SUNIR PANDEY
Everybody loves a benevolent autocrat, but the problem is you seldom come across one. Umbugland, the peace-loving country where
Mandala Theatre’s new play Umbugland ko muthbhed (Encounter in Umbugland) is set, has the fortune of getting two in a row.
King Bichitrabirya has been ruling the tiny country for the past 60 years with supreme conviction and authority. A pack of scheming, groveling ministers serve his royal ambitions, but they too want to sit on the throne. Princess Bijaya, sole heir to the kingdom, is still a child and has no interest in politics or protocol. Just when he looked like he would rule forever, the old king dies and the games begin.
Umbugland’s ministers can’t decide who among the five of them should rule the country, so Bijaya is made child queen. The court seeks a regent role and even succeeds in getting a royal ordinance to defer all executive power to the cabinet. But Bijaya, like every maturing monarch in history, now gets used to premiership and wants to bypass her ministers on every decision.
Adapted from Indian writer Vijay Tendulkar’s Marathi play Dambadwicha Mukabala (translated and published in English as Encounter in Umbugland), the Nepali version is uncannily similar to the last half-century of our politics: monarchs seek to rule by divine right and corrupt ministers preach for democracy.
At the heart of the conflict is Bijaya’s wish to bring the Kadambas, a large-ish minority of Umbugland’s population, to the mainstream. The ministers refuse, making the similarities between Nepal and the nonsensical sounding Umbugland even clearer. Like Nepal 2006, the battle of rhetoric between Bijaya and her ministers spills out into the streets and culminates in angry riots and retaliating gunfire inside the steaming tin-roofed theatre.
As the ministers eye the streets from their safe vantage point, one of them, like politicians quoted in newspapers, declares quite matter-of-factly: “There can be no revolution without spilling blood.”
Another hopes,“surely twenty brave citizens will be martyrs,” while the most cunning one decides: “Twenty? I think five hundred! Seven hundred!”
Bijaya too is far from perfect. Her naivety may make her seem sympathetic, but it speaks volumes of monarchy and its customary rights if Bijaya’s eunuch servant has to keep reminding her why diplomacy is better than recklessness.
Tendulkar, renowned for exposing the hypocrisies of patriarchal India in his plays, has named his heroine after himself and makes an idealistic intrusion to settle the score. But it is his satire that leaves no one untouched that makes Umbugland ko muthbhed so enjoyable.
Sunir Pandey
Umbugland ko muthbhed
Directed by Aashant Sharma
Written by Vijay Tendulkar
Cast: Pramod Agrahari, Sirjana Subba, Anoj Pandey, Suraj Malla Thakuri, Manish Niraula, Suresh Sapkota, Sambhan Shrestha, Kamal Devkota
Rs 200, Rs 100 for students, runs till 14 June (except Mondays), Mandala Theatre, Anamnagar, 01-6924269