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The imbalance of power

Actress Nandita Das is set to bring her play, 'Between The Lines' to Bangalore, a second time. Ahead of the performance, the actress spoke to After Hrs about the play and its proximity to real life.

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You better have your notes ready because I am going to ramble on,” chimes actress Nandita Das as she sits down to converse with us about the play Between The Lines that she is bringing to Bangalore this week; therein revealing with that statement what that fruit of labour means to her.
The first play she’s ever directed, acted and co-written (with Divya Jagdale), Between The Lines is the tale of a lawyer-couple (essayed by Nandita and husband, Subodh Maskara), who’ve been married for 10 year and find themselves on the opposite sides of a criminal case that curiously begins to affect their marriage as well. The play, as Nandita describes it, looks at gender inequalities that exist in today’s urban set up. “Today, we have one foot set in modernity and another in tradition. The play looks at the subtler inequalities that exist in our lives and questions the traditional roles that a woman has to conform to even today,” explains Nandita.

While the struggle that women in general is the same, the case of the modern, independent woman, Nandita avers, is more complicated than a woman from the lower strata because, “with women in the upper class, there are subtler complexities that are more difficult to fight with.” “You are conditioned to think and act a particular way and funnily, because of the patriarchal thinking that still exists, most men today think they are liberal — they compare themselves with their parents and think they are better, but there are things they still take for granted or expect from the women in their lives.” “There are things that get left unsaid between a modern couple — which is also the reason behind the name of the play,” she offers.

Staged for the first time last year, the play had an impressive running in every city it was performed in. That might mostly have to do with the fact that Between The Lines deals  with issues that almost every modern couple has gone through. “After every show, we’ve had people coming up to us to say, ‘How do you know what we’re going through? Or ‘This is our life exactly’,” recalls Nandita before reasoning that the play has resonated with the audiences — whether they are young, newly marrieds or older couples who’ve been there, done that — because, “the play reflects 50% of my own married life.”

While the idea to do the play came about when Nandita chanced upon a script penned by Purushottam Agarwal, the need to do it stemmed from her life itself. “My desire to do the play came from the fact that I was juggling with the same issues as the character I play. When I got married and became a mother, I thought I’d be able to do a better job than most other women.
That’s because I’ve always rebelled against stereotypes, but once I had my family, I realised I couldn’t do it either,” Nandita admits before revealing how she manages to juggle all these roles in real life, as well.

“Women on the whole are programmed to multi-task,” she states before adding, “We are thinking of our kids along with shopping for that detergent and a hundred other things, all at the same time. The trick, then, lies in the way one juggles it all. Different things take precedence at different times, so I’ve learnt that it is important to create that space in your life where you focus on one thing at a time,” Nandita sagely notes before completing it with a telling analogy. “In the play, my character has a line that goes, “I want my son, Arjun, here with me, and I also want my spare time. The life that most women lead today is like that. It’s like saying, ‘All I want us everything’ but…” and Nandita’s voice trails off leaving a silence that speaks loud.

Be at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, 7.30pm, December 19. Log on to www.indianstage.in for tickets

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