Modernity in Mohan Rakesh’s Ashadh Ka Ek Din

Article published in Muse India

Mohan Rakesh wrote of his age in his diary:

“Huge buildings were built, government and semi-government centers, commissions and agencies, factories and machines, dams and development programmes, and government dictionaries were built. Below this development, emerged a very distorted and mutilated humanity. It felt as if people, already so earlier, were growing smaller and worthless, under the shadows of huge patterns of change… the entire base of humanity was crumbling and falling down.” (Chatak 2003:24)

This was the age that Rakesh was born in and led his life. His literary style was very much a product of his age. Modernism as the dominant literary mode, as it manifests itself in Realism, Symbolism, and Existentialism, came to influence Indian literature as well. However, modernism in India was not the same as in the west. Our experience of modernity was shaped by British colonialism, underdone industrialization and scanty development, religious separatism, and Partition. At the same time, there was awareness, among the writers, of five thousand years of tradition and history, which was an amalgamation of arts and people.

Talking about modernity in Hindi literature, it has entailed a modernization of language and sensibility, but without a passive imitation of western literary paradigms, according to Kedarnath Singh. Rakesh once said: “Individualism can be accepted in a very limited sense and in a very radical manner too.” (Chatak 2003:24). This is so applicable, not just for Hindi theatre, but entire theatre of India.

Ashadh Ka Ek Din, written in 1958, is primarily about the conflict between royal patronage and creativity in the confines of a comfortable life of the palaces, which makes the play very modern and contemporary. All three acts in the play depict the conflict of creativity and the inability to face the realities of life. Without doubt, these concerns are modern concerns and by relating them to the past, the pervasive nature of these concerns has been emphasized as put by Pratibha Agarwal (Basu: 98). 

Modernity has many meanings; it encompasses both the use and negation of tradition and history. This finds expression in the literature, arts and culture.  To sum it up, “Modernity is an impartial and vicious search for truth, which implies the abandon of faith and religion”.

At this juncture, the use of history and/or mythology makes the modern performative text profoundly captivating. The modern author uses incidents from the past in order to reflect upon the contemporary society, for the purpose of exploring the present. But these plays cannot be dubbed as historical plays, because their sensibility is very modern and to a greater extent post colonial. The crisis here is a crisis of culture---it often involves an unhappy view of history-so that “the writer is not simply the artist set free, but the artist under specific, apparently historical strain” (Bradbury and Mcfarlane 1976:23). The audience can relate the crisis to the past as much to the present. Thus, Ashadh Ka Ek Din is about Kalidas, the literary symbol of the ancient Golden Indian history, and it is also about every human being who is sensitive to his surroundings and expresses his opinion.

Rakesh also felt the ‘paradox’ of an urban, educated, professional, member of middle-class community, and the associated frustration and ‘fragmentation’. He portrays his characters in a manner that reflect his pain and angst due to the ‘fragmentation’. Here in the portrayal of Kalidas and his suffering because of his involvement with bureaucracy and politics, as a result of which he lost his creativity, could be read as autobiographical, not to mention the dilemmas of a writer while rejecting and accepting various awards and posts in the bureaucratic set up.

Indian theatre has a long tradition of using mythology and history as its dominant themes. In the same vein, Rakesh used history as a tool to communicate something of contemporary relevance. He has employed a historical episode, not in order to praise the antiquity, but to bring to fore the current problems, especially the political and bureaucratic ones.

The representation of man-woman relationship is central to Rakesh’s plays. But the style of this representation is not at all romantic. It gets analyzed in a very cold and spiteful manner. Thus both couples remain involved in their own tribulations, without recognizing each other’s existence and problems.

Modernity is a constant experience, which flows with time. So a turn to 'open' or ambiguous endings, again seen to be more representative of 'reality' -- as opposed to 'closed' endings, in which matters are resolved, only makes sense. It is in its end (lessness) that modernity retains its force. Thus, his plays reveal a continuity of experience; they do not have a closed and definite ending. What is definite is the possibility of endless opportunities. Nevertheless, modernity has, over a period of time, resulted into a universalism that brought a norm, a standard, an order in all walks of social life-in social code, in behavioral pattern, in etiquette, in clothes and costumes, in religion etc.

