wada chirebandi.........Mahesh Elkunchwar

The play, Wada Chirebandi, begins on the fifth day after the demise of Tatyaji (Venkatesh) the patriarch of the Deshpande family of Dharangaon. Dharangaon is a small hamlet in the interiors of Maharashtra where the influences of commercial Bombay has slowly spread its tentacles. The play begins with Aai, the widow of Tatyaji, awaiting the arrival of her second son Sudhir and his wife Anjali from Bombay, to attend the 13th day rites. In the meantime, the eldest son Bhaskar and his wife, Vahini, has taken over the reins of the family by taking charge of the two objects of command, the keys and the ancestral jewellery box. Been a traditional Brahmin family, Bhaskar intends to conduct the rituals in full traditional fanfare even when the family has fallen in difficult lines. Bhaskar expects Sudhir to bear the expenses, as his image of someone from a big city is that of been financially well off, while Sudhir claims that he is just about making ends meet in his two room apartment in the outskirts of Bombay. Thus the first crack in the already crumbling household begin. Ranju & Parag, the fourth generation, feels the need of escaping from their Wada as they feel stifled in a time stuck place. The obvious destination is Bombay.

The split in the family widens when each start claiming their own. Ranju, with cinema in her head feels her private tutor can be a vehicle to reach Bombay. Parag, who has moved in wrong company, wants to change his ways in a faraway land. Prabha the sister of Bhaskar and Sudhir wants to further her higher studies as the fears she would end like other ladies in the Deshpande household.

All this leads to further complicacies which highlights the plight of such traditional families which have stuck in time.

The play written in 1983 captures vividly the decline of the WADA culture in Maharashtra, unable to stand the test of time and the social change in the world beyond. WADA which means an old, ancestral country house takes centre stage in WADA CHIREBANDI, revealing the skeletons of a culture, stuck in time. The WADA insularity is a product of the large joint family with its hierarchic patriarchy that holds the tensions in check under a facile pretence of authority.

The crisis brought forth in this intense play is more than a family crisis–it is a crisis of traditional culture against commercial or consumer culture. As Elkunchwar says, “Wada is not a simple family drama, it is more than that, a document of social change, political change…”