Casteism, superstition: Thought-provoking play ‘Bayan’ compels audience to ponder

For the second consecutive day on Thursday, a play staged by the National School of Drama (NSD), Delhi, ‘Bayen’, as part of the ongoing Darpan Theatre Festival, coaxed the audience to ponder on social stigmas such as casteism and superstition.

Based on Mahasweta Devi’s short story ‘Bayan’, this play was originally directed by noted theatre personality late Usha Ganguly. It introduced viewers to the different colours of human life and socio-economic disparities including Doms living in the darkness of crematoriums, the Bagdis, Dusadhs and Manjhi communities living on the banks of the river, the Santhals living in the dense forests.

The play is about Chandi Dasi who is compelled to take up her ancestors’ profession of burying corpses despite her unwillingness to continue the family’s legacy. She later marries Malinder, a man from the Chamar community. She also has a child with him. Due to coincidence of some deaths of the children in the village and her profession, she is being considered as a Bayan (a child eater) by the superstition of villagers. Later, her husband too abandons her.

The play is a painful depiction of how due to superstition, a mother is separated from her son, her husband and her village.

Eventually her son emerges as an agent of change and succeeds in rekindling the flame of self-respect and dignity for her mother. The villagers realise her worth only when she sacrifices her life for them first by saving them from goons who enter the village, and then averts a tragedy by jumping in front of a moving train.

The play was dedicated to Darpan’s senior member, a journalist and columnist, Vivek Chatterjee.