How would a woman grounded by the feudal mores of rural Haryana imagine life on a different planet? Given a choice, she might visualise a world where women impregnate men; the latter would bear the onus of conceiving children. The newborn is not assigned any gender at birth; the parents don't get to know whether it is a boy or a girl. In fact, the "alien" children get to decide their own gender identity once they grow up.
General Gita, a grumpy, middle-aged teacher from a remote hamlet in Haryana, explores outer space in her mind in a way she never can in her own territory on earth. And she conjures vivid, surreal images for her eager listeners in a special segment of a community radio show. At this point in the play, Hello Farmaaish, Gita and her band of space-travelling women have already garnered quite a following—believers, haters, thugs, and fellow dreamers. Soon, there will be repercussions for daring to invent an alternate reality on air. The special show on space science, conceived and hosted by women who cajoled the local RJ to include a segment in his show, follows Kalpana Chawla's historic odyssey to space onboard space shuttle Columbia. Even though the show gets off to a shaky start and bumbles along, the point is made when Gita offers a sneak peek into an outer space mating ritual, disguised as a cricket match, where the gender roles are delightfully reversed. This is the centerpiece sequence of the play, directed by theatre director-actor Yuki Ellias, whose previous credits include the award-winning Elephant In The Room. A Dur Se Brothers production, Hello Farmaaish is the second play of the 2018 edition of Aadyam, a theatre initiative by the Aditya Birla Group.
It was a heady coincidence for Ellias. She read an article about women-run community radio stations in Haryana. Around the same time, she saw a reflection of herself, in a motorcycle helmet, evoking images of space suits and astronauts. "Serendipity that India's first woman in space hailed from Haryana, also the base for some very special community radio stations. A Big Bang! And the story began," says Ellias in the playbill of Hello Farmaaish. Even as BBC Hindi and All India Radio reported on Chawla's dramatic space run in their dry, no-nonsense tone, a group of teddy-bear makers from an NGO convinces local RJ Bobby to give them air space on his community radio for a show which traverses and probes the universe beyond. Soon the whole village, referred to in the play as Kaala Parbat, launches a volley of quirky queries and seek answers in space to their most banal questions. Can buffaloes fly? Can a black hole suck in a missing donkey?
Set in an imaginary, dreamy landscape where cotton-wool clouds merges with stuffed teddy bears, a shadowy moon, and a stairway to the heavens, the play recreates elements of magical realism with the dazzling desolation of the deep, dark beyond. The blinding effects, like the spotlights that indicate juddering intergalactic take-offs and landings, heighten the drama. The play does get a little too saccharine in parts, but, overall, the message is neatly conveyed.
Anuradha Dubey from Alfaz-e-Mewat, one of the two community radios in Mewat, Haryana, was also present at the staging of Hello Farmaaish on September 23 in Delhi. Incidentally, Haryana’s Mewat (Nuh) is also India’s most backward district. Dubey says the play accurately portrays the kind of problems women go through if they decide to go live on radio in Mewat: they have to hide their identity, and the callers are mostly male and looking for missing livestock. "But that was in 2012 when we started. A lot has changed since then," says Dubey. "Now, women call in for shows which discuss eve-teasing and harassment. At least now people trust us as their go-to source of information in the absence of any local newspaper or TV channel. And the real show, Hello Farmaaish, which inspired this play is still running at our station."
