Synopsis of a Street Play

This is the sketch of a 15-minute Hindi street play that we are hoping to stage on 1st January before a Rotary audience, and later present before several other audiences. This is written for targetting slum audiences, municipal school children etc. in mind.  However, we hope to strike a chord in sophisticated, urbane audiences also.

The author of this play is a half-Tamil half-Maharashtrian chap named Santosh Jangam  who ran away from home, became a street child, and later found shelter, training and guidance at a YMCA. He currently lives in a slum at Vile Parle and makes a livelihood peddling books on suburban trains. I met him serendipitously while doing a little friendly research on the economics, profit margins etc. of book peddlers.

THE SCRIPT:

The Creator descends to earth and wants to know whether his creatures are happy. First, he beckons to a tree and a plant standing shyly at a far corner, and urges them to speak. They are diffident. "We dare not speak, because it is well known to all creatures that you favour humans over all other creatures," they allege. The Creator reassures them that it it is not so, and asks them to speak without fear.

What follows is a well-reasoned litany of woes from different creatures who each speak of being abused by humans in their greed for a better lifestyle.

Trees and plants complain that while other creatures consume them only for food, humans cut down trees for a multitde of other reasons, including the idle pleasures of reading newspapers with very little productive content. "Our land is continually being taken away from us (deforestation) and is left unsuitable for even tiny shrubs (desertification)", complain the trees. "That is why we are now left standing in secluded corners -- we who once populated all of the earth."

Others speak of similar truths:

fishes, whose water is polluted with chemical wastes and chemical fertilizers. Also, they are trapped in large numbers with hi-tech vessels, and driven to extinction through over-fishing.

insects, who complain of indescriminate use of chemical pesticides

birds, who complain of habitat loss due to deforestation and death due to pesticides

domestic animals who complain of being housed and fed in inhuman conditions

predators, who complain of poisoning of their prey, dwindling forests etc.

All these creatures keep ending their 2-minute speech with one request: "We no longer want to share this planet with humans, please take us away". (This is a reference to the wave of mass extinctions currently in progress... over 50,000 species per year.)

Finally, God asks humans to speak. Two guys who were formerly classmates represent the viewpoint of humankind before the Creator.

One, who is poor and lives in the slums, points his finger at the rich guy. "He drives a big car and parks it on the roadside along with others, preventing me from riding my bicycle and safely walking by the roadside," he says. "Because of him and many many others like him, who consume hugely and dump large quantities of garbage, I am unable to walk about safely in this city. Indeed, his garbage -- like PET bottles, chocolate wrappers and plastic bags -- litter even the countryside and the seaside. This world is no longer a nice place to live in," he lamets.

The rich guy in turn accuses the poor guy and his kind of having degraded his city with sprawling slums. "He and his kind indiscriminately burn garbage, plastic, rubber tyres, and poison the very air that I breathe. They are the ones ruining the environment," he says.

In this way, a lot of issues related to environmental degradation and global warming are aired in an interesting way.

Finally, the Creator concludes by urging the rich and the poor to make peace, to resume proper communications between themselves and together change their ways. He tells them to restore earth to make it liveable for all creatures, including themselves. He gives a brief explanation about the web of life, and its importance in maintaining breatheable air, drinkable water, cultivable land etc.

The End.

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In the backdrop, we plan to have banners held by some actors -- scenes that portray healthy forests, deforestation, degraded environment etc. They will change the scenes a few times during the play.

We hope to end with a song or a slogan for all 'creatures' in the play to sing together. Haven't thought of one yet... any good ideas out there for a catchy jingle in Hindi?

Through this play, and others like this one, we hope to take the global warming message to many simple folks in and around the city, and trigger some amount of positive thought and action.