Mohan Rakesh’s Adhe Adhure is the story of a family on a downward spiral to complete disintegration. It is an incisive take on man-woman relationship and a scathing portrayal of the disgruntled middle-class world. Written in the year 1968 and performed for the first time in 1969, the play enjoys a certain canonical status.
The title of the translation - Halfway House refers to the incompleteness in the house, an inability to become ‘home’ that exudes warmth and predictability. The individuals in the house are also broken in different ways. There is neither scope for peace and restoration nor for complete dissolution of filial relations. The play ends in a situation similar to the start indicating a gridlock.
Savitri, the breadwinner for a family of five, claims her married life of 22 years is a hell and her husband Mahendranath, a curse. Right from the play’s start, we see that Mahendranath has no place of respect in the household. He is projected as a lethargic, ‘good for nothing’ parasite sucking up his wife’s lifeblood, a useless lump of flesh. The treatment meted out to him elicits a little pity from us initially before we realize the part he played in ruining his marriage/home in act 2.
Trapped in the vicious cycle of domestic dysfunctionality are the children of Mahendranath and Savitri - the eldest child, a son named Ashok, a college dropout with no inclination to find a job who spends time sleeping & cutting pictures from magazines, the older daughter Binni who runs away from home to marry her lover, Manoj but leads an unhappy married life and younger daughter Kinni, the ‘hard to discipline’ rebel in her early teens whose caustic tongue lashes like a whip.
The play in 2 acts opens with a unique prelude where a man in a black suit, about 50 yrs old, stands in the middle of a disorderly living room and claims he is ‘amorphous’, lacks a well defined function in this play, a play which is just as undefined as him. This arrangement allows us to believe that though the play revolves around one family, its scope is universal given the pace at which post independent society (1960-70s) was transforming. Women were stepping out of home for work, striving for better education and financial independence which created an ego tussle between man and woman leading to clear, constant strain in their relationships. The middle class was clinging onto tradition and pining for freedom, witnessing genuine love and concern devoured by materialistic pleasures.
That the author chooses Savitri as the wife’s name reflects sharp irony. The play’s Savitri yearns to get rid of her husband who she treats like a scumbag, sharply athwart the Savitri from Indian mythology who fought Yama, the God of death, valiantly and doggedly to bring her dead husband back to life. Despite this careful choice of name for the central protagonist, the author never resorts to using names of his characters through its length (possibly another attempt to enhance the scope of the play) - Mahendranath is referred to as The First Man, Savitri as The Woman, the daughters as The Older Girl and The Younger Girl and the son as The Boy.
Other men too play a significant role in the play as Savitri and Mahendranath use them as options of ‘emotional refuge’ when the battle at home gets severely bitter. These men are Savitri’s boss, referred to as The Second Man known for empty boasting and ogling at women, The Third Man for whom Savitri has a soft corner and turns to when in utter distress and The Fourth Man, Juneja, who is Mahendranath’s close friend. It is noteworthy how the author insists that all men (barring the son Ashok who is a young boy), right from the man in the black suit in the prelude, should be played by the same person exhibiting only change in mannerisms and costume and the reason for this becomes clear as the play progresses.
While the play’s act 1 only reveals deep fissures in the family, the children torn between their parents with the daughters reflecting their mother’s traits and the son mostly in tandem with the father, it is only in act 2 that the WHYs are answered, at least partly. Through conversations between Juneja (the Fourth Man) and Savitri (The Woman), we begin to grasp the role husband and wife played in ruining their marriage. The end leaves us with a stark realization that the author places most of the onus for the damage on Savitri. Even if inadvertently done, the end imparts a controversial status to the play. We swear to read more written by the author to take note of his style. The end leaves us with many questions, for instance, if it is okay to normalize a frustrated man’s violent behavior, if this play is anti-woman.
Mohan Rakesh, one of the pioneers of the Nayi Kahani movement in Hindi literature, challenges our interpretation of the play at many places. The play’s critical analysis plus other detailed essays on the author & his written works at the end of the book published by Worldview Publications help in fine tuning our understanding. The translation by Bindu Batra offers a seamless reading experience and the introduction by Enact’s Rajinder Nath a befitting start to the play. Adhe Adhure succeeds in retaining our interest as it encourages debate and discussion, there's a lot in the lines said by the characters but so much more in the unsaid.
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