Abhivachan brings to life works of Sharad Joshi

NAGPUR: Saturday evening turned out to be a treat for patrons of Hindi literature. The second edition of Abhivachan, organized by Chitnavis Centre, featured works of writer, author and satirist Sharad Joshi.
The select audience was in splits as six of the writer’s works were read out by theatre persons Supantha Bhattacharya and Dinkar Bedekar who had also conceptualized the event.
Popular among the readers of Hindi literature, Joshi carved a niche as a satirist commenting on the socio-political milieu of his times. That those perceptions hold good even today came across when a few of them were read out in a dramatized manner.
Bhattacharya began with ‘Intezaaar bhid ka’ in which Joshi discusses the intense need of a politician and an author to gather a crowd. Building up on a scenario where a politician arrives on time to make an impression on his audience only to find the venue still empty of crowd, and an author who though empathizes with him yet is amused, the author sketches the undercurrents, like growing irritation, the complacence of the organizer and the lurking smirks of the author with aplomb.
Bedekar’s reading of the second essay, ‘Kasbe ka cinema manager’ brought out the brilliance of Joshi with its deep understanding of small town sensibilities. The writing was brought alive with the precision with which Joshi pencils out each character, lending the piece the right touch of nostalgia along with good humour.
‘Sharam tumko magar aati hai’ read by Bhattacharya was a run of everything that a common man has always wanted to ask a politician. Both Bedekar and Bhattacharya engaged the audience as they went into a dramatized conversation between a government official and an ordinary citizen demanding his dues, based on Joshi’s ‘Sari behas se guzar kar’.
‘Ek Bangla film’, a humour piece which underlines how not knowing the language can lead to misunderstanding of an otherwise well-crafted film, was highlighted with Bedekar’s reading which accentuated the deriding conversation between two non-Bangla friends who get the crux of the film all wrong.
The concluding piece ‘Virginia Woolfe se sab darte hain’, read by Bhattacharya, takes the notion of ‘follow the leader’ to another level and speaks of bureaucratic hierarchy and the subservient manner in which it is practised.
Bedekar said, “Sharad Joshi’s writings took many formats like essay, column and story. But what I like the best is his expression and precision and the fact that he gets the situation so correct. That’s because though he understood the prevalent paradoxes he never accepted them.”