Parnab Mukherjee needs no introduction to the North-eastern states. The director of Necropolis, Mukherjee describes this play as a triology of which Hamlet Machine is the finest, following which is Necropolis. Hamlet-Machine was staged in Guwahati last month, and this month, Parnab was seen with Necropolis. Together, this triology is called — The Trilogy of Unrest. The presentation began with a series of still-photographs depicting the brutality of men, with mindless violence on their fellow beings, be it in the name of infanticide, genocide, racial discrimination or gender discrimination. The background music – Kalankini Radha, a telling comment on the plight of women even in the 21st century, sets the mood of the play. It is perhaps such discriminations in the name of race, colour, gender, class, geography, dialects, language, religion, economy, so on and so forth, that make people like Parnab Mukherjee raise their voice over and over again regarding the same issues in play after play. Necropolis is a solo performance of about an hour long, where two persons meet on a balmy evening at a metro-station in Paris. However, this place need not necessarily be constricted to only a Paris metro-station, but could also be any other place. People today, in this globalised world, usually meet with the motive of common transaction — that of buying and selling, to take place. As such, here also two persons meet, one to buy and the other to sell. However, this commercial venture entails a slight technical snag. The one who sells is slightly confused as to what he would want to sell, and the one who buys is also naturally confused as to what he would like to buy. This indeed is a document of our times. We are so used to accepting genocide discrimination, of accepting people who are displaced as destitutes, and more importantlly, accepting violence as a quotodian activity, that we seem to have actually lost our way. There entails a cat and mouse game for the transaction between the two nameless and faceless buyer-seller. The next few minutes of the play are marked by an exchange of concepts, ideas and ideologies, and how these get crushed by us in society owing to our selfish attempts to progress forward. Suddenly, there comes a twist in the play and the seller is seen to pick up five items for the buyer to buy. The first item is silence, considering everything taking place around them. Second is modern trappings. Enough trappings make us blind, deaf and dumb to every happening. We should also be careful of technology (read the Bhopal tragedy) ruining us. So what if even after decades, people still continue their lost battle for justice? After all, it is ‘they’ and not ‘us’. Can we one day really grow up enough to truely celebrate the concept of unity in diversity? Perhaps that would be the day when we would no longer be afraid of the colour of our skin, our dialect, our gender, or to say, basically of one’s identity. One therefore, needs to learn to wear appropriate ‘masks’ in accordance to one’s time and place. At a later stage of transaction, the seller is seen to intrigue the buyer with the concept of buy four and get one free. As usual, the buyer is shown to excitedly pick up the bait, whereby, the fourth item – world citizenship, comes free. ‘World citizenship’ is again a beautiful way of putting the phrase ‘a world full of compromises’, whereby a world would refuse to see bloodshed because then they would not only have to accept it but perhaps set it free as well. At the end of this transaction, however, nobody ends up buying and selling, but then this play surely makes us aware that such transactions can still continue in today’s times with a different set of clients and customers, until one is ready to face and resolve the above mentioned arising issues.

Parnab Mukherjee has always used different idioms for his personal expressions to voice such issues. Necropolis was held in Handique Girls College under the ageis of Bohemian Souls, the dramatic society of the English department of the Handique Girls College, which has time and again proved its commitment to the cause of theatre.

Meenakshi Gautam