31 prisoners get 10-hour parole for their last show of Tagore’s Balmiki Pratibha
Times of India | 18 November 2024
1234 Kolkata: Freedom for 10 hours. Thirty-one inmates of Presidency and Midnapore correctional homes were busy making the most of their parole inside the green room of the heavily guarded Rabindra Sadan on Sunday. Some were saying their lines, some waiting patiently for the colourful transformation into their respective Tagorean characters. Some looked happy and sad, having met their family in the wings. They were all set to stage the 100th edition of Balmiki Pratibha, Alokananda Roy's pioneering work with jail inmates — focusing on prisoner reformation and rehabilitation — that earned widespread acclaim in the last 17 years.
Three hours before the iconic opera's grand finale, there was excitement in the air. But some of the protagonists seemed stoic. "After the 10-hour parole is over, the party will be over. We will be whisked away in police vans and taken back to our prison cells," Bijoy Mukherjee, a lifer in a 1990 murder case and a former Tollygunge resident, said. As if in a soliloquy.
"Will we ever be allowed to change? Freedom is nothing if you are not accepted," rued Nilkanto Behra, the ex-jawan involved in the 2013 shootout at the CISF camp near Garden Reach. "By the way, I am a dacoit in the dance-drama," the lifer smiled sadly. There was no mistaking the sense of despair in the 31 crew members of Tagore's work on Ratnakara, the thug who turned into Balmiki.
Eight of them were transferred for 10 days from the Midnapore correctional home for this performance. "The holiday is over. We return to Midnapore tomorrow," said 65-year-old Gangadhar Mahato, a lifer of 17 years.
Sitting among the actors was a veteran, Krishna Das (50), lifer of 21 years and the only one from Roy's initial team. "All the others who were with me in the first Balmiki Pratibha staged on Nov 15, 2008, are either in open jails or went home. How I miss my ma!," said Das. He proudly tells you that one of his former co-actors, Nigel Akkara, went on to join films.
"People went places from here," agreed Basudeb Santra, a lifer of 23 years and Roy's cast since the third show. "Both Nigel and Narendra Singh, who played Balmiki, were such good performers. Ever since they left, professional actors have been hired for the lead role," he said.
The made-up faces lit up as the dancer-choreographer-educator-counsellor (Alokananda Roy) stepped in. "Our Maa has come. She made theatre our home away from home," smiled Akash Ali Khan, a lifer of 31 years.