Friday, March 8, 2019

Five Plays for Children - Vijay Tendulkar

Vijay Tendulkar is a legend. 'Give me a piece of paper, any paper, and a pen, and I shall write as naturally as a bird flies or a fish swims,; he said. The five plays were written on the express request of Sulabha Deshpande for school children she was teaching.

The first play 'Missing: A Father' is an unusual and intriguing tale where a tree, a letter box, a pole, a crow, and even a film poster play the lead characters. Into their dull life comes a little girl who is kidnapped by a rogue. How the lead personalities get together and put out an attractive poster to search for her father is the story. Haven't ever read any like this before.

In 'Bobby, the young girl dreams of being a teacher to famous personalities who appear in her school books - Akbar, Birbal, Shivaji, Mickey Mouse, circus artistes all keep flitting into her class as school kids and she is the teacher. What fun!

In 'Nosey Parker' we find a kingdom is a crisis - the prince's feet are burning. the King realises that the culprit is the Sun. No amount of planning is able to reduce the heat. Plans include stitching a giant umbrella, constructing huge taps to cool it down and in desperation even an attempt to shoot the Sun. Until a Nosey Parker arrives and hands them a pair of slippers and earns a great reward.

In the next play 'The King and Queen Want Sweat' the king and queen of an idle kingdom find that the cure for their sleeplessness and other health issues is lack of sweat so they search everywhere for it. Well, the king finds out finally that he needs to work out a sweat else it does not work for him nor his people.

In the last play of the 'Drummer', we have a lavish wedding in the village but the headman has chosen to ignore the village drummer and has hired a band from the city. How the village idiot saves the day by frightening away the band is the rest of the story.

Delightful stuff. Wonder when I can write like this. Children's writing is the most satisfying of all.

No comments: