an ailment he identifies in him. Perhaps, due to the paucity of time, the play falls short of dwelling sufficiently on the nuances of promoter and labour relations.
The play was attended by sizeable number of doctors. The play is also important as a vehicle that gives voice to the medical fraternity that has less of a dialogue with people directly.
(Tarun Agarwal is the author of a book, Hope Factory. He is the director a short film, Honesty Weds Dishonesty. He sees reviews as an art as much as an assessment of art.)
