As a child, Rajinder Nath let me into his rehearsals — I watched as he shaped Delhi's theatre scene

Indian Express

4 days ago

Rajinder Nath (1934–2025) died on July 24. For me, this was one more in the count that had started quite some time ago, when one by one the pioneers and stalwarts of the 'Group Theatre Movement' (a term coined in Calcutta) left the stage, making space for the new guard. I personally knew many of them well, not as a theatre person, but by dint of having been born into a household where theatre was a part of life. I was probably the youngest person to have had the privilege of observing Rajinder ji and Abhiyan, the Hindi theatre group that he had founded, on their remarkable journey on Delhi's stage.
If I remember right, I was all of 10 years old when I started identifying Abhiyan's productions as being different — more sophisticated — from most others that I had the opportunity to see almost every evening in the AIFACS auditorium. This unique privilege was mine because I used to live on the top floor of the building that housed the theatre auditorium in AIFACS, considered to be the best in Delhi and in all probability one of the very best in all of India. AIFACS or the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society was the cultural hub of New Delhi in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. It, therefore, attracted the best shows from across India and the world. Visiting troupes such as the Bolshoi Ballet, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bohurupee, People's Little Theatre Group, and National School of Drama, performed at AIFACS, and it was in this context that I could place Abhiyan's productions.
My interest in Abhiyan's productions was also because my father Sitansu Mukherjea was a close friend and collaborator of Rajinder ji. Baba was the lighting designer for every Abhiyan production and also the set designer for some of their productions. I remember seeing Rajinder ji sitting quietly in the seventh or eighth row of the auditorium watching the rehearsals on stage. He would intervene at times to discuss how a dialogue could be delivered, or where the actor should take his or her position. I do not remember him climbing on the stage to show the actors 'how to act'. I have never seen him act himself, but Baba used to say that the only time he had seen Rajinder ji act was in Habib Tanvir's production of Mitzi Ki Gaadi, an adaptation of the Sanskrit play Mricchakatika.
In the beginning, my involvement with Abhiyan was primarily as a curious onlooker. As a child, I was allowed in unquestioned even in the midst of rehearsals. This afforded me a ringside view of some of their memorable productions. Many of the actors of Abhiyan later became big names in Hindi cinema. I consider myself lucky to have seen the likes of T P Jain, Sudha Chopra, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Kimti Anand, Chetna Jalan, Om Puri, V M Badola, S M Zaheer, Ravi Bhaswani and Subhash Gupta act on stage before they moved to television and cinema.
Rajinder ji and Abhiyan are known for staging the first Hindi version of many contemporary plays written in India. Many of Badal Sircar's plays from Bengali were first performed in Hindi by Abhiyan under Rajinder ji's direction. These were often translated from the original Bengali by Santana ji, his life long partner and collaborator. Vijay Tendulkar was another favourite. Plays such as Ghashiram Kotwal, Kamala, Sakharam Binder and Khamosh Adalat Jaari Hai were first performed in Hindi by Abhiyan; they often had very distinctive sets and lighting-design to enhance the viewing experience. Mohit Chatterjee's Guinea Pig was electrifying to watch. Ashok Bhattacharya's set using full height plastic sheets representing the glass tanks of a laboratory combined with atmospheric lighting design by Baba, enhanced the outstanding performances by Kharbanda, Jalan and Kimti Lal Arora.
I remember many small incidents from behind the scenes of several of those shows. Sircar's Saari Raat had a very interesting set by Bhattacharya constructed by stacking packing boxes. In the play, the mention of 'khichdi' as a delicious dish was often wondered at by the actors, who were used to more mundane associations of the dish. To demonstrate the validity of the claim, my mother cooked large quantities of Bengali khichdi and fries in our home. On the last night, after the performance, all the actors and the stage staff sat down on the stage floor to find out if khichdi could actually be delicious.
After the rise of Mandi House as the theatre hub of Delhi, Abhiyan's productions were staged in Shri Ram Centre, often in the Basement Theatre, which, if I remember correctly, Rajinder ji had started during his tenure as its director. The plays performed by Abhiyan in that period were smaller in scale and required fewer actors. The more intimate audience seating arrangement in the Basement Theatre was well suited for these productions. Vijay Tendulkar's Jaat Hi Poocho Sadhu Ka was a very popular production, and was first performed in this theatre. As was Udhwasta Dharamshala by G P Deshpande, which had Zaheer and Puri in key roles.
By this time I had joined architecture college, and maybe because of this reason I was asked by Rajinder ji to design the sets for Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa. This was my only direct involvement with an Abhiyan production. The set was a simple one of three cloth screens, which I had painted over with impressionistic graphics that were meant to represent the iconic political wall-paintings seen on buildings in Calcutta during the Naxal period. The central panel had an acting area behind it, which was lit during specific scenes when the front acting-area lights faded out. This production also got to be well known, and I remember Govind Nihalani coming backstage to meet Rajinder ji after the show; it was a few years after this incident that Nihalani made the film version of Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa.
Those were exciting times, and I was happy to be a spectator of that golden period of theatre in New Delhi. Today when I look back, I realise that Rajinder ji was one of those who had, in a way, started that highly creative period of Hindi theatre in Delhi. His hallmark 'understated' approach had a huge impact on both the audience and on theatre persons across India. Now that he is no more, I remain thankful to him and to Abhiyan for tolerating my presence as a child in their midst when they were so involved in the act of staging, through their plays, what could now be considered important milestones in Indian theatre.
Mukherjee, son of eminent theatre personality Sitansu Mukherjea, is an architect