Friendships forged during long-distance train journeys have a charm of its own. Often it’s the impermanence that allows one to be more forthcoming about their thoughts, opinions and memories, where they try to take in a little bit of each other before the journey ends and they part ways for good. It is this insight that Rabindranath Tagore has captured in the opening of his story Khudito Pashan (or Hungry Stones) where an elderly tax collector strikes a friendship with his fellow passenger and narrates a poignant story of his past, one that he has perhaps not shared with anyone else till date.

It is his journey into the bygone that forms the crux of this short story by Tagore that has been adapted into a stage version for the first time by Kolkata’s acclaimed cultural institution Padatik.
But Khudito Pashan has been translated into the visual medium before. Its cinematic version directed by Tapan Sinha in 1960 won the National Award. Later, Gulzar’s adaptation of the same, titled Lekin, in 1990 won critical acclaim. But unlike the cinematic versions that break away from the original story, the stage adaptation sticks to what Tagore wrote.
Says Kunal Padhy, who has directed the play, “The first thing we need to do is pay our obeisance to the author. Normally, there is a tendency to deviate, but we have stuck to the original script. Since it was originally written as a short story, we have chosen the dramatic highlights and woven them into our play.”
The story is set in 1910, when the young tax collector who works for the Nizam’s government arrives at the sleepy town of Bharaich. A little too rational to take the advice of locals, he decides to stay in a haunted palace, which was once the pleasure resort of Shah Mahmud, the second. It is here that he has a bizarre tryst with the ghost of an Iranian girl who had once resisted the amorous advances of the lustful king and was made to suffer. Trapped within mute walls, where every slab of stone has a story to tell, the tax collector gets so engulfed in the past that he loses track of the present world.
Kunal calls it the unravelling of the romantic mind. “It’s a journey where he is romancing the past — he gets so attracted to the bygone that his present being changes completely,” he says. Despite it being a work of Tagore, one must not expect a quintessential Tagore dance drama here. “It’s more of a theatre dance, where there are dialogues interspersed with music and dance routines,” Kunal says. Even though there have already been two popular adaptations of the story, the director is unfazed by the possibilities of a comparison. “It all boils down to the presentation. Tapan deviated from the story and introduced several extra characters, while our play only concentrates on the man and his search into the past. So it is very different from the film,” he explains.
While staying true to the original text, it is in the execution department where Kunal has dared to go off the beaten track. This is a one of a kind Tagore creation that features no Rabindrasangeet — a sacrilegious step for purists. “We haven’t even used the Tagore dance form,” says Kunal. “Since the story is set in the Mughal era and takes place out of West Bengal, it doesn’t require Tagore songs and dance. So we have only used kathak dance forms and Hindustani classical music. And there are few ghazals too,” he continues.
Translating the text in Hindi was not a daunting task either, courtesy the setting of the story. There is also a bit of Urdu in the dialogues that further enlivens the Mughal ambience. But if there’s one thing that retains the soul of Tagore in the play, it is his poetry. “That’s something I could never translate for the meaning would be lost somewhere. I have retained that bit in Bengali and I am sure that even if the audience don’t understand the exact words, they will understand the spirit of it all,” says the director, who doesn’t fear of alienating an audience that is not familiar with the works of Tagore. “In fact, I have made the play specifically keeping them in mind. I want Tagore to reach the corners of Maharashtra in a way he has spread in Bengal,” says Kunal.
The play received a phenomenal response at the National School of Drama festival and Kunal hopes history repeats itself in Mumbai. “We know Mumbai appreciates anything good. We are ready to put ourselves to test,” he says.
Khudito Pashan will be staged at the Nehru Centre Auditorium, Worli, on March 23, 7.30 pm onwards