Asatyakaam

A still from a Bengali play titled 'Asatyakaam' that I saw today. Even though I do not understand the language but both the actors were so brilliant that they kept the audience in rapt attention. the story went as follows:

A young man visits a lady in her middle-age. They engage in small talk with the boy exuding nervous energy. The boy reveals his identity and his father's name to the lady. She instantly recognises the man to be her son, whom she had left when he was just 5 years old. The young man questions his mother for the reasons she had left him. The mother cooks up a story, saying that his father had killed all her singing aspirations, was a sadist and behaved very badly with her. She adds that she left the father because she could not bear the brutal treatment JUST because she was an Indian girl. The son loses his temper and tells his mother that he knows that she was forced to leave his father because she had been impregnated by his father's best friend. The play ended with the son leaving his mother crying with tears of guilt that promise to ruin her life for all times to come.

It was not a happy story that I usually enjoy. But I was really impressed with the actors. The Son was excellent in projecting the anguish of a child, who was abandoned by his mother and had faced the hardships of life answering difficult questions about his own mother. The Mother on her part, was exceptional in adorning the role of a woman who made a choice earlier in life, a choice that makes her guilty but at the same time the good things that come with this new life are worth forgetting the injustice she met out to her son. I had goosebumps after watching her express remorse at the end of the play.

Hope you liked the story too. :-)