A Court Rises To His Honour

his book on theatre icon Satyadev Dubey is edited with such care and love by critic and writer Shanta Gokhale that I find it difficult to reconcile it with my memory of Dubey’s ire against her. Dubey railed against Gokhale for an hour for some reason that I have forgotten. But that’s how he was: at some point or other, Dubey quarreled with almost every one of the contributors who have written so fondly about him in this book. Once, hearing that he had been attacking me at a party, I called him to ask what I’d done to bother him. “Don’t worry,” he replied, “if there’s a problem, I’ll tell you myself.” His anger was not personal and never lasted long. Whatever it was that bothered him about Gokhale, it didn’t prevent him from doing an excellent production of her play.

Dubey came from Bilaspur to Bombay to be a cricketer. He joined the Theatre Unit under Ebrahim Alkazi and P.D. Shenoy, and when Alkazi left to take up the directorship of the National School of Drama, took on his mantle.

This book records, through different voices, how he went on to become one of the towering figures of twentieth century Indian theatre. But he had several other ambitions. He wanted to be a film-maker and became enraged at the merest suggestion that his screen adaptation of Tendulkar’s Shantata! Court Chaloo Aahe! (introducing Govind Nihalani as a cinematographer) was a disaster.

He loved Bollywood and was so desperate to have even a walk-on role that he once agreed to work as a secretary for a budding starlet! He also aspired to be a playwright, writing and producing some ludicrously wordy pieces. His method of showing how much he liked my play, Wedding Album, was to rewrite it entirely in Marathi and put it on stage without even consulting me. When he was honoured with the Padma Bhushan, I sent him an email, assuring him that we would get him a Padma Vibhushan if he would only promise not to write any more plays. He remained unfazed.

But as a theatre director, he was supreme. He loved the stage, made it his home, and became as much a legend on the Marathi stage as on the Hindi one. He presented Tendulkar’s Marathi and Adya Rangacharya’s Kannada plays in Hindi, Mohan Rakesh’s Hindi and Badal Sircar’s Bengali plays in Marathi. He discovered new plays (Andha Yug, Yayati). He brought Marathi actresses like Sulabha Deshpande and her sisters to Hindi theatre, trained new actors (Amrish Puri, Sunila Pradhan, Sonali Kulkarni, Harish Patel) and new directors (Chetan Datar, Sunil Shanbhag), nagging them, berating them, testing whether their love of theatre was strong enough to bear his insults. When Vinod Doshi gave him the entire ground floor of Walchand Terrace in Tardeo, for four years it turned into the crucible of Marathi/ Hindi theatre in Bombay. In recent years, despite his poor health, he turned Prithvi Theatre into a non-stop workshop for aspiring actors, with the patient approval of Sanjna Kapoor.

Although he ultimately managed to buy himself a flat, he was happier sleeping on the drawing-room carpets of Nira Benegal, Saryu Doshi, Sunila Pradhan and Rani Burra in Bombay, Chetna Jalan in Calcutta, and Sunita Paul in Delhi. He had a soft corner for the wives of his closest friends and was, in turn, pampered by them. I have seen him being thrown out of parties at midnight for becoming too loud or vituperative, but welcomed back again with the same warmth.

This book traces Dubey’s development through five decades, through articles written by him (sometimes interviewing himself) and by his close associates. Gokhale has made a sensitive selection, catching the often-contradictory nuances of his unusual career and complex personality. It throbs with the energy of the man, whom Dharamvir Bharati describes as “whimsical, obsessive, quarrelsome, emotional, tenderhearted, highly intelligent and somewhat temperamental”.

This unusually moving tribute to Dubey has been brought out by Natrang Pratishthan and published by Niyogi Books with all the care and stylishness for which they have established a reputation.

Satyadev died on 25 December, 2011, without seeing this tribute, which would have thrilled him. He had been lying in a coma during the previous three months, devotedly attended to by his young theatre disciples, many of whom must surely have suffered harassment to the brink of despair while working with him.