About two years ago, on July 16, 2024, a newspaper report caught my attention. What I read left me astonished, and stirred something deep within me. The report said: A thief who had broken into the home of renowned poet Narayan Surve realized whose house it was, and, overcome with remorse, wrote an apology letter and quietly returned every stolen belonging to the house exactly as it was. What began as my admiration for the thief gradually transformed into curiosity about the forces that had shaped him, the world he inhabited, and the moral understanding through which he viewed his own life. At the same time, I found myself compelled by a strange realization: somewhere within the thief existed the belief that theft was not a crime but an occupation, yet stealing from a poet is such a grave wrong that it demands not only the return of the stolen belongings, but also a written apology. From there, I slowly began piecing together an understanding of his overall behaviour and the moral world it emerged from. Perhaps this petty thief had never, in all his earlier thefts, experienced any real fear of the law, nor had he ever allowed cracks to appear in the logic that justified his becoming a thief. So why was it that after stealing from Narayan Surve’s house, he suddenly felt remorse-stricken? What made him feel so deeply ashamed of his own actions that he felt compelled to write an apology letter? He did not ask forgiveness for being a thief or the countless thefts he had committed before. Then why was he apologizing specifically for stealing from a poet’s home? Returning the stolen goods was understandable. But what would really have happened if he had not written that apology letter? What would truly have changed had he not written it? What was it that awakened within him as he looked around Narayan Surve’s house, reading the poems on the walls, looking at his photographs and his awards?
Given the nature of today’s media ecosystem, the news quickly went viral across the country through news channels and social media platforms. People watched it, read it, and reacted with momentary amazement. But in a nation where events far more shocking unfold every second, it was obvious that this story too would have the lifespan of a colorful firecracker bursting briefly across the sky before fading away. People listened, reacted, and forgot. The thief became the subject of discussion. The poet did not. The possibility that poetry could move a thief enough to alter his conscience, however briefly, is not an idea that sits comfortably within today’s restless social climate. The very meaning of what delights us, and what we choose to value or dismiss is itself changing in the world we inhabit today. News of justice now feels like a rare source of joy, almost a relief. Securing a job or earning a livelihood has itself begun to seem like an extraordinary good fortune. We find ourselves astonished when people rush to help one another out of sheer humanity. And so, the image of a thief breaking into Narayan Surve’s home, reading his poems on the walls, and returning his stolen belongings in remorse begins to feel almost impossible to believe. Our faith in the very system of values meant to uphold human goodness has eroded so deeply that whenever something genuinely good happens, it strikes us as unbelievable. And so, people reacted with some disbelief and eventually forgot the story. These days, people almost consciously choose to forget such stories. Because stories like these disturb the careful numbness we cultivate within ourselves. They awaken moral values and ethical instincts that modern life has taught us to suppress, since carrying them often feels like carrying an unnecessary burden.
In the context of everything around us today, this news felt immensely important to me. I instantly knew I wanted to write a play about it. I kept returning to the idea again and again. But gradually I realized that I needed to give it time. Because I was caught in a dilemma: should I use Narayan Surve as a way to understand and unravel the thief, or should I use the thief as a way to rediscover and reinterpret Narayan Surve himself? We have read Narayan Surve ourselves. His writing, which continues to keep human beings morally awake across generations, has shaped something within us too. But then why would a thief respond so deeply to his name? What exactly had awakened within him? Had he read Surve as well? And if he had, how did he still become a thief? One question led into another. It became clear to me that if I wanted to look for these answers, I would first have to read Narayan Surve all over again. I would have to meet people who had known Narayan Surve closely. I would have to keep taking notes and gathering information.
I began by rereading Narayan Surve and revisiting books written about his poetry. As I went along, I began setting aside certain poems that resonated with this incident. Gradually, I realized that Surve’s writing already contains within it immense theatrical potential. His deeply human-centered way of constructing poetry carries not only a sharp and unsettling realism, but also a lyrical artistry, and the lingering scent of human consciousness. I then went to the Narayan Surve Library in Nashik and explored whatever references and archival material I could access there. I watched documentaries on YouTube by filmmakers like Arun Khopkar and Dilip Chitre, among many others. I found myself studying Narayan Surve closely: his voice, his gait, the way he recited poems, the rhythm of his conversations and interviews. At the time, I did not really know how any of this would eventually connect to the writing of the play. There was something extraordinary about the thought that a poet who once possessed the power to inspire movements of social transformation through poetry could still, even today, offer the possibility of transformation to a thief.
