Broken Images Vs Bhikre Bimb: A Review

Bhikre Bimb Vs Broken Images

Play: Broken Images

Cast: Shabana Azmi and Shabana Azmi’s Image (Conscience)

Written By: Girish Karnad

Directed By: Alyque Padamsee

Venue: Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Bangalore

Play: Bhikre Bimb

Cast: Arundhati Nag and Arundhati Nag’s Image (Conscience)

Written By: Girish Karnad

Directed By: Girish Karnad

Venue: RangaShankara, Bangalore

The Crowd at Chowdiah Memorial Hall on July 19 2012:

There were no tattoos on the left side just below the shoulder blade this time! Nonetheless the crowd was intellectual or apparently intellectual yet again. The English was fluent, the wardrobe was starched, the necklace was loud and clear!

The Plot:

Two sisters Manjula Nayak and Nalini Nayak grow up in a well to do Kannada (Hindi for Broken Images) family. However Nalini is paralysed from the waist and below and gets more attention of the two. Attention is not limited to parental care (where Nalini is brought up by her parents themselves whereas Manjula is brought up at her grandparents place) but also to the inheritance of property.

While Nalini is given the palatial house in Kormangala as inheritance by her parents Manjula does not have the same proportionate share.

Nonetheless Manjula is happily married to Pramod, a software engineer, who had fallen for her. Two letters written by Pramod one to Manjula and the other to Lucy (Manjula’s close friend) reach the wrong hands and Manjula comes to know of the latter’s love for her. However there is a doubt if Pramod was sure that he was in love with Manjula or it was just infatuation as the events that happen in their life later seem to suggest.

Manjula pursues her career as a lecturer in Hindi in a college while settled down in J.P. Nagar and Pramod works from home, a privilege many enjoy (or regret) in multi-national I.T. companies in India.

After Manjula and Nalini’s parents die, Manjula brings her sister to her house in J.P. Nagar from the ancestral palatial house in Kormangala. Lust for wealth was a trigger behind this or love for one's sibling, is not clear though!

Nalini and Pramod are left at home alone while Manjula goes to college to work.

The cook, nurse, milk-man, news-paper runner and domestic help are there to occasionally help them.

But for the fact that Nalini was paralysed below the waist and had to spend her whole life on a wheelchair, she was actually prettier, intelligent and a step ahead than her elder sister Manjula in everything that a man looks up to in a woman.

Pramod quickly develops an intellectual intimacy to his sister-in-law spurred on by the above facts.

It’s never understood in black and white that the duo’s (Pramod and his sister-in-law) intellectual and platonic admiration culminates onto the bed. However, Manjula often feels that her husband though with her on the bed was actually fancying her paralysed sister Nalini.

She tries in vain to catch them red-handed and ends up only feeling herself as a foreigner in her own house.

During the last months of her life Nalini is keenly grossed in writing her book on her laptop. Manjula notices this but does not give it much attention to.

As Nalini passes away Manjula is both sad and relieved. Sad for her only sibling is no more and relieved that she is no more a foreigner in her own house.

The story takes a cruel and unexpected turn here.

Manjula desperately is in search of the book that her late sister was working upon. She finds no trace of it in her house. Her trail for the book takes Manjula to her husband’s office where she locates the printed version of the book in his cup-board. Pramod had created an office of his own to work after his sister-in-law’s death.

She reads the whole story of the book and realizes that the villain in the trio characters of the book is no one else but herself. Nalini had been observing her elder sister’s insecurity and jealousy and self-centeredness. She spills it all in the book, probably her only ventilation point.

Manjula does something now which would go down into history as an epitome of an act of 

jealousy and self-centeredness, maybe also as an act of self-preservation.

She sends the manuscripts to a publisher in U.K. and carefully changing the author of the book as M. Nayak from N. Nayak (Manjula from Nalini)

The book becomes an international bestseller with fortunes good enough to make Manjula give up her job of Hindi Lecturer.

Pramod by now disturbed with this plagiarism by his wife leaves for U.S., forever. Not sure though whether his wife’s plagiarism was the sole cause of this step or it was also the absence of Nalini in his house in J.P. Nagar, quite likely, both but in different proportions.

Manjula is left all alone basking in her success as a writer but being haunted by her images on all sides albeit broken and in introspection.

Critical Comparison of Bhikre Bimb (Arundhati Nag at RangaShankara) and Broken Images (Shabana Azmi at Chowdiah Memorial Hall)

On any day the performance by Arundhati Nag at RangaShankara as the protagonist of this Girish Karnad’s masterpiece would score over the one by Shabana Azmi at Chowdiah Memorial for reasons more than one, a few of them mentioned below.

Manjula storms into the news room at RangaShankara nowhere from within the audience scratching her upper thighs, pricking her nose, checking her blouse, provoking amorousness or disdain.

Manjula at Chowdiah Memorial enters into the news room not in herself but cautious of the things around. In fact, it’s not Manjula who enters but a person who is going to be Manjula for the remaining hour.

The opening scene tells it all.

The plot in Broken Images has been slightly changed to cleverly depict the rift between the “Hindi” speaking and the “Punjabi” speaking communities and Kamala Nagar and Gurgaon on those lines; the plot in Bhikre Bimb talks of the rift between Kannadigas (people speaking Kannada) and “North Indians” and J.P. Nagar and Kormangala on those lines.

The characters have their surnames changed.

Bhikre Bimb scores over Broken Images on several occasions. Manjula in Bhikre Bimb is energetic and can jump around the floor to bring out the hypocrisy of the society with much intensity than the Manjula (Malini) in Broken Images.

There are too much of props in Broken Images which distract the audience from the sole performer on the stage. The overdose of lights and music do no better than further reduce the intensity of the emotions being ventilated by Malini in Broken Images unlike those of Manjula in Bhikre Bimb.

Author's Note

Nonetheless Broken Images is undoubtedly a great performance and a voice from behind could be heard “O GOD! Shit!” when Malini confesses of the plagiarism to her image in Broken Images.

Moreover, one would pay hundred times to see his childhood crush perform live in front of him whether it is in Broken Images or “Tumhari Amrita”. Albeit Zulfi and Amrita both need a younger and high pitched voices than the ones they had on 13^th July 2012 in Bangalore.

The play by the intensity of emotions may be called as an "adult only" play. Still there were kids around!