To begin with, the play is about choices. Mallika chose to send Kalidas to Ujjain for the post of royal poet in the first act.

“I ask you to go from the bottom of my heart”. (Rakesh 2003: 44)

Kalidas chose to go to Ujjain, the royal capital at the end of first act. In the second act, he decides not to meet Mallika. By the third act, Mallika has chosen to marry Viloma, and Kalidas chooses to return to his village from the royal palaces of Kashmir. At the end of the play, Kalidas goes away from Mallika.      

While Kalidas seems to vacillating between the choices given by Rakesh, is it really an absolute choice? Is it not determined by conditions of Kalidas, which include his poverty, and/or ambition? Is this not the fate of the modern man? It is ironic that a person has to live in such an environment where he is forced to live against his own will. His human attributes lead him to the kind of life he leads. His poverty leads him to seek royal patronage, his insecurity leads him to Kashmir from Ujjain, and his search for his roots and love puts him at the feet of Mallika. However, this does not make him lesser heroic. He fights his own conditions and is definitely the “modern hero”. In Act III,

“I kept convincing myself that I will get control over the circumstances today or tomorrow and will be able to strike a balance between the two faculties.” (Rakesh 2003: 100)

This makes Kalidas contemporary and real. We find him amidst the uncertainties and problems of alienation and frustration in our age. Although he is the source of creativity, Mohan’s Kalidas is ‘also a part of the consciousness of “homelessness” so crucial to the modern man’. He says in Act III:

            “I could never imagine that this home will appear so unfamiliar to me…and you too. You also look very unfamiliar. That’s why it is possible that it is not the scenery that has changed, but my way of looking at it” (Rakesh 2003: 97) 

Having established the play as a modernist one, let’s look at other aspects. As a leading critic, Dr. Nemichand Jain points in the appendix (Rakesh 2003), this play is a realist piece of theatre from the point of stage craft, not just from the outside, but also with respect to inner emotions. “It is the first realistic play in Hindi to illustrate the conflict between the outer and inner reality with sensitivity” (Rakesh 2003). Rakesh refuses to be tied with a single “ism”. The play is a manifestation of inner psychological reality, laden with symbolism, with a modern appeal, closer to a post colonial audience.     

The title is very symbolic. The first and the last acts open with rain and thunder in the month of Ashadh. In both the acts the couple unites in the rain, as also are they bound to separate in the same rain. The aptness of the title is reflected in the fact that all major events in the play happen in a period of 24 hours. The rain in the backdrop unites with the sorrow and tears of the lovers who could never meet. However in the second act, when Kalidas does not meet Mallika, there is neither rain, nor thunder or vice versa---if they don’t meet, there is no rain. What a beautiful way of uniting lovers in the lap of nature! The rains and the dark clouds are associated with Kalidas, and the energy of love for him. Mallika cries out in the beginning of Act I:

            “It’s the first day of Asadh, and such heavy rains!... Mother, I have got wet so thoroughly!” (Rakesh 2003:6)   

Thus there are no rains in the second act, when Kalidas does not meet Mallika. In Act I,

“Mallika: These clouds will fly towards Ujjain tomorrow” (Rakesh 2003:48).

The sense of loss is a recurring theme in the play. Kalidas is lost because he is disrupted from his surroundings; Mallika is lost, because Kalidas is not with her. Priyangumanjari also seems to have lost on Kalidas in the entire process. Viloma although married to Mallika, never really got her. Mohan Rakesh himself describes Kalidas as one who is ‘soft, unstable and constantly engaged in mental tussles’, a sign of life itself, whereas Viloma has lost the capacity to think, although composed on the outside. While it is clear that both the male protagonists are losers in their own way, the lost property is Mallika. She is the one who was betted on. In Act III,

“Mallika: I never allowed my feelings to be empty. But can you experience the pain of my loss?”(Rakesh 2003:94) 

And

“Mallika: You created classics and I felt as though I am valuable, that I have also achieved something in my life. And will you make my life meaningless?” (Rakesh 2003:93)

Kalidas’ loss is not just a loss at an individual level. This loss is also at the plane of creativity, which occurred because he was uprooted from his surroundings. This loss did not occur only in the past, but that feeling exists even today, at all levels-societal, political, creative, academically, and that is what Rakesh tries to capture through his play. This ‘loss’ is also the reality of post independent India.

Postcolonial literature engages with a variety of intertexts, which it alternately contests, reclaims, and reinvents. It also asks certain relevant questions about history and its writtenness, which include interrogations that cut through gender, class, caste, and race. Thus the questions that assume significance are: who is the one written in history? Who is it written for? Who writes that history? And finally, who claims and reclaims that history? It appears that this play is primarily about Kalidas. However, all other characters around them, seemingly minor, get equal amount of importance. It is very interesting to look at the histories of Kalidas, alongside these people and their lives. Rakesh attempts to focus, not on historical recognized personages, but on others and their subaltern histories. He writes about people, those minor characters, who are playing their roles, which do affect the personages, on whom the traditional history always focuses on. Post colonialism also attempts to interrogate and shake the set patterns of society and distort hierarchical structures. While the focus of the play is Kalidas, equal attention is given to Mallika or Viloma or Ambika or Matul. Thus, we don’t only know the story of Kalidas, but the story of Mallika or Viloma or Ambika or Matul or Priyangumanjari, the silent voices, who are instrumental in taking the play forward. Thus the play is as much the story of all the characters in the play.

The minor characters also, aid in the (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality, which is so dear to modernity. The character of ‘Viloma’ needs a special mention. Quite literally meaning opposite, he describes himself as an unsuccessful Kalidas. But while Kalidas is not a worldly person, always given to dreams and imagination, Viloma is quite the opposite. The untimely rains and dark clouds are a heavenly boon for Kalidas and Mallika, but for him, these clouds have created darkness everywhere (Rakesh 2001:34). He is a realist character who recognizes the importance of the societal set up and institution of marriage. He does get married to Mallika through force, but that does not necessarily make him the villain; it is more out of necessity.

Ambika, the mother, is worried at the state of Mallika and her involvement with Kalidas. Since the time Kalidas leaves for Ujjain, she has fallen ill and has become bed-ridden. Is her illness an outward manifestation of Mallika’s mental state? Or, like Salman Rushdie’s hero, Dr. Omar Khayyam in the novel Shame, who simply gets fatter every passing day with increasing corruption in Pakistan, is she used as a postcolonial device to indicate the inability of Kalidas to compose brilliant texts as earlier?

Kalidas writes Ritusamhara, an epic poem describing the seasons of nature, when he is rooted in his village and connected with his muse Mallika. But when he goes to the royal palaces of Ujjain, he can only compose Meghadutam and Abhigyanamshakuntalam, both epics about lost-love and sorrow. Both the epics are attempts to reconcile and connect with the glorious past. Rakesh, like Kalidas, is in search of that utopian past, which might give him the peace of mind, he is looking for. That probably explains Rakesh’s employment of Kalidas as a theatre personality from history. This play can also be seen as a means to repossess the past, that past which has been looked down upon by the colonizers and their tools of domination.

Theatre is one of the conventional means of conveying messages- political, social, or political. Kalidas is the icon of ancient Hindu literary tradition, and writing about him, simply means getting connected with the past. The audience therefore is able to connect and associate with the play and understand the message that needs to be communicated. Thus, an ancient figure like Kalidas, who is a part of the collective Indian conscious, is used as a means to understand the dilemmas of a writer while rejecting and accepting various awards and posts in the government and bringing to the fore contemporary problems of history, and nation-building, among others.

But at the same time, the play is a critique of the traditional history. While the text is a means of representation, it comes to be seen as ‘resistance’ to the ideology of the times, in which he lived in. The resistance is not restricted to that ideology only, but also to the traditional history through the portrayal of certain powerful personages in history.  Post independence writing of history was strongly nationalist in character. The mutilated self-confidence of the nation by the British and loss of comprehension of anything in the post independence era led to a construction of a history, a history which would capture the glory of the ancient past and revive the lost confidence of the nation. In this ‘nationalist’ fervor of writing history, the Gupta Empire became the symbol of the ancient glorious past, the ‘golden age’, where everything was utopist. This glorious period was considered/ portrayed as to be the acme of language, literature and other arts. Kalidas was the chief court poet of the Guptas, and was credited for producing the most ornate prose and poetry in Sanskrit. This was also the period of the codification of classical Sanskrit language.

Mohan Rakesh uses Kalidas and presents him as a meek and submissive character, and he does not stop at that. He also critiques that traditional school of history writing-“the national school”. Through this postcolonial device, Rakesh critiques and questions the validity of everything that is the canon in history and literature. He actually turns the tables on to the government through the Gupta age. That was precisely in tune with contemporary Marxist criticism of the nationalist construction of history then.

He also succinctly mocks at the scholars engaged in serious research at the newly established institutions in independent India. He directs his criticism to some scholars who evidently search for a logic and specialty in their related fields. This criticism is thoroughly driven by authorial ideology and political convictions. Rangini and Sangini are two such examples in Act II.   

“Sangini: I don’t believe this. This place has given birth to an exceptional person like Kalidas. Everything here has to be unique.”(Rakesh 2003:57)

The play is a hard-hitting satire on the bureaucracy of the country. The bureaucracy was a product of the colonial times; it was created to smoothen the administrative purposes of the country. Bureaucracy existed even after independence, and became despotic in the Nehruvian era. Rakesh, in critiquing the bureaucracy, critiques the government. The dialogue between the two officers surveying Mallika’s house in Act II, Anuswar and Anunasik, is a case in point.

“Anuswar: Replacing the gas would necessitate the removal of other equipments. We need more time for this.

Anunasik: We need more patience than time.

Anuswar: We will have to work harder than have patience.

Anunasik: I suggest that it is inappropriate to touch those vessels

Anuswar: Me too” (Rakesh 2003:62) 

The state is associated with evil throughout the play, as in shown in Ambika’s dialogues in Act I.

“Ambika: One or the other ill omen strikes. Sometimes it is the news of war or an epidemic.” (Rakesh 2003:11) 

Yet it is the same state and its recognition that an individual and/or community yearns for. Nikshep, the character is sensible and real, when he says in Act I:

“Talent constitutes one-fourth of the personality. The rest gets accomplished through prestige.”                                         

And later,

“The post of the royal poet will never be vacant. But Kalidas will remain what he is today—a local poet!” (Rakesh 2003:32)

Rakesh also takes this opportunity to highlight the conflict between the state and creativity. He places both categories in opposition to each other. Going a step further, he points to the difference between royal patronage and royal governance. Kalidas crossed the line from patronage to governance and accepted the kingdom of Kashmir, which is not meant for him, although Priyangumanjari thinks that option as the right one for him. But in his own words in Act III:

“The work-space of a bureaucrat is from that of mine.” (Rakesh 2003:100)  

Structuralism as a literary critical theory assumes that within the way a particular society uses language and signs, meaning gets constituted by a system of “differences” between units of the language. Saussure argued that things have meaning because of what they are not -- that meaning is defined by what the sign is not. Meaning is not inside something, but is the product of a set of relationships, often negatively defined. And that we do not have direct access through language to reality itself. However we do try to access reality, it is always through language or other sign systems. With this definition in mind, the word play in Rakesh’s theatre is worth observing. The use of word ‘Viloma’, as opposed to Kalidas is itself suggestive of the characterisation of Kalidas. Kalidas can be defined only through the negation of ‘Viloma’. ‘Bhava’ (emotion) and ‘Abhava’ (emotionless) are two opposing words which recur throughout the play. Mallika describes Kalidas and her plight simultaneously, constantly through these two words. Presence of Kalidas is ‘bhava’ and his absence leads to an ‘abhava’, a vacuum in her life. The defining of characters and emotions as binary oppositions make this play intensely striking. But it is Viloma who experiences those feelings of Kalidas externally in Act III:

“Viloma: Brother Viloma, you should not climb so high.” (Rakesh 2003:106)

Mallika, the heroine of the play, is best described by her mother as “living only for the sake of emotions” (Act II, 74). Mallika is the ever-engaging woman who forces Kalidas into action and thereafter to the level of the court poet of Ujjain. She is the prototype of ‘Prakrti’ (in Samkhya school of thought in Indian philosophy), who always initiates action throughout the play. She is a romantic at heart, for whom love for Kalidas is the only basis of survival. However, she is very firm in her convictions. She does want Kalidas to become the court poet, but she does not want him to rule Kashmir (Act III, 92).

A large number of critics understand the play as dealing with man-woman relations. While this can be largely true, it definitely goes beyond that. Mallika is not just the “woman character”; she is the embodiment of values as Romanticism, Idealism, and self-belief. Kalidas has to make a choice between Mallika, and his Romantic land, the abode of creativity, both of them forever embracing, and royal patronage. It is Kalidas who makes the statement: “The question is not about your enclosure.”(Act I, 45). And interestingly it is Mallika who goes on with her baby and marriage, whilst it is Kalidas who undergoes a cathartic end, who is given the choice to begin afresh.

The Romantic Movement, the Chaayavad Movement in Hindi literature had a long lasting impact on the times to come. Great writers like Bharatendu Harishchandra and Jayashankar Prasad changed the course of Hindi literature in both content and form as a part of that movement. However, the post independence era gave way to modernity and its features of alienation, homelessness, and ruthless angst. Mohan Rakesh conveys that message through Mallika. The play abounds in dialogues replete with utopianism and idealism. But that is only to indicate that the romantic era is over and the modern age is here to stay, although for Mallika it is strange in Act I.

“Mallika: This is very strange… after the ecstasy of the monsoon.” (Rakesh 2003:16)

Mallika is embodiment of the Romantic era, and in the end it is she who is left with no choice except becoming an “Adjective”. Thus the word is now a passé.

“Mallika: Do you know that I have bagged an adjective at the cost of my name and now I am that Adjective, no longer a Proper Name.” (Rakesh 2003:92)

The utopianism and proximity to nature as part of the Romantic age is long over and reduced to a mere attribute in the modern age, which has no place for such feelings.

The ‘politics of inclusion’ works in the case of Rakesh too. There is an undue emphasis on the literary aspect of the play. A look at criticism produced on this play, will clearly indicate the emphasis towards the literary aspects rather than the performative aspects. Rakesh has got incorporated in the mainstream literary canon and is taught in almost all universities of the country. The ‘book’ itself has become a tool for the canon and appropriation in the mainstream. The issues of politics are not discussed at all, and thereby ‘cleanliness is maintained’, to borrow from Elizabeth Meese.

References:

Primary Source

Rakesh, Mohan.2003. "Ashadh ka Ek Din". New Delhi: Rajpal and Sons.

Secondary Sources

Basu, Dilip(Ed). “Aadhe Adhure”. New Delhi: World View Publications. (Offset copy, no publication year is given).

Bradbury, Malcolm and Mcfarlane, James (eds). 1976. “Modernism 1890-1930”. London: Penguin Books.

Chatak, Govind. 2003. “Adhunik Hindi Natak Ka Agradoot: Mohan Rakesh”. New Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan

Meese Elizabeth. 1986. “Crossing the Double Cross: The Practice of Feminist Criticism”