Chintamani, the most popular play in the rural Andhra Pradesh for almost 9 decades now is under the threat of a ban. The play, written by Kallakuri Narayana Rao in 1921, has been lapped up by lovers of stage all these years.
But now, the Arya Vysya community is up in arms against the social satire for its alleged depiction of a caste in bad light.
A meeting of the Arya Vysya Association at Dwaraka Tirumala in West Godavari district today called upon the government to ban the staging of the play in view of its defamatory contents.
The Subbisetty character in the play has been the source of pun, innuendo and satire and audience loved the character, playing which many a stage artiste made a career out of. Subbisetty was a caricature of a typical village ‘shavukaru’ whose tight fist can only be opened by the wily Chintamani, the charming village concubine.
The play nowadays does not exactly follow the text of the author. Along with its cult status, the play has also acquired lot of ‘creative’ additions and interpolations over the years from contemporary society, referring even to the veteran politician K Rosaiah, who belongs to the community in question, in the dialogue.
While the ‘demeaning’ of Subbisetty character to tickle the funny bone of the audiences at the expense of the community has been going on for some time, the younger generation of Vysyas seem to be particularly offended at the brazen commentary targeting one caste.
Political representatives of the community from various parties like B Usha Rani, Congress MLA and Ambica Krishna, ex-MLA declared that they would approach the government for a ban.
But the stage artistes as well as writers decry such an attempt. Underlining the need to stick to the original or at best make changes to the character of Subbisetty to remove the stigma to a specific community, they say that the play should be allowed its dream run as long as people want to watch it.
But the moot question is whether the viewers would love Chintamani without its Subbisetty speaking in that garrulous voice and Chintamani and her sister taking potshots at the community at his expense.
