Calcutta arts

The staging of playwright Dorab Mehta’s Sasu Sexy, Jamai Esky (Mother-in-law sexy, son-in-law fashionable) saw a turnout of "more than half the community members who are mobile,” wrote the play’s lead actor Yezdi Karai in an email to Parsiana. The 220 community members "braved the deluge that descended on Calcutta on that day,” August 17, 2019, he stated. The Calcutta Parsi Amateur Dramatic Club (CPADC) has continued its 112-year-old tradition of holding a show for the city’s Parsis on New Year with this staging at the Satyajit Ray Auditorium. Directed by Pervez Kekobad and assisted by Cyrus Madan, Sasu… comprised a cast of eight — five male and three female actors. Only two of the cast read Gujarati, and the remainder read and memorize the Gujarati lines with English phonetics, wrote Karai.

An "authentic 70-year-old,” Karai played the role of Bajiba, a septuagenarian whose second wife Mani (Indrani Anklesaria) is scheming with a doctor to "medicate Bajiba into the next world.” The doctor Najamai Adagra (Anahita Gupta) and her "somewhat effeminate son Addu” (Malcolm Tarapore), who is studying to be a doctor, provided many "slapstick moments.” Situations involving potential matchmaking, and Mani’s manipulation of a solicitor, Sherry Ghamat (Jahan Parekh) to get Bajiba to sign a will that leaves her all of his assets provided for many mirthful moments, wrote Karai. The cynical Man Friday Kavla played by Darius Panthaki is pivotal in revealing Mani’s conspiracy.
Contemporary twists to the play came with Bajiba’s daughter Delna (Dolly Irani Bannerjee) and her music and dance teacher Hector (Ratan Postwalla) twirling to Bollywood numbers. The play ended with a song choreographed and tuned by Bombay-based musician Kaizad Gherda (see "Morose musician,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, January 21, 2016) based on an old Lata Mangeshkar favorite, wrote Karai. The play is available on the YouTube channel of CPADC for public viewing.
Until the 1980s, CPADC held, besides the annual free drama for the city’s Parsis, performances for Gujarati speaking sister communities. "Separate performances for sister communities is a tradition that we could not continue,” regrets Karai. "This year the size of the hall precluded us from inviting sister communities to the performance… We are keen to revive this…costs and logistics permitting.
"After 112 years our stock of scripts is running dry and we would gratefully acknowledge any gesture to share scripts of Gujarati nataks as we seek to maintain our tradition in future years,” appealed Karai, whose write-up was forwarded to Parsiana by Calcutta Parsee Club (CPC) president Prochy Mehta.

An interfaith marriage; the kidnapping of a recently navjoted boy; a Bengali woman detective who is also a martial arts expert and cinema roles for at least three Calcutta Parsis — Karai, Postwalla and Yazad Katrak — all these are components of a forthcoming movie titled Mitin Mashi (Mitin Aunty). The director Arindam Sil has dedicated this movie to the Parsis of Calcutta, Karai wrote in an email to Parsiana.

A part of the Bengali film was shot at the CPC, noted Karai and Mehta. In the film, due for release later this year during the Durga Puja festival that will precede Dussehra, Karai plays Ratan Dastur, the Club secretary, who Mitin appeals for help to locate her sister’s missing son. Postwalla plays the kidnapped boy’s paternal uncle and Katrak stepped in as the mobed who performed the boy’s navjote. Karai noted that the Late Dhunjeebhoy Byramjee Mehta’s Zoroastrian Anjuman Atash Adaran donated some props for the filming of the navjote scenes. "Some members of our community were part of the scenes at the navjote dinner filmed in an old mansion in Ballygunge (a tony area of the city),” he stated.
"We were very impressed with the detailed research that the production crew had done on the Parsis of Calcutta and little did we know that the Parsi plot was in a Bengali novel of the same name (Mitin Mashi) written by Suchitra Bhattacharya many years ago.