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GAURAV PANDEY on Arjun Raina’s play A terrible beauty is born

Arjun Raina’s play A terrible beauty is born was staged at the Dancehouse in Melbourne recently, and its evocative theme found the audience enraptured. The play oscillates between New York and Gurgaon, and traces an encounter between Elizabeth, an old American lady and Ashok Mathur, an Indian call centre worker whose job is to make credit collection calls to Americans under the pseudonym John Small.

Arjun, the voice of all the characters of the play, establishes his talent as an actor within the first few lines he utters: a moving, and at times heart breaking, portrayal of the distressed state of a mother concerned about her daughter who has gone missing after the World Trade Centre Tower attack. His interpretation of Elizabeth is expertly steered between being too clichéd or too unusual. Elizabeth is real, even with that booming male voice on her.

Ashok calls Elizabeth for a credit card payment but ends up finding himself morally bound to help her find her daughter who is a single mother and has been using an add-on card given to her by Elizabeth to make ends meet.

Elizabeth, who has had no news from her daughter since the attacks, pleads with Ashok to look out for purchases of baby products on her credit card, which would tell her that her daughter is alive. Ashok helps Elizabeth, perhaps to lend through an act of selflessness, a little meaning to the farce called John Small.

Then there’s the hopeless dichotomy between the day and night lives of Ashok, shown to us thorough juxtaposed images of high-rises in New York and dilapidated Old Delhi structures.

Arjun’s play perhaps tries to highlight the cruelty of dual identity in so many ways that the story almost becomes a mere glue to keep the message together. The suicide of Ashok’s young colleague, who was perhaps unable to cope with the pressures of a job that required her to be able to ward off personal insults with her American cloak, is one such pointer.

Then there’s the hopeless dichotomy between the day and night lives of Ashok, shown to us thorough juxtaposed images of high-rises in New York and dilapidated Old Delhi structures. The contrast captures well the state of mind of an individual trying to survive both these worlds at the same time: a second-hand American dream dreamed under a stationary fan on hot summer days spent in one of the most chaotic parts of a city, plagued by a sprawling population and deep-seated superstitions.

At one point, Arjun breaks his American-accented monologue to switch to chaste Urdu: “Baat karni mujhe mushqil kabhi aisi to na thi, jaisi ab hai teri mehfil kabhi aisi to na thi.” The couplet translates as, “to talk (communicate) was never as hard for me as it’s now, the gathering (audience) was never what it’s now.” Any guesses whom he is talking about?

Arjun’s performance as Elizabeth stands out; in a way it is a grim reminder that these are the very qualities that Ashok must display everyday, day after day, to merely keep his job. There are no accolades reserved for him; he is just a pawn in a world where dollars and cents count more than human identities.

The play successfully touches us with the story of world-class actors whose best reward is anonymity.