Shakespeare Wali!
I had a very troubled relationship with Shakespeare since the time I came to know of him. Much of it stemmed from the fact that he was prescribed reading not just in school but also what my dad considered culturally and socially sound. And I hated being told at an early age of ‘what & who to read’.
We did ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in school for the ICSE examinations in English Literature. The only high point of the two years of reading Shakespeare was the school drama we did. I got to play Portia and was thrilled to bits because a ‘she’ was the central character, who was brilliant. You see she had brains and that was what mattered and muttered as I grimaced through “haldi – chandan ubtans” under my grandmother’s eagle eye supervision. Somehow Portia also kind of set me on the path of not wanting to have been born a man. Compared to her, Antonio seemed pretty dumb and un-macho. I mean, he first gets into debt and then mopes about relentlessly. While Portia is all revved up and slices the wily Shylock with her brains. Hey, I thought, she is the kind of feminist I want to be!
I scored exceedingly well in the standard 10th board examinations with a then unheard-of 95% in English Literature & Language. But, it did nothing much to excite me to read Shakespeare further. Rather, I remember being gleeful about reading Mills & Boon and dreaming about the possible entry of a tall-dark-handsome man into my life.
College happened with me choosing to study Political Science and Economics. We had English Literature as a mandatory subject and were assigned to study “As You Like It” and “Julius Caesar”. The classes were a riot with the professor, afflicted by a typical Oriya regional/colloquial pronunciation malady, ( couldn’t say ‘sh’, but instead made an “ss’ sound) referring to the bard as ” Sexpeare”.
And then in a 1985 visit to London, I watched ‘Othello’ by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford with Ben Kingsley & David Suchet in the lead roles. The performances were stellar! The outpourings of grief and rage were spellbinding. ‘Othello’ took on a whole new meaning. And I was hooked. I sought out the Bard….set out on a journey of discovering his greatness. It’s a journey I haven’t reached the end of as yet. Each step reveals a previously unnoticed gem.
That is also perhaps the reason why I am such a huge fan of Vishal Bharadwaj, the filmmaker. Somehow I feel he is on the same journey as mine! Undoubtedly brilliant, it’s in his adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet, into his movies ‘Maqbool’, ‘Omkara’ and ‘Haider’, that the cinematic vision of the man shines through. The movies have today, a massive fan following. Vishal Bharadwaj, like the Bard, also understood the significance and paramountcy of music in the telling of tales. Besides, the exceptional acting and contemporary relevance of Bharadwaj’s Shakespeare Trilogy, his musical repertoire is extraordinary. Well, actually he started out his career as a music composer and who can forget the haunting beauty of the music of ‘Maachis’.
Vishal Bharadwaj
My favourite Shakespeare play is Hamlet and Shahid Kapoor in ‘Haider’ does a brilliant job of it, reminiscent of the extraordinary stage performance of Ben Whishaw, ( he is Q in “Skyfall”) which perhaps reset popular conceptions of what age Hamlet should be! It was a role attempted earlier by older actors like Laurence Olivier, Ian Mc Kellan, Kenneth Branagh.
And yes, much older and wiser today, I would say Shakespeare is a must for children.
Author:- SunheriSufi
SunheriSufi