Through this entire process of research, everything began overlapping inside my mind at once: the thief, the act of theft, Narayan Surve’s poetry, the returning of the stolen goods, the writing of the apology letter. It increasingly felt necessary to meet people who had known Surve personally and intimately. That is when I reached out to writer and journalist Uttam Kamble. He has always shown curiosity and genuine interest in my writing. Besides, I have myself spent thirteen years in journalism, the foundation of which has been laid under his mentorship and guidance. So when he asked me, “Why do you want to understand Surve through me?, I had to tell him about the incident of theft and my urge to turn it into a play. He appeared deeply happy after hearing it. Then followed two continuous days of long conversations, stretching nearly eight hours each, in which Uttam Kamble narrated to me, almost like a storyteller, the many dimensions of Narayan Surve he had personally experienced: Surve the poet, Surve beyond poetry, and the larger philosophy through which he viewed life. It was also from him that I came to know about Surve’s interview being aired on Russian radio. And through these discussions, I slowly began grasping Surve’s profoundly human way of seeing people and engaging with those around him. Gradually, I stopped feeling the urgency and pressure to write the play immediately. Because before anything else, I needed to truly understand Narayan Surve. I did not want to carry even the slightest ambiguity within me while writing the play. As I read Surve’s reflections in Sanad, edited by Kusumagraj, it struck me that this extraordinary poet had a remarkable ability of narrating pain with rhythm and lyrical beauty even while speaking of life’s deepest wounds. What struck me repeatedly was the extraordinary fact that Narayan Surve wrote only 145 poems in his lifetime, and yet was able to make such profound and universal observations through them. As I studied works such as Aisa Ga Mi Brahma, Majhe Vidyapeeth, Jahirnama, and Navya Manasache Agaman, along with books like Sarva Surve, newer meanings continued unfolding before me. The collected volume of his complete poems and the preface written by Digambar Padhye opened up fresh ways of understanding him. One thing became increasingly clear to me. I did not want this play to turn into a docudrama centered on Surve’s life journey. The thief in this story is not just a thief. He is a representative of the contemporary system itself. It is this very system that has either offered him theft as a choice, or compelled him to become one. The new capitalist order offers people countless dreams and alternatives, but within its harsh realities, becoming a criminal can often seem easier than becoming anything else. Whether that became this thief’s first choice, or his last remaining possibility is a question that needed to be understood.
Researching Narayan Surve was comparatively easier, simply because the references and material related to him were available. But how and where does one search for a thief who, after committing a robbery, returned the stolen belongings and apologized simply because he realized the house belonged to a poet? That felt infinitely more difficult. And even if it was easy, I would still not have wanted to extract explanations from him. The one act through which he had revealed himself to still be alive as a human being felt sufficient to me. What I did need to determine, though, was his age. On one side, I began making notes and reflecting on everything that might shape such a man: unfulfilled dreams, a rebellion buried deep within himself, the new way of life he had come to accept, his own ideas of material happiness, and the personal philosophy through which he had convinced himself that becoming a thief was more rewarding than remaining a labourer. Alongside this, I repeatedly revisited the news reports about the incident. I reread them carefully, again and again. The story had appeared across several television channels as well, and I watched every version I could find. I spent time observing the apology note itself: The handwriting, the little strikethroughs and corrections, the earnest caution in the way it was written, the visible effort to keep the words clear and readable. And finally, the way he had written “Sorry” in English at the end, underlining it heavily with two firm strokes beneath it. I studied every detail carefully.
