Baharul Islam’s plays always raise the expectations of the audience and live up to them. With Green Serpent, Islam has added a new feather to his cap. For the first time in North East history, English subtitles for a play were being used. Subtitles are, of course, very beneficial for the foreign audience of a play. The Green Serpent is a play adaptation of a short story by Dr Dhrubajyoti Borah.

The play depicts the identity crisis that has plagued man since time immemorial. But the identity crisis has become a badge of suffering and much critical debate. In the play Green Serpent, this age-old crisis takes on a new garb and a different perspective. That one Osama somewhere commits acts of terrorism for which an entire community has to pay a price is something that Baharul Islam the playwright finds questionable. So, we have a young girl in a remote village of Assam being sexually assaulted in the name of revolution and with the motive to create panic in the minds of people. Overnight, she is brought to the city by her distraught mother. She pursues her higher studies, but as far as her native village is concerned, she is kept captive in the city by her mother, without permission to visit her quaint village in the foothills of the Himalayas, where, when the icy winds blow, one is numbed to the bone; she remembers this with fondness and nostalgia even after spending long years in the city. She acquires a post-graduate degree and becomes a lecturer in a college. It is not only memories of the village that hold her captive, she also cannot forget the nightmarish experience of her physical encounter with a stranger who changed her life forever. Like a serpent, the smell of the rough, male odour and his physical aggression and touches have forever captured her, just like a serpent in the coils of the imagination. Yet, surprisingly, she cannot hate this man who almost destroyed her life on a hot afternoon many years ago. So, the metaphorical green serpent has time and again held the girl in its coil and she is at times confused and at times shattered , yet is unable to hate this man, in spite of his abominable act. Instead, she ends up hating herself. The physical movement displaying the metaphorical relationship and the interplay between the girl and the serpent have been indeed portrayed beautifully. The relationship between the serpent and the young girl brings an ironic poignancy to the play.

Parallel to the girl’s metaphor is the paradox of the girl’s brother, who is ironically called ‘Asom’. So, he is questioned rhetorically, after which Asom is he named. The Asom of Britishers or the immigrant revolution’s Asom. The boy faces the most acute identity crisis and the question after which ‘Asom’ he is named is the most poignant question raised. With Asom having so many fragmented identities, it is difficult to experience a sense of harmony and belongingness with one’s own native place. The second significant question raised is the definition of the critical and debatable one of being ‘tribal’ and their need for autonomy. As many questions criss-cross each other and the journey of self-discovery and finding one’s identity progresses, the play approaches its crescendo. The metaphorical relationship between the girl and the serpent, whom she cannot help but love, also creates a ‘green’ colour of its own.

The climax of the play has the girl meeting the man who, one hot afternoon many years ago, had physically abused and changed her life forever. The man, who was once a part of the revolution, has left those days of gun, power and bloodshed behind to don the mantle of a professor. This intellectual terrorism and its implications are worth taking into account. But, he is not able to forget those ‘hot-headed bloody days of yore’ when he was drunk with the power of the gun and an idealism horribly gone wrong. The conflict of idealism gone wrong and ‘tribal people’ wanting to claim back areas from people long settled in those areas is projected as an underlying current where humanism seems to be fighting a losing battle. As the girl comes face to face with the man, her long hidden pent up emotions come to the surface. And the primordial instincts also resurface in this confrontation. But, as the moment passes and her emotions are expressed, a kind of resignation and acceptance occurs. Somewhere the girl almost longingly waits for the man. But her younger brother, caught in the turmoil, refuses to accept the fact that he is an outsider in his own birthplace. For him, his journey of self-discovery, his roots and heritage is inextricably connected to his birthplace. He refuses to go, for he feels that outside it he has no identity.

The question of ‘they and us’ is asked more and more often now. A lot of mindless and senseless violence seems to be erupting because of it. But what is dangerous is that such violence is being justified in the name of justice to ‘them’ and to ‘us’. As a cloud of hate, anger, violence clouds us, we seem to be living and creating more fragmented worlds where the search for identity is more felt than ever and is often leading to bitterness and injustice. Such questions take various shapes and hues in this venture of Baharul Islam. Even when we are marching technologically forward, questions of our roots and heritage have been plaguing mankind more than ever before. Perhaps in the struggle for survival, the identity crisis have been deepening, and instead of taking us to our roots, is cutting at our very roots.

Meenakshi Gautam