Pyaasa & Letters to My Grandma

Anusree Roy

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781770912274
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático canadiense

Set in Calcutta, Pyaasa tells the story of Chaya, an eleven-year-old untouchable who dreams of nothing more than learning her times tables. When Chaya's mother begs a woman from a higher caste to give Chaya a job at a local tea stall, Chaya's journey from childhood to adulthood begins and ends over ten days. A moving and heartfelt play, Pyaasa illustrates with subtlety and nuanced truth the inequalities and injustices that persist through the Indian caste system.

In the haunting Letters to My Grandma, Malobee unearths letters detailing her grandmother's fight to survive the 1947 partition of India, which resonates with Malobee's own struggles to create a new life in present-day Toronto. A grand multi-generational tale of hatred, regret, love, and forgiveness, Letters to my Grandma weaves the remarkable stories of these two women together, inextricably linking their histories and delving into how the hatred bred between Hindus and Muslims in the Old World consumes families in Canada today.

Letters

to my

Grandma

SCENE ONE

MALOBEE enters holding an Indian bridal plate. She is singing the following Sanskrit mantra.

MALOBEE:

Om niranjanam nityam anantarupam Bhaktanukampa dhrita vigraham vai, Ishavataram parameshamidyam Tam Ramakrishnam shirasha namamah.

Amma, today I am getting married aar tumi nai.[1] You are not here, kintu chinta koro na,[2] I brought all your letters with me. All of them. See, this is your last one. Still unopened.

I don’t know how to open it. I am scared. I don’t know how I am going to get married without your blessings. I need your blessings, Amma. I need you to have accepted this marriage. I wish you were in Toronto today. With me. I try to find courage in thinking how it was for you to have gotten married when you were seventeen, surrounded by the war, four years younger than I am now. You must have had one of these also. Right? Flowers, thala,[3] ghonta…[4] but I bet you didn’t have an unopened letter. No… no you didn’t. I have an unopened letter, and you were dealing with the aftermath of the war…

The plate unexpectedly drops from her hands, resulting in a sharp sound along with its contents scattering on the floor. The actor transitions from MALOBEE to her GRANDMA, when GRANDMA was eighteen during the war. She is holding her baby.

SCENE TWO

GRANDMA:

Bachao! Bachao! Kau ache! Aamar kache baby! Bachao! Shh…[5] someone will come for us. Shh. Stay calm. Ma is here. (She spots a passerby.) PLEASE! Please please. There was hatred in everyone’s eyes. Everyone is dead… their eyes are dead. (notices a passerby, runs towards them) Dada,[6] dada, dada, where is everybody? I have a baby, only five hours old, dada, please help. Do you know where my family… No, dada, we are all Hindu. Our full blood is Hindu… not Muslim at all. What do you mean “Muslim Trucks”? They don’t have Hindu trucks picking up Hindu people? Why not? But this is a Hindu area. Wait… wait… (notices someone else, runs towards them) Didi,[7] didi, didi, my husband has left me, didi… no… only a few hours old, didi. Do you know where the Basu family is hiding? Which ship? When did they leave? What… listen… come back… No they didn’t. They couldn’t have left. We will find them, shona.[8] You just stay alive… that’s all you do. Ma will fix everything. Ma will be here. Always always always. Hai Thakur tumi dhekho… tumi![9]

Startled, she turns around to the sounds of a truck roaring by.

Eh wait wait! stop the truck! Stop the truck. Please, I have a baby… save us. Bahisab… bhaisab.[10] Mai Muslim hoo.[11] I am a Muslim. Allah Ki kassma.[12] I swear on our Allah. Yeh mera baccha hai.[13] I just gave birth, bhaisab. Please bhaisab… you will be able to fit us in your truck. No I won’t! I will sit on the floor. If you want I will not even breathe in th...