Another Navroze without live naataks in theatres leaves us craving a return to the way we watched and whooped
An audience enjoying a 1950s play: theatre lovers of several communities thronged to Navroze evenings. Pic courtesy/Meher Marfatia, Laughter In The House
No one chooses glumness on a day meant to be merry and auspicious. Yet, here I was, feeling exactly this. Like most of the roughly 38,000 members of my community in the city, left bereft by no traditionally staged naatak to chortle over.
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I love Parsi plays dearly, aching at their absence over Navroze and, in the same week, Khordad Sal (birthday of Zarathustra, the Zoroastrian Christmas, as it were). This is the second year of such deprivation in the centuries-old history of the Parsi Gujarati play. Lockdown has ruined theatre practitioners and equally dejected audiences.
The naatak evening is essential, organic and intrinsic to Navroze. To go without it is absolute torture. It simply emasculates the occasion, paralyses it with gloom. Sorry, plays peered at on a laptop, flashed onscreen with a cold click of the keyboard, can’t cut it.
Dinshah Daji breezing through his song and dance routine in the 1960 musical Hasa Has. Pic courtesy/Meher Marfatia, Laughter In The House
No mouthing “non-veg” jokes or double entendre ditties in sync with beloved singing stars? No standing ovations with “Once more” hollers for adored actors? And—critical for the khaata-peeta jaat we are—no munching home-packed “pora pav”, omelette sandwiches fished out from paper bags that crackled even ahead of the interval?
A rare young dramatist writing in Gujarati, Meherzad Patel, partner and director, Silly Point Productions, says, “We were set to perform Sherlock Homi in March last year and forced to shut shop in lockdown. When we were about to do so this March, on Jamshedi Navroze, the second wave hit. What I wrote in 2019 is effectively going to be performed in 2022, if we’re lucky, or 2023, the longest a script has taken to reach the stage. We did Pretty Boman as a film last August. Though well received, it was astronomically expensive. Things are tight with restrictions to shoot. With a R5 lakh budget, one can produce only so much in terms of quality and still not manage to compete with millions of dollars’ worth of streaming content options.”
Ruby Patel takes centre stage in the Ladies vs Men qawwali finale of the Laughter in the House revue, 2012. Pic/Sooni Taraporevala
Sad, sad, sad to be unable to assess the collective bellow of live audiences who not just expect corniness, they crave it. In Whistles in the Darkened Hall, her Foreword to my book, Laughter in the House: 20-Century Parsi Theatre, Bachi Karkaria beautifully explained—“In Parsi history, the end of farce would be ultimate tragedy. The naatak is the most indelible mark of our childhood, worked like a tattoo into and under our skin, slipping to the nerve endings to rest inextricably in the folds of memory… It replenished, recharged, rejuvenated our identity. A seemingly time-pass evening formed lifelong bonding, a centrifugal force drawing a whole community into its own, quintessential core. Don’t underestimate what the Parsi naatak once stood for. Or undermine how much else will fall with the curtain.”
The loss is as unforgivable for other communities. After all, the language of laughter is universal. Elevated and celebrated with added gusto and glee when its phrases roll in a mother tongue wicked and witty enough to be appropriated by many.
Danesh Khambata, Danesh Irani and Sajeel Parakh with Pheroza Modi in Amar Akbar Akoori, 2017. Pic/Narendra Dangiya, NCPA
“Nothing in the world is more joyful than Parsi plays,” MF Husain told me years ago. Having grown up in the Khetwadi-Grant Road gullies, the then-in-exile painter said, “I knew your comedies through neighbours and friends. We had unforgettable, rollicking times in play halls.”
Those were golden years for a genre strikingly both universal and unique. The post-Independence decades belonged to the playwright giants Adi Marzban, Pheroze Antia, Dorab Mehta and Homi Tavadia. Their work touched thousands of theatre-goers thronging halls, from Tata and Tejpal to Birla and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, besides Patkar, Sophia and Nehru. A wide spectrum of people was bound together by the Parsis’ mother tongue—Gujaratis, Bohris and Khojas devoured these adroit Broadway or West End adaptations.
Bombay being the pulsing heart to which drama buffs flocked from Poona, Surat and Navsari, enterprising Parsis accommodated the boom. The business of comedy was of great consequence. What started as a happy, readily accepted confusion of stage conventions, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and Victorian melodrama, progressed to pure, hysterical comedy.
Auditoriums exploded in roars of “Waaaaah!” Thrilled viewers spilled accolades. Halls rippled and rang with their surge of responses. A constant bubble and boil brewed over, erupting in ludicrous laughter induced by anything remotely fun. The plot—sometimes weighty, most times wafer-thin —was not so much the point. The wonder of the lines was. The sparkle of the acting was. The singularity of an unabashed Parsi ethos was.
