Andha Yug
Written by Rohan A. Rastogi


Sanjay (left), Ashwathamma (center), Yuyutsu (right)
Act II, Andha Yug

Twenty years ago SETU emerged as a local theatrical troupe introducing Indian drama to Greater Boston. Since its founding in 2003 it has staged 30 plays spanning reenactments of historical epics, skits & sketches of love, and contemporary socio-economic realities including casteism. Equally amazing as its breadth in theatrical work is SETU’s operation as a non-profit. For two decades the troupe has organized a wide-ranging suite of shows thanks to the talents and dedicated efforts of some 200 volunteers. Their production of Andha Yug fittingly marks a culmination of not only SETU’s excellence in staging theater but also its visible promotion of Indian art within the region.

Andha Yug, which translates to ‘Blind Era’, is Alok Bhalla’s English translation of playwright Dharamvir Bharati’s 1953 verse play.[R1]  It encompasses a philosophical discourse into the Mahabhārat, the original oratorical masterpiece of India’s ithihās. Harrowing, melancholic, and doggedly profound, Andha Yug offers a unique vantage point from which to view the filial fall-out occurring upon the battlefields of Kuruḳṣḥeṭḥṛ.

The play’s setting is bleak. For seventeen days two clans of kinsmen have waged brutal war against one another for their honor, name, pride, and self-respect. A handful of warriors and an open, unanswered question are the only survivors of the colossal violence. Was a royal throne worth smashing and shattering the bonds of brotherhood? Via this inquiry Bharati’s play diverges, somewhat controversially, from the canon. Andha Yug presents a dissenting interpretation of the War of Kuruḳṣḥeṭḥṛ, one which frames the fight as foolishness, fruitlessness, and an utter insanity aided and abetted by the wiles and whims of Supreme Lord Krishna.

Stellar performances by Gitanjali Srivastava (Ashwathamma), Yogita Miharia (Yuyutsu), and Ketan Dave (playing Gandhari as the male actor among an exclusively female cast) portray how the physical pains of war are often outweighed by its emotional agonies. The three illustrate with immense expressiveness the knotted implications of conflating the rights of raj and revenge hand-in-hand. Their stand-out stage presences invite the audience into what is possibly Andha Yug’s core appraisal of the Mahabharat: Is war ever genuinely justified by Dharmā or is it but a foregone folly and failure of man?

An impressive cast highlights the prominence of characters long considered secondary within the canon. The roles of blind regent Dhritharāṣḥṭṛ (Meghna Karody), wise minister Vidur (Swapneel Batra), Yadav turncoat Kritvarmā (Monisha Vaish), royal counselor Sanjay (Sugandha Gopal), and the mendacious mendicant (Chandrala Malkood) are presented with greater significance by their corresponding actresses. The royal guards (Jyothsna Luckshetty, Priyanka Banerjee), divine brothers Balrām and Bhagwān Ṣṛī Kṛṣṇa (Mukta Munjal and Sirisha Viswanadha respectively), Pandav king Yuḍḥiṣḥṭṛ (Shailini Sisodia) and other roles contribute indelibly to the gravity and gloom of circumstances. Forceful gestures, somber faces, and admirable body intensities realize despondency, anguish, and wretched rage before the audience’s very own eyes.

And it is the eyes that matter, or so Andha Yug reinforces. The play begins in darkness and it ends in darkness. Its resounding theme is the catastrophe that results from an incapacity to see people as they are, to foresee them as they will be. Kaurav rulers Dhritharashtra (blind by birth) and Gandhari (blind by choice) rely upon Vidur’s sight and Sanjay’s clairvoyance to locate their corporeal, psychological, and spiritual bearings. Their blindness extends beyond the eyes; they cannot help but believe in a beggar’s lies for false comfort and ephemeral assuagement. It is a blindness that consumes their court, their kingdom, and the fate of their world. Servants, soldiers, and even sages are affected as if blindness were an unchecked contagion, cleaving clarity, obscuring judgment. Blindness, as well as its abled obverse, is both metaphor and motif throughout the play.

Most aspects of Andha Yug are executed quite well. Colored stage lights paint war-torn, blood-stained brilliance upon the stage and targeted spotlights augment the spectral nature of post-mortem dialogues (all handled by Prateek Paul). The production features a fantastic curation of costumes, carefully selected to suit the characters appropriately. Costume designer Jayanti Bandyopadhyay captures the regal elegance and majestic beauty of Holy Lord Krishna with bright colors, modestly jeweled ornamentation, and his characteristic morpankh. Refined green and orange frilled cloth pair alongside glinting bracelets accentuating bicep musculature to manifest the godly avatar’s glorious appeal. Warriors wear golden breastplates and wield spartan weapons, while civilians are reserved to rustic vestments connoting simplicity and subordinate status. Ashwathamma is shrouded almost entirely in black except for red undertones throughout Andha Yug, likely as a sartorial representation of his singular psychological state, and boasts his customary gem of invincibility upon his forehead. 

Similarly, the vision and skill of director Subrata Das are clear and obvious. Featuring customary elements of Greek theater such as interspersed dance and a narrative chorus, his direction blends an Indian script with English diction and the signature style of antique Attic tragedy. References to broken chariot wheels and analogies of aṣṭṛon as nuclear weapons subtly translate the context of the Mahabharat for non-Indo audiences. From operating double casts to securing the Charles Mosesian mainstage in Watertown, director Das’s stagecraft empowers the players to showcase their best with minimal set management and auxiliary crew in a facility worthy of their ability.

SETU’s production of Andha Yug hones a novel creative edge by electing for reverse-gendered casting, switching female players for male roles and vice versa. Such progressive casting ensures more equitable access to roles conventionally regulated for one half of a troupe. Any initial skepticism of female actresses’ capabilities to play powerful, warring characters is soon mitigated during the first scenes. The male performance of Gandhari enlightens a particular critique against the canonical framing of the character. Typically, Gandhari is archetyped as an exemplar wife within the Indian tradition in light of her choice in blindfolding herself permanently upon marriage to Dhritharashtra. Her action is conventionally construed to be one of virtue, prompted by piety and proactive empathy to share in the sufferings, sorrows, and disabled stature of her husband. Her blindness is one of free will, personal volition, and yes, female agency.

Yet SETU’s staging of Andha Yug casts doubt and tenuousness into the canon. Is Gandhari’s pious choice truly the correct one? Does Gandhari’s pity for her partner’s condition and sincere desire to abate its incurring solitude genuinely serve her family?
Or do her spousal sentiments and wilful surrender of sight endorse a metastasis of her husband’s ailment from mere physical blindness to emotional, psychological, and spiritual blindness? Is Gandhari’s abnegation of vision her fatal flaw when it prevents her from redressing her husband’s blind love, blind egoism, and blind judgment?

Audiences acquainted with the Mahabharat may probe unyieldingly deeper. Dhritharashtra’s partiality for his sons stem from personal resentments of having being passed over the right to rule in favor of his younger brother due to the former’s physical disability. Time and time again, his blindness is a convenient excuse to ‘look the other way’ with respect to his sons’ baseness and criminality. Given her husband’s favoritism, should not Gandhari have been less preferential, less complicit, and less enabling of her sons? As fully sighted should not the Kaurav matriarch be held to a superior standard relative to her husband? What if the Kuru queen had banished the passivity of a spousal follower and instead intervened actively with the authority endowed by her royal marriage? Would not she have embodied the ideal wife as an equal ruling partner and fully healthy meter of justice? Or is Gandhari the canon’s example that irrespective of personal worthiness the fate of a married woman and her family ultimately abide by the will of her husband? Does the canon believe that though a father determines his own ability to judge his children properly, maternal love is always blind and not so by choice?

These sorts of layered depths emerge from the shows of Andha Yug. They evoke pensiveness and provoke spectators to ponder in a manner akin to Oedipus. Was the destruction of the Kuru dynasty inevitable? No answer to this or any other raised questions are provided by Andha Yug, but a truth common to both Indian and Western is illuminated: andhon mein, kaana raja —  among the blind, the one-eyed is king.

With four shows distributed  across weekend matineés & nights plus offerings of piping hot chai and savory samosas during intermissions, Andha Yug is a memorable experience spectators will enjoy and appreciate. SETU’s labors to connect Western and Indian drama bear remarkable, laudable fruit in the form of Andha Yug. This troupe should take pride in its success in representing the Indian-American community within Greater Boston and building the very bridge of theater it has strived for these past twenty years.

Andha Yug was SETU’s most recent production, staged at the Dorothy and Charles Center for the Arts during the weekend of September 29^th – October 1^st, 2023. The author of this review is independent of SETU, but is fortunate to be on a friendly basis with its members. Learn more about Andha Yug and other theatrical productions upon SETU's website.

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