Even a full minute after the auditorium lights came back on at Shilpee Theatre on Wednesday, the audience didn’t stir. Shell-shocked, they looked on at the stage, perhaps unwilling to acknowledge the play had come to an end. It was an unusual moment indeed—as if the theatergoers were unwilling to extract themselves from the fictional world they’d been reveling in just moments earlier and reenter the here and now. 

The play in question was Ani Deurali Runchha. Written and directed by Man Bahadur Mukhiya, the play was staged in Nepal at Nepal Academy Hall in the year 1976, after first being staged in Darjeeling. More than three decades later, the play is currently on at Shilpee Theatre in Battisputali and it feels as fresh and relevant as ever. 

At its heart Ani Deurali Runchha is a love story. But like all great art, it is not easily boxed into just one category. It is also a tale of the struggle between the powerful and the powerless, the privileged and the voiceless, of those who matter and those who just wilt away anonymous.

Set in the rugged mountains of Dolakha in the 1970s, in the early moments of the play, we witness the hardship the villagers have to live through, and how amid it all they still find time for humour and joy. It is during one of these moments that Juna (played by Jaanbi Bohara) and Ambar (Anil Subba) catch each other’s eye and fall in love. 

Back home, Juna has an older sister, Maiya (played by Kopila Dhakal), and their father, Randhoj (played by Chandra Prasad Pandey), reckons it’s time for Maiya to get married. For the nuptials, he secures a high-interest loan from Chudanath (Safar Pokharel), who masquerades like a minister, and claims to help out the villagers when in need. His posse includes the sycophant Chaturman, the mukhiya of the village and perennial middleman. We also find out that the bride is having an affair with Sante (Tarjan Papi). 

Then, Chaturman (Niraj Subedi), claiming to have killed two birds with a single slingshot, comes up with a conspiracy. He manipulates Sante to persuade the bride to elope with him. And on the big day, just before the puja, they elope. It’s a Catch-22 for Randhoj, and he decides to wed his younger daughter Juna instead of her sister. The husband, Bahadure (Narsis Lingden), doesn’t find out. 

What Juna finds out later instead is that her husband is an alcoholic and a gambler, and the new family quickly begins to see fissures. Meanwhile, Ambar, Juna’s former love interest, has gone abroad for employment. Once he returns to the village, and visits Juna’s house, he finds out that she’s been married off. When the former lovers converse, Juna falls into the floor. Her mother-in-law (Loonibha Tuladhar) finds out that she’s carrying a child of four months. The husband, after learning about it, first savagely beats his wife and later, goes on to hunt for Ambar to kill him. The husband finds Ambar in the mountains and in their fights there, one of them gets killed. To know who gets killed, though, one has to wait till the end, and that marks the closing of the play. This is all the outcome of Mukhiya’s conspiracy. 

At Randhoj’s home, however, once the day the loan is due be paid comes, he can’t procure enough money and his home is seized by Chudanath; Randhoj’s family is now homeless. All the village is in shock, and who prospers is only Chaturman and Chudanath, having captured the innocent Randhoj’s land and property. 

The cast who act this out is fully realised, and almost everyone feels natural in their roles. Notables are Chudanath who, clad in a fancy daura suruwal and topi, embodies the villainous role of a despot with eerie composure. Chaturman, true to his name, is one who celebrates the powerful and belittles the powerless and even at the age fifty, flirts with girls half his age. With all his follies, he sends surges of laughter through the audience. Meanwhile, Chandra Prasad Pandey’s Randhoj is one who one feels sympatheric towards the most. Loonibha Tuladhar plays a double role and shines throughout the play delivering deadpan one-liners. Her embodiment of Khatrini, Maiya’s mother-in-law, however, sounds more natural than her other role of an adolescent girl. In other words, the play features all the characters, cast naturally as one would see in a society beset by feudalism. 

The play touches upon a broad range of subjects, some of which are relevant today as they were when they play was written. And in telling the story, it is evident that director Jeevan Baral has a wonderful eye and ears for details. The dialect employed is one that is used in the western villages, and they are natural; though some audience may find it hard to comprehend at first. The sets too are magnificent, the most elaborate one in Nepali theatre of recent times—where bridges, canals, trees, hills and all that constitutes a village are depicted tactfully. 

And while the play’s subjects, the mukhiyas and Chudanaths, might not exist in today’s society, and in that respect the play might feel a bit outdated, but in director Baral’s retelling, the classic play finds its place into the hearts and minds of the modern day audience as the original playwright had intended—a Herculean feat in itself.