Attractive new titles, either deliciously alliterative (Fasela Firozeshah, Gher Ghungro ne Ghotalo, Tirangi Tehmul), or riotously rhyming (Utyu Tutyu, Hasta Gher Vasta, Sagan ke Vagan), were regularly announced. Tall wads of tickets crisply tore off on booking counters and House Full boards loomed large as excited audiences revisited favourite productions.
Besides three-act plays, variety musical revues were the rage. Thodik Aisi Thodik Taisi showcased a hilarious Cancan number, with Bomi Dotiwala, Jimmy Pocha and Sam Kerawalla rubbing shoulders with Jerry Mason, America’s gypsy entertainer. “It was hilarious,” recalls Dotiwala. “Adi grandly announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the lovely dancing ladies of the Folies Bergere, imported from Paris.’ And out we popped outrageously, with hairy legs and absurd antics.”
Anand Pai created what was literally a novel set for this revue when it opened at Birla Hall—shaped like an open book, the turn of page parting the curtain to signal a fresh item on the programme. The audience lapped up the idea. Spontaneous gaffes would elicit unintended laughs—like accordionist Goody Seervai crashing to the ground with one foot on the revolving stage, when a “page” curled open before he dodged out of its way.
Space for serious themes? Not really. Audiences reluctantly greeted Marzban’s attempt at plays pushing beyond froth and frolic. He did try to address issues of relevance. If Mancherji Konna referred to the 1960s’ Indo-China hostility, Pakar Maru Puchhru fronted Panchayat politics. Asha Nirasha examined grief and bereavement, albeit paced with lighter moments.
But it was never easy going along this other track. There was a clamour for unadulterated comic shenanigans. Audiences rejected Asha Nirasha and were not entirely convinced about the euthanasia issue Marzban sensitively highlighted in Jeevan Khel.
It needed the Indian National Theatre (INT) touch for audience approval that swallowed bitterer pills smoothly. A dynamic association with INT—memorably established by Damu Jhaveri and Rohit Dave, boasting brilliant talents including Pravin Joshi, Chandrakant Thakkar, Arvind Thakkar and Tarak Mehta—made non-comedy palatable. The collaborative Parsi wing of INT garnered rave reviews for plays like Hello Inspector and Solmi January ni Madhraate.
An unhealthy slump in writing and production followed the heady ’60s and ’70s. Lesser authors succumbed to lazy plots layered thick with overdone koylagiri and mistaken identity imbroglios. From the 1990s, it’s been a steady slide. Current naataks are generally pale rehashes, trite mutations of their original inspirations. Navroze offerings continue as a far cry from the smash successes that used to be staged year-long after shows opened on Navroze.
At an NCPA rehearsal of Laughter in The House, Dinyar Contractor had told me, “Think why comedy runs best. It reminds everyone of characters with whom they find parallels within their circle. I could cram 73 shows in 84 days of a lighter play like Hasta Ramta Jeevi Laiye. But my Khel Khatarnaak suffered. Let’s face it, people come to the hall to blot out reality. Comedy may be escapist. Its quirkiness is identifiable.”
Few plays now achieve the literary cachet and mass appeal of those from the pen of the last century’s ace authors. Fewer display the sly humour or wild whoosh of mad wordplay, eliciting endless whoops of delight from Parsis and non-Parsis alike. A leaner line trickles into auditoriums for the annual play. Farces lack lustre, their structure is weaker, the puns limper, the guffaws slower. Ticket sales have thinned, with the years taking away the commanding stage presence of confirmed comics of the naatak’s glory years, who guaranteed a giggle a minute.
The Zoom Room kills co-creation and actor-audience collaboration that is the very hallmark of a naatak night. Pandemic signals the death of palpable experiences. Gone is the scope for adventurously conceived actor entries and exits. Gone, too, the electric frisson of anticipation, which generated murmurs and clapping before iconic performers barely stepped onstage. Impossible, for instance, if Jimmy Pocha, “the Danny Kaye of India”, were to jauntily ride a bicycle through the aisles in that typical manner he appeared amidst gathered fans.
As Meherzad Patel says, theatres will eventually reopen, but most artistes might have lost the will to wait and moved on to other avenues of creative expression—“Parsi theatre, however, might thrive because the community refuses to take things lying down and believes in recovering from this hit. Audiences and actors are waiting for the day they come back to each other. I miss the thrill of sitting at the tech box, to watch people elbow other, indicating ‘That’s so you’. It’s not something a recorded show can ever emulate. Imagine distancing with a seat’s gap. Who will you nudge?”
Who, indeed?
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
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