This was no longer merely interesting to me. It had moved far beyond that. Who could this thief have been? How old was he? What was his native place? Was he perhaps a migrant? Did he have a home of his own, a wife, a family? And after bringing the stolen items home, after learning that they had come from a poet’s house, what happened next? Did his wife resist the idea of returning them? Or did she quietly support him? The things he had stolen were ordinary, old household objects. How much value could they possibly have held in the market anyway? The most valuable object among the stolen belongings was a television. At best, it might have fetched him a few thousand rupees. And yet, even that had been returned. In fact, he had specifically mentioned in the letter, “The TV has also been returned.” It suggested that, in his eyes, the television was the most valuable item in the theft. Perhaps he had imagined keeping it in his own house. Or perhaps selling it. While thinking through these details, I found myself gradually shaping the thief’s personality. Neral, the town one crosses while travelling from Mumbai to Matheran, lies on the Badlapur–Karjat route, around eighty kilometres from Mumbai, yet very much within its social and economic shadow. Migrants who come to Mumbai seeking work often end up settling in nearby suburbs like these, especially in slums and modest settlements at the city’s edges. Alongside migrants from other states, many young men from regions like Marathwada and Vidarbha also arrive in these areas searching for work, and eventually settle there. There was enough reason to assume that this thief, someone who at least recognized the name of Narayan Surve, had received some amount of formal education. And from there, his character slowly began taking shape in my imagination. I wondered whether he too had been carried here by great flood of circumstances, forced to abandon a once orderly and dignified past somewhere in Marathwada, before being deposited upon this unfamiliar shore. Perhaps the two of them, he and his wife who worked in multiple homes doing dishes and cooking, were simply trying to move toward a few ordinary dreams. They too would have had their own definitions of happiness and comfort. She may not have approved of his life as a thief, yet there was probably little space in her reality for the kind of morality that could afford to reject the income thievery generated. And from these reflections, the characters of Govardhan, the thief, and Geeta, his wife, slowly began to emerge. Like I said before, I had to be cautious about not letting this play turn into either a documentary on Narayan Surve or a romanticized glorification of the thief. The real focus needed to remain on the contemporary world around them, the larger system that produces such lives, and the thief’s family caught within it.
In the course of these thoughts, I realized that I had barely considered the public uproar this theft had created across Maharashtra, or the questions of law, order, and policing surrounding it. I considered a simple and convenient structure while creating this story: it could unfold through a police investigation, gradually uncovering the truth step by step. But I quickly realized that such an approach would flatten the play into little more than a crime drama. I kept reminding myself, again and again, that the true subject of the play was something else entirely. It was the fact that a poet had awakened a sense of morality within a thief strong enough to make him return the stolen belongings, and the deeper question of why that transformation occurred at all. One thing had become certain to me. The police had to be a part of the play.
It then struck me that if the police themselves were divided in their understanding of the thief’s actions, the play could open itself to a much larger conversation. From that thought emerged two characters with opposing viewpoints, a havaldar and an inspector. And yet, despite this, the dramatic framework continued to elude me. By mid-2025, nearly a year after the actual incident, I was still struggling to find the right form. The theft had taken place over the course of three days: two days of stealing, followed by the third day, when the thief returned the stolen belongings. And then it occurred to me. What if this entire process unfolded simultaneously before both the audience and the police? I began feeling that the most interesting aspect of the play could lie in the different meanings emerging from the same events. The two policemen would interpret what they saw in completely different ways, while the audience too would arrive at its own conclusions. But the question of execution still remained unresolved. How could these scenes actually be created on stage? Who was watching the theft take place? Who was listening to the thief’s conversations? I wrestled with these questions for nearly two months until the solution appeared almost unexpectedly. What if the entire story unfolded through CCTV footage?
The ideological contrast between the two policemen became clearer. The inspector represented a balanced, tolerant, and humane worldview. To the constable, however, every thief or criminal potentially concealed an anti-national or a Naxalite within. The first believes that it is the system itself that has pushed the man into becoming a thief. The second is convinced that the thief is merely a façade, that such people are fundamentally anti-national forces who have come to destroy the carefully constructed order of the nation. Gradually, it began to feel easier and more organic to write the play through the framework of CCTV footage. The original incident and the many interpretations emerging from it could now unfold simultaneously before the audience. People functioning within systems often become deeply loyal to the dominant ideology of their times. And quite often, such people end up exerting an invisible pressure even upon their own superiors. That dynamic existed here as well. The senior constable carried a certain unspoken authority and ideological intimidation over the younger police inspector, despite technically being his subordinate. Their constant ideological clashes reflect the larger conflicts of the present social and political climate.
Around this time, just before I finally began writing the play, another important event took place. The Narayan Surve Library in Nashik organized a two-day programme to mark the birth centenary year of Narayan Surve. There were discussions, panel conversations, poetry readings, and several other events spread across those two days. I attended the entire gathering from beginning to end. In a way, it felt like a complete revision of everything I had been thinking and reading until then. And somewhere during those two days, I also realized something else: by sheer coincidence, this play too would eventually arrive on stage during Surve’s birth centenary year.
The first scene took an unexpectedly long time to write. But after that, it almost felt as though Govardhan and Geeta themselves began guiding me through the rest of the play. I felt that the relationship between Govardhan, a man pushed toward theft after struggling with both migration and the system itself, and his wife Geeta, needed to exist in two emotional spaces simultaneously. It had to contain deep tenderness and companionship, while also carrying the exhaustion and mutual accusations born from a life spent fighting difficult circumstances together.
Spending her days working in the homes of rich families has gradually given birth to Geeta’s own dreams of material comfort and happiness. At the same time, she knows how impossible it is to achieve those dreams through the little they earn. Govardhan, troubled by her silent turmoil and longing, has slowly become a thief almost without consciously deciding to. The philosophy he has built for himself is straightforward: if someone possesses far more than they need, then taking a little from them is not a crime. Among countless people displaced from villages after the disintegration of large families and familiar ways of living, there survives a quiet hope deep within: once everything settles , we will return to our village again. It glows weakly but persistently, like a firefly in darkness. Perhaps that is why many migrants never entirely become creatures of the metropolis, no matter how long they live there. They remain emotionally elsewhere. And so, the divide within cities ceases to be merely financial; it slowly turns social and cultural, becoming more painful and complex. Even Geeta, despite seeming to support Govardhan’s thefts on the surface, carries within her a faint moral flame. Somewhere she still dreams that he will leave this life behind, start a humble Chinese food cart, and earn a respectable living.
The first time Govardhan enters Narayan Surve’s home, he comes alone. He calls Geeta and describes the house to her over the phone. Having a house of their own is perhaps the greatest dream the two of them carry. They believe with complete certainty that owning a home would solve many of the humiliations and uncertainties of their lives. So on the second night, Geeta comes with him, ostensibly to help steal whatever remains, but in truth also to experience the house herself. What unfolds there over the course of that night feels deeply human to me. The two move through the house freely, almost peacefully. They talk endlessly. They quarrel, comfort one another, laugh, cry, and love each other. There was something deeply moving in the idea that the space enabling such raw and intimate conversations between them happened to belong to Surve. They climb in through a pipe and enter from the upper window. And once inside, they begin almost enjoying the experience. Through the window, they can see the moon throughout the night. It is the same moon visible from their slum too, but both remain convinced that here, it somehow appears different.
Certain poems of Narayan Surve began to feel profoundly suited to this intimate companionship between them. I gradually wove those poems into the play as though they were simply extensions of the couple’s own conversations. These are a few such lines:
Moon…
Step gently in through this window.
Come, wear these clothes.
Your delicate fingers will get soiled.
Geeta: Let them get soiled.
Govardhan: Your hands will grow calloused too.
Geeta: (crying) Let them.
Govardhan: Every beginning is like this.
Geeta: (crying) Then let this beginning end…
Govardhan: And one more thing…
Geeta: Hmm…?
Govardhan: We, who think of every celestial body in the skies, sometimes imagine you as bread for the hungry, sometimes the glow upon a lover’s cheek. These metaphors have become too worn-out now. O Moon, become simple and ordinary like the rest of us.
Or this:
Late at night, after Geeta falls asleep in Govardhan’s arms, he finds himself overwhelmed with emotion. He opens a book lying on the shelf and, with one hand gently caressing her, begins softly reading aloud:
“My beloved has fallen asleep in this weary little hut beneath the moon.
And I still sit awake beside her, stringing words together. I too can hear the whispering wind. Just for today,
do not remind me about the discipline of time….”
Govardhan comes back with Geeta to return the stolen items. Geeta opposes the decision, but Govardhan insists on putting everything back, simply because the house belongs to Narayan Surve. In that one scene, Govardhan says to her : Geeta, Narayan Surve was a great man. You know that, right?”
To which Geeta responds: Well, of course he must’ve been one. How would we steal from a poor man’s house?”
In the play, the inspector keeps trying, through his conversations with the constable, to make him understand Narayan Surve. But the constable resists that understanding entirely. At one point, he says: “Tomorrow this thief will start writing poetry, and once his poems start getting published, society will begin admiring the thief in him. Then what? Sir, if we want social balance to survive, poets must not become thieves and thieves must not become poets. Forget philosophy for a while, sir. I’m requesting you. We should treat this as the beginning of anti-national activity. Let me remind you, even during British rule, petty criminals were often left alone, but intellectuals were arrested and thrown into prison. Because the British Empire was never threatened by thieves. It was threatened by educated minds. We should learn something from history, sir…” Through this kind of reasoning, the constable slowly comes to embody the anxieties, ideological extremism, and authoritarian impulses that fuel much of the chaos of the present time.
Along with this, there was another reference I knew of. During a farmers’ protest in Chandwad organized by the Shetkari Sanghatana, forty thousand women farmers had performed Narayan Surve’s poem “Dongari Shet Majha Ga, Mi Benu Kiti.” The event had become widely talked about. I wanted to weave that reference into the play as well.
I also felt an urge to include this mill-workers’ lavani by Narayan Surve in the play.
“At seven in the morning,
the siren sounds like a dawn-song.
The first shift begins
In its proud rhythm.
The wheels spin endlessly,
the yarn rushes forth in streams,
it is through our sweat
that the earth is adorned.
We create all this wealth,
yet we, its rightful owners, become thieves.
Meanwhile the rich grow stronger still,
displaying their arrogance openly.
There is no money even for fuel.
Tell me, what shall we cook now?
Or must we sew our bellies shut
with desperate stitches against hunger?”
Capitalism remains fundamentally the same. Its appearance evolves. Earlier, exploitation had visible owners and identifiable masters. Today, there are countless owners, except they are no longer visible to the naked eye. The exploitation remains, in fact it has only intensified. Only the methods have changed. People are numbed into submission, almost sedated, while exploitation continues on a far larger, and more sophisticated scale. These ideas slowly found their way into the play, often unconsciously, through the exchanges between Geeta and Govardhan, and through the conflicts between the constable and the inspector. While writing, I constantly reminded myself that none of these ideas should arrive as deliberate commentary. They needed to emerge organically through the natural conversations and behaviour of these four characters. And perhaps, somewhere along the way, they did begin to take shape that way.
The journey after the script…
Sachin Shinde, who has directed many of my plays, has always been deeply inclined toward minimalist theatre. Ever since I narrated this incident to him, he had been relentlessly urging me to write the play. He serves as the acting director of the Fine Arts Centre at Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, while I am associated with it as a Professor of Practice. Eventually, we decided that this experimental play should be produced under the banner of the university’s Fine Arts Centre itself. The decision felt meaningful in many ways. It would help bring attention to the university’s artistic initiatives and extend the reach of the Fine Arts Centre across Maharashtra. It also offered the possibility of connecting with new generations of students through theatre.
The immediate decision was to focus entirely on finishing the play first. The initial draft was completed within a week. I read it aloud to Sachin Shinde, and he liked it a lot. About a week later, I sat down with the script again. I edited it carefully, and developed the second draft. By then, we had also started putting together the artistic and technical team from the university and our theatre group. The four key roles were finalized with Omkar Govardhan playing Govardhan the thief, Ashwini Kasar as Geeta, Ameya Barve as the Inspector, and Umesh Jagtap portraying Havaldar Deshmukh.
Sachin has always shared the entire creative journey with me right up to the first days of rehearsal. During the initial three or four days, we work intensively with the actors on the nuances hidden within the writing: tonal variations, emotional undercurrents, subtext, rhythm, meaning, and speech patterns. Only after that does Sachin begin the actual staging of the play. That has always been our method. The same process unfolded this time too. Usually, stage design and visual structure come to Sachin almost immediately. But with this play, he just couldn’t come up with a set design. He explored countless designs and approaches. He revisited the script over and over, studying it carefully each time. What he kept wrestling with was this challenge: how could the CCTV element written into the play be translated onto the stage in a way that felt theatrically original and alive? Then one day, he came rushing in, almost shouting “Eureka! Eureka!”, and told me that he had finally come up with the set design. “The stage itself will become a laptop screen,” he told me. “We don’t really need anything beyond that.” He then developed a design. His idea was to create a skeletal structure out of interconnected PVC pipes that would generate a three-dimensional illusion on stage. He first built a small model of the set. The model helped in making things clearer and easier for everyone. His belief was that the empty spaces within this skeletal structure would naturally come alive through the actors, lighting, and music. Everyone found this idea appealing.
Meanwhile, we shared the concept of the play with Sanjiv Sonawane, the Vice-Chancellor of Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University. He liked it immensely. According to him, the very incident of a poet awakening humanity within an ordinary thief or a man who had gone astray carried something deeply reassuring about human values and compassion. He then proposed that the university itself should produce and stage the play. Once the script was completed, we also organized a full reading session in his presence. He responded to the script with great enthusiasm and also made some valuable suggestions regarding the production process, which ended up simplifying many things for us. Meanwhile, Sachin completed the set design, and rehearsals began within the university itself. Sachin’s primary focus throughout rehearsals was on sharpening the script further, making it tighter and more structurally precise through constant reworking. The title of the play still remained unresolved. But ever since reading about the original incident, a line from an old song had inexplicably stayed with me: Ithech Taaka Tambu (Pitch the tent here itself). Rishikesh Shelar, one of the most talented musicians and singers in our group, possesses a rich understanding of folk music. The play needed a theme song that could run like an emotional thread through it. I gave him the lyrics for it —
Though the world belongs to us,
we are left to live like thieves…
No more this shadowed life now,
no more drifting merely to survive
The earth our tender bedding,
the sky stretched above as shelter.
The moon slips in through the window…
Let us stay here now…
Pitch the tent here itself…
The words themselves carried the pulse of a rebellious song resisting the system. Rishikesh gave them a remarkable musical form by merging Marathi folk traditions with Sufi textures, while also introducing a subtle sense of exhaustion and helplessness beneath the rebellion. It became an extraordinarily beautiful composition. Its thoughtful use throughout the play lends the entire production a unique emotional texture. The background score, too, needed to capture two different kinds of unrest at once: the contemporary chaos of the present day, and the industrial noise of Mumbai from the era of the mill workers. Sachin Shinde got this work done from Rishikesh Gangurde, a gifted young man working at the University. Sachin Shinde had witnessed the entire writing journey closely. He understood the process through which the script had slowly taken shape. And so he was deeply committed to doing justice to every word and every scene. Even though Narayan Surve does not appear anywhere directly in the play, we wanted the audience to constantly feel his invisible presence throughout the performance. While designing the lighting, Sachin worked with remarkable effectiveness alongside the young duo of Pranav Sapkale and Nikhil Marane. From somewhere beyond the boundaries of the stage, a yellow beam occasionally falls from an upper room. In its light, dust particles rising from books remain visible for a few fleeting moments. That beam serves as a symbolic reminder of Narayan Surve’s unseen existence within the world of the play.
The play came together slowly, almost as though it were being composed like a poem. Omkar Govardhan is himself a thoughtful and deeply attentive actor. He kept asking precise questions about his character, constantly probing its emotional and psychological layers until the role acquired a firm grounding within him. Ashwini Kasar, meanwhile, is among the most nuanced and versatile actresses of the present generation. She worked immensely hard to reveal the many delicate layers within her character. The Inspector, played by Ameya Barve, needed to embody a calm, balanced, progressive-minded officer of the present times. He was faced by the accomplished actor Umesh Jagtap in the role of the Havaldar. Ameya approached his character with admirable subtlety and restraint. I had thoroughly enjoyed writing the Havaldar’s role right from the start. We have often seen how even a harmless or minor offence can be surrounded by carefully built narratives until the accused person is transformed into a larger criminal figure, a traitor, or a Naxalite. The aging Havaldar in the play emerges from within that same ideological ecosystem, and becomes one of its carriers. While always maintaining formal respect toward the Inspector who is senior to him in rank, he continues asserting his views through sarcasm, humour, and subtle provocation. I wanted both his arguments and his opposition to function, knowingly or unknowingly, as a fierce commentary on the contemporary social climate. And so, while writing him, I tried to place the character delicately between caricature, and believable human reality.
Umesh handled that delicate boundary with remarkable maturity, and brought extraordinary depth to the role. Whenever I arrived after rehearsals, the entire group would already be immersed in discussions about the play’s deeper meanings. Its hidden textures and inner subtext had slowly begun opening up before us. Every scene was first blocked by Sachin on paper before translating it onto the stage. The entire process stretched across two months after the writing of the script was completed. Finally, the play opened to audiences.
Over the past six months, the play has received an extraordinarily positive response. It continues to generate conversations, and an outpouring of thoughtful writing… The truly astonishing part of all this is how a tiny two-column news item can take hold of your entire being and push you toward a long inner excavation. I have never been the kind of writer who can simply be handed a subject and write about it. That demands a quality I do not think I possess. I can only write what begins to stir organically from within me. This subject, however, was entirely external to me. I had no connection to the incident, not even remotely. But that news report had moved something deep within. Amidst the suffocating negativity of our times, the incident seemed to possess the rare ability to peel away the rust accumulating over society’s conscience. It forced us to revisit and re-evaluate our ideas of morality and wisdom through the lens of a changing world. Who, then, was the true protagonist of that incident? Narayan Surve? Or the thief? When Geeta, after venting her frustration at Govardhan for returning the stolen belongings, eventually falls silent and asks him, “Who was this Narayan Surve?”, I felt there should be a short passage shaped from Narayan Surve’s poems and the narratives written about him. It was in this section that figures from Surve’s literary universe – Porter, the character of sundri in Money Order, Yakub Nalbandwala, African Chacha, and Chandra Nayakin at the railway station murmuring, “Khade aso re mazo zheel… hya merer ki tya…” (where is my little child, on this shore or the other)— all these characters briefly enter the play. I consciously weaved them into the dramatic flow so that they would feel like temporary extensions of the play’s own world. I did not want the play to feel like a docudrama on Surve’s life. In the second draft, I consciously attempted to reduce the sense of overwriting that lingered in the first, and shape the script into something tighter and more disciplined.
After all, on its surface, the play functioned as a crime story. It contained the layered complexities of police investigation and interrogation. Much of its structure depended upon the viewing of CCTV footage and the conflicting interpretations arising from it, slowly amplifying doubt and ambiguity. Besides, the first act itself reveals the central secret: whose house the thief has actually robbed. Which means the audience is immediately left wondering: if the writer has already exposed the central mystery in the first act itself, then what exactly is still left to unfold in the second? Those questions were justified, of course. Yet, I had no interest in constructing the play around suspense, shock value, or the conventional pleasures of an investigation drama. What interested me was not the process of solving a crime. As I had mentioned earlier, my real focus was on the world surrounding the thief and his wife. I wanted to dwell upon the kind of existence we casually describe as “struggle”, and examine the emotional and social reality of their lives. What exactly is their understanding of the world? Where do their roots truly lie? Why is it that even after living in this city for five years, they continue to feel that this life is only temporary, that their “real” life is yet to begin, and that until then, they are merely passing time in waiting? These were the questions I wanted the play to remain focused on. I wanted poetry itself, along with the sensitivity and human understanding contained within it, to gradually lead the thief, his wife, and even the institutional mindset represented by the police toward this realization. Whether I truly managed to accomplish this or not, I don’t know. But there is a moment when, after all the stolen belongings have been returned, Geeta says through tears that the apology note left behind by the thief is actually his first poem. And in that instant, both the letter and her statement seem to transcend the immediate story, and assume the scale of something universal and deeply poetic. My attempt was to let the thief remain a thief, without glorifying him excessively, while still quietly honouring the moral awakening that had occurred within him. It would perhaps not be wrong to say that this play about the thief and the world surrounding him has ultimately become a kind of documentation of our present times themselves.
Image credit: Datta Patil