Amar Fal

Vastupal Tejpal

A Tale of Toil and Selfless Giving

Vastupal and Tejpal were brothers who rose to become ministers of the Vaghela court in thirteenth-century Gujarat, and who spent the fortune they built on the marble that still stands at Delvada on Mount Abu and at Girnar — carving so fine it remains among the highest achievements of Indian temple craft. Dineshbhai Modi's play is the story of how they got there. It does not open with the brothers. It opens a generation earlier, with a scandal. Kumardevi, widowed in her twelfth year and sent home two months after her wedding, is to be married again — to Asaraj, son of the minister of Patan — on the word of Acharya Haribhadrasuri, who has read her palm and been visited by Shasandevi with a prophecy: two sons of extraordinary lustre. Her father Abhu Sheth, who wants nothing more than his daughter's happiness, can only ask the question that stops him: widow remarriage — what will society say? His wife tells him to put society aside. The two sons of that defiant match are Vastupal and Tejpal. What follows is a chronicle of reversal and repair. Born to privilege, the brothers lose their wealth and keep their integrity, rebuild it through honest trade until they are among the foremost merchants in Gujarat, and are then raised to ministerial office, where they turn on the corruption and drift of the administration they have inherited. The poster called it a tale of toil and selfless giving — parishram ane parmarth — and the play holds both halves: the labour that makes a fortune, and the decision to spend it on something that outlasts you. Manoj Shah staged it on a grand scale, with Prasad Walavalkar's stone-palace set, Rajiv Bhatt's costumes, Bhotesh Vyas's lighting and Suresh Joshi's score, and a company of sixteen actors — among them a young Malhar Thakar, six years before Chhello Divas made him a name in Gujarati cinema. It was commissioned by the Jain Adhyatma Studies Circle Federation, whose lifetime chairman, Dineshbhai Modi, wrote it, and presented by Kaustubh Trivedi. It opened on a Sunday evening at Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan, Nariman Point, on 31 May 2009.

Apoorav Khela

The Ecstatic Wanderer of Rajasthan

Apoorav Khela — meaning 'a wondrous play' — is the biography of Avdhoot Anandghanji, a 17th-century Jain mystical poet who dwelled in the forests of Rajasthan and whose name has been all but erased from the books of history. Anandghan — literally 'cloud of bliss' — was born as Labhanand, likely before 1624, and was initiated as a Svetambara monk in the Tapa Gaccha order under the name Labhavijaya. But monastic convention could not contain him. He became an avdhoot — an ascetic wanderer who had renounced all worldly attachments — and disappeared into the forests of Rajasthan, where his proximity to nature was said to pacify the beasts and make the trees sway in joy. His absence from monastic records suggests he was always an outsider, more mystic than monk. What survived is his poetry. Anandghan composed padas — devotional songs — in a mixed vernacular of Gujarati, Rajasthani, and Braj that were spontaneous, ecstatic, and radically non-sectarian. His Anandghan Chauvisi honours the twenty-four Jain Tirthankaras. His Anandghan Bahattari was transmitted orally and in manuscripts, its verses sometimes found alongside those of Kabir, Surdas, and Banarasidas. Mahatma Gandhi included one of his hymns in his prayer collection. His songs are still sung in Jain temples across India — and even appear in Digambara hymn collections, despite his Svetambara origins. The play, written by Dr. Dhanvant Shah and directed by Manoj Shah, is constructed from the anecdotes and oral traditions surrounding this enigmatic figure. Five actors — Ashok Parmar, Jay Upadhyay, Nimesh Dave, Manish Rohit, and Sagar Rawal — bring to life a man about whom barely any documented information exists. Kabir Thakore's set design and Uday Mazumdar's music carry the Rajasthani folk texture, while Rajesh Mandloi's language work ensures the dialect rings true. The play does not attempt a conventional narrative. It is, as its own programme notes describe it, 'an astonishing flight of happiness, beginning with anand and ending with Anandghan.'

Jal Jal Mare Patang

The Burning Kite — Life of Manilal Dwivedi

The story of Manilal Nabhubhai Dwivedi (1858–1898) — the philosopher, writer, and literary critic who blazed through forty years of life with an intensity that redefined Gujarati literature and introduced Western philosophy to Gujarat. Married at fourteen to a four-year-old girl. Professor of Sanskrit at Samaldas College, Bhavnagar. Founder of Priyamvada, India’s first women’s magazine. Invited to the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893 — the same event where Vivekananda gave his famous speech — but could not afford to attend; his paper on Hinduism was read by Virchand Gandhi in his absence. His Raja Yoga was praised by Edwin Arnold and later read by Mahatma Gandhi in a South African prison. Narmad, the founder of modern Gujarati literature, considered him his intellectual heir. The era of Gujarati literature from 1885 to 1905 is named after him: the Mani-Govardhan Era. Manoj Shah spent seven years researching before staging this play. Written by Mihir Bhuta and drawn from Dwivedi’s autobiography Atmavrittanta — compared to Rousseau’s Confessions — the production features backdrop paintings by Atul Dodiya, one of India’s foremost contemporary artists. It premiered on 28 February 2009 at NCPA and received an A-certificate from the Maharashtra Censor Board of Theatres for its frank depiction of Manilal’s personal life. The title translates as ‘the kite burns as it flies’ — a metaphor for a life that blazed brilliantly and briefly. Manilal died at forty, writing at his desk in Nadiad.

Lakshmi Poojan

Lakshmi Poojan is a Gujarati play in two acts — 2 hours 15 minutes with intermission — written by Uttam Gada and directed by Manoj Shah, with music by Kaniya, sets by Kabir Thakore, lights by Asmite Pathare, and a cast including