"Giving somebody a job for a small salary...

... is same as condemning him to life imprisonment." This quote from Brecht summarized the whole idea behind the play I saw yesterday, "Dayashankar Ki Diary." We all dream, so did Dayashankar. He came from a small village to the city of dreams, Mumbai. He wanted to be an actor. Sixteen years of drudgery as a low paid clerk, burdens of his family away in his village and the constant realization of not being able to fulfill his ambition to be an actor. He never could make it to the silver screen, so he set a stage of his own. He tried to bury his failures behind his fantasies. And slowly the wall separating truth and imagination crumbles, making our protagonist its victim. We are reflections of our thoughts. We are all actors who live in both worlds. Some are successful in maintaining the balance, some are not. That does make them any less human, they just become the pawns of human misery. Ashish Vidyarthi enacted the whole play with brilliance. Taking us through his various stage of life filled with interesting characters and imagination. He is the only actor in the play but his vivid description of other actors creates an impression as if they were also present on the stage with him. His love for MLA's daughter Sonia, despise for his boss, dominating room-mate More and funny conversation of two dogs Softy and Tiger. He expressed humour in his own way, like comparing the swaying posterior of fisherwomen in Mumbai as clash between "two mountains" trying to decide which one was bigger. The play progresses showing signs of delirium of Dayashankar, first visualizing talking dogs to the missing king of Nepal at last. Ashish kept his audience riveted with his simply mindblowing performance till the end. Talk of the climax, it will haunt you for the rest of the evening. Question where real actors are born. Theatre will always be the answer... technorati tag: hyderabad life