Halfway House: A Critical Study (for MA-Sem-IV: Modern Indian Literature in Translation: Poetry and Drama) By- Sanjeev Vishwakarma Assistant Professor (English) DDU Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, UP. Post-Independence Indian Drama After
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Halfway House: A Critical Study (for MA-Sem-IV: Modern Indian Literature in Translation: Poetry and Drama) By-
Sanjeev Vishwakarma
Assistant Professor (English)
DDU Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, UP.<br>
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Post-Independence Indian Drama After the legalisation of copyright issues in the last decade of the nineteenth century, publication and circulation of books in different countries became quite convenient for publishers. The undisputed circulation of books in foreign markets led revolutionary changes in the literary movements and activities all over the world. Indian Drama was also influenced by foreign (Western) playwrights, thoughts, techniques and stage settings owing to the availability of plays of Henrik Ibsen, G B Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Becket and others.
Though problem plays were being written in Europe in the later decades of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century, they were written in India after Independence as the nationalist movement of India in the first half of the 20th century kept Indian drama under its influence in the leadership of Jayashankar Prasad and Maithilisharan Gupt who were re-establishing and reviving the past values of Indian culture, tradition and history.<br>
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Post-Independence Indian Drama The Western development in dramatic techniques also influenced Indian theatre at large. On the one hand the traditional Parsi theatre turned into the Bollywood following similar stage settings of the proscenium theatre, Stanislavsky and Brechet had greater impact on theatre techniques and stage settings. The revolutionary Russian influence on Indian drama became a challenge to the current government in Bengal and Eastern India after the formation of IPTA (Indian People's Theatre Association), the British liberal forms and techniques in drama were promoted through the foundation of NSD (National School of Drama) to counter the growing influence of IPTA.
In the process of modernization, westernization and revolutionization, Indian drama lost its Sanskrit influence and became totally cut off from traditional theatre techniques. Jayashankar Prasad tried to keep Indian theatre closer to Sanskrit tradition but the Post-Prasad era of northern-Indian drama was technically a new form.<br>
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Halfway House: Techniques and Stage Settings The play has been written in two Acts of almost similar length. Mohan Rakesh was an expert in experimenting with techniques and styles in his plays. Looking closely at the formal aspects of Halfway House, one can find that the play is in , a little bit, similar tradition of the plays of Badal Sircar, while the theme is concerned with a capitalist system of society that is much influenced by the idea of American Dream.
The play seems to have German and Russian influence in the matter of characterization. It tries to attain greater objectivity by reducing the personhood of every character into a common numerical or age-and-gender-specified identity. The play uses names of characters as The First Man, The Man in Black Suit, These Second Man, The Third Man, The Fourth Man, The Younger Girl, the Older Girl, The Woman and The Boy in almost the similar way as Badal Sircar names his characters in Procession as One, Two, Three, etc.
However, it uses proscenium theatre techniques in the matters of stage settings that were totally rejected by Badal Sircar and other playwrights of IPTA. The other technical aspects like lights, music, props, costumes, stage directions and use of curtain follow the patterns of NSD.<br>
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Halfway House: A Problem Play Written under the influence of Henrik Ibsen, G B Shaw and John Galsworthy, Halfway House sheds lights on those human problems of daily life that were totally neglected in the pre-independence era in India because of the powerful impact of the Nationalist Movement.
Notwithstanding, the play also puts lights on the economic instability in India in Post-China-and-Pakistan wars followed by political instability after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru.
First performed in 1969, the play projects middle class Indians being seduced by the idea of American Dream: taking huge risk in large investments with a view to gaining greater benefits if market forces remain favourable, but it often resulted in huge losses and bankruptcy both in the West and in India. Therefore, in the play, Mahendranath (the male protagonost) becomes a victim of the American Dream like Willy Lowman is in Death of a Salesman.<br>
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Halfway House: A Problem Play Not only does the play question the relevance of capitalist ideology in India at the time when India was as socialist country under the Congress Party regime, it also brings into account the politics of human relations within and outside a family.
Dealing with many relevant but unspoken problems of the current time, the play also tries to highlight the double-shift of women in traditional Indian family: where a woman who is the bread-winner of the family has to work outside in the workplace and take all responsibilities to produce (cook), reproduce and serve (perform all daily, nursing and cultural activities in her family).<br>
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Halfway House: A Problem Play At the same time, the play takes a turn to be psychological in nature when it tries to reflect on the desires and drives of its main female character Savitri and exposes the hollowness of moral and ethical values that lay restrictions on human sexuality.
Under the broader influence of western culture, education and social reforms, the play builds its plot around the emerging concepts of femininity and masculinity where a man (Mahendranath) has been portrayed something like a feminine character who has failed to fit into the hierarchical binary of male/female, while Savitri confronts the devastating traditional values of family and Indian womanhood and seems to be reluctant to cross the threshold of Indian modernity.<br>
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Autobiographical Elements in the Halfway House In spite of being a very creative genius, Mohan Rakesh could not overcome the haunting images of his personal life. His male protagonists, most often, end up being the epitome of his own personhood. In fact, the literary world of Rakesh is a refuge from his painful experiences of life which he could never forget.
Rakesh never felt home anywhere and with anyone and this dissatisfaction from home and search for a permanent and emotionally connected one are reflected in his plays everywhere.
Rakesh was also disappointed with his own married life and sought fulfilment vainly in his three successive marriages. The play Halfway House is not different from his lived experiences with his third wife Anita in the persona of Savitri.<br>
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Autobiographical Elements in the Halfway House Rakesh was a wanderer throughout his life and he never stayed home. Home was like a biting-dog for him and he always made excuses to stay away. This disintegration of family relations, deteriorating values of marriage and a sense of loneliness even after being with members of his family tortured his soul so long as he lived. Therefore, he lived under ‘insecure and unstable sense of self’, ‘fear of intimacy’, ‘fear of abandonment’, and ‘fear of betrayal’. That was, perhaps, the reason why Rakesh was changing his friends very often, so did he with his wives.
The same is found in Mahendranath in the play who also does the same and lives under the same fear.<br>
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Notes and Suggested Readings Note-1: In order to understand this presentation better, it is suggested to read the full-text of the play.
Note-2: The stage performance of the play can be accessed on YouTube through the following link/url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAxfmbthIxw
Rakesh, Mohan. Halfway House. Trans. Bindu Batra. Delhi: Worldview Publication, 2015. Print.
Chatak, Govind. Adhunik Hindi Natak Ka Agradut: Mohan Rakesh. New Delhi: Radhakrishna Publications Pvt Ltd, 2016. Print.
Nagendra, Dr. Adunik Hindi Natak. Agra: Sahitya Press, 2004. Print.<br>
