The 21st century is a time when our many gadgets function more as extended appendages than just tools that make our daily lives easier. Today, our lives are inextricably tied to the many techie distractions that surround us day in and day out—we model our looks after celebrities, our thoughts after public intellectuals and our lives around movies and soap operas. But have we reached a tipping point? Has art stopped imitating life, and has life begun imitating art that constantly surrounds us instead? The play Maan vs Mati, which is currently being staged at Theatre Mall, delves into this question. 

Maan vs Mati, as the title suggests, is a story involving a Shreemaan (husband) and a Shreemati (wife). The titular Mati of the play (played by Prembarsha Khadka) is hopelessly addicted to televised Hindi serials. The virtual world of the TV has her so entranced that she spontaneously acts out scenes and even tries to mould her own demeanour according to the characters she sees on screen. Her husband, Maan (Aakash Magar), is a working-class man employed in a typical nine-to-five job. Once home, he likes to zone out to some news, but given Mati’s obsession with the serials, he rarely gets a look in. The dispute between the two, which originates from the control over the remote, as the play wears on, only grows. 

As one who has known her favourite characters on TV to partake in risqué adulterous affairs, Mati one day accuses her very husband of an extra-marital liaison. To add to the absurdity, Maan also comes home to find out that a stranger (Saveer Churaute) has entered the home, fuelling his own suspicion that Mati is having an affair with the stranger. 

This is the play Maan vs Mati’s basic premise. I watched the play surrounded by a cluster of middle-aged women, who burst into cathartic fits of laughter throughout the play. Their laughter would be punctuated by exclamations and they would often go on to name the serial being projected on stage. At one instance, when Mati tries to imitate a scene from one of the serials she has watched, one of the women beside me burst out in recognition, “Oh, that’s a part from the serial Kumkum Bhagye!” These outbursts during the play’s proceedings told me just how much the premise of the play was relatable to the audience, a rare feat in what can sometimes be high-browed hyperbole acted on stage these days. 

Director Kedar Shrestha bases his work on a hyper-real setting. In essence, Maan vs Mati brings to stage familial wrangling that come parts and parcel with every marriage. Where the narrative shines the brightest is when it brings on stage the punchy dialogues that reflect on every day conversations that take place in homes on a daily basis. Coming at the heels of his last work, Bhoko Ghar, which also based it’s plot around a family setting, Maan vs Mati takes that narrative further, placing it squarely in the here and now, as highlighted by the incessant laughter that reverberated around the theatre throughout the play.

Yet, in Maan vs Mati, there are several instances that might not do much to contribute to the overall plot, but they do so much in bringing to stage a sense of what it is like to live in Kathmandu. There is one extended sequence towards the end of the play where the husband is stuck in a traffic jam, in a place what he calls “Jaameshwore”. Roshan Subedi’s role as a commuter in conversation with Maan during this particular sequence is one of the many bits that might leave a lasting impression on an audience’s mind, for it portrays an instance which many of us commuters find ourselves in on a daily basis. Sure, it does not further the narrative on its own, but when taken as a part of the whole, it—even as a stand-alone act—contributes to helping the audience place the other parts of the story in their own daily lives. No wonder, you leave with a sense that your own life, or the lives of people you know, was being enacted on stage. 

This is the second time the play is being staged. It was previously in theatres in 2016, when the producers had to stop the staging during the Indian blockade. due to the lack of diesel to power the back-up generator. At the time, the audience was so enamoured by the play that they even insisted, in one instance, that the play be staged with their mobile phone’s flashlight for lighting. The play seems to reciprocate that love and appreciate the end of ‘loadshedding’ in one fitting joke. The lights go out as Mati is in kitchen. And she says, “The one responsible for this cut-off should be sent to Kulman. And ask Kulman to punish him with an electric shock.” 

So here’s one play that, although based on a basic premise involving a seemingly mundane intra-familial fights, hilariously simulates the twenty-first century Kathmandu life. At a time when Nepali theatre is grappling with shortage of original plays, director Kedar Shrestha has given us something so organic and original that its one-hour running time elapses in the blink of an eye. At once funny and relatable, Maan vs Mati is undoubtedly one of the best plays that has been staged of late. Like the proverbial bancharo slammed onto your own foot, the play will leave you giggling in self-deprecation while at the same time leaving you with food for thought as you make your way out of the theatre.