Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Theatre doyen Ratan Thiyam had a long and intimate connection with Bhopal. Theatre persons from the city have fond memories of the eminent playwright and theatre director, who passed away at 77 in a hospital in his birthplace Imphal, on Wednesday.
Thiyam came to Bhopal in the 1980s and since then, kept on visiting the city to attend different cultural and literary events. In 2019, he participated in Bhopal Literature Fest as a guest.
In 1984, he staged Kalidas’ ‘Ritu Samhar’ at Bharat Bhavan under his directorship. The Open Air stage of Ravindra Bhavan in Bhopal was the venue of the ‘Rang Sopan’, the first theatre festival in the country centred on Thiyam.
Organised by Ustad Allauddin Khan Sangeet Evam Kala Akademi, a wing of the culture department, in January 2013, the 7-day festival saw the staging of six plays including Urubhangam, Andha Yug, Nine Hills One Valley, Uttar Priyadarshi, When We did Awaken, King of the Dark Chamber, directed by him. Before that, in 2005, he was feted with Kalidas Samman by the state government.
Theatre doyen Ratan Thiyam interacts with audience in Bhopal Literature Festival at Bharat Bhawan in 2019. |
Thiyam was a close friend of BV Karanth and that was one reason why he visited Bhopal and Bharat Bhavan, with which Karanth was associated for many years as the first director of Rangmandal.
“In his passing, we have lost the greatest contemporary theatre director of India. In fact, he can be counted among three or four top theatre directors in Asia,” says poet and art critic Udayan Vajpeyi who was a close friend of Thiyam and has written a book titled “Bhavyta: The Theatre of Grandeur” on him. Thiyam had a deep understanding of movement, colour and light, Vajpeyi said, adding that Thiyam loved Bhopal for its slow-paced life, food, Upper Lake and wonderful audience. Vajpeyi said that Thiyam chose Bhopal to get operated upon for gallstones in 2018. “It is a great personal loss to me. Such wounds don’t heal. They only grow worse with time,” he said.
Professor at Sanskrit Central University, Bhopal, Sangeeta Gundecha, who has also written a book titled ‘Natyadarshan’ on Thiyam, had an almost 30-year-long association with Thiyam. She said that whenever he visited Bhopal, Thiyam did not forget to take back Kheer Kadam and toys for his two sons . Sangeeta recalls that she met him when he visited Ujjain, her hometown. “I was working on my PhD thesis on Sanskrit poet Bhas. I went to interview him and prepared questions in English. But to my surprise, I found that he spoke excellent Hindi,” she said. “His death is like the exit of Rangpita from the world,” she said.
Senior theatre artiste Shobha Chatterjee recalled having learned Manipuri martial art from him in 1981 at a workshop at Gandhi Bhavan. “He was a very strict and disciplined teacher. He didn’t speak much but when he spoke, it was always logical and precise,” she said, adding that “the void created by him in the world of theatre can’t be filled.”
According to Shriram Tiwari, Trustee Secretary of Veer Bharat Nyas and Cultural Advisor to the Chief Minister, like Karanth and Habib Tanvir, Thiyam, too, provided a wide platform to indigenous theatre.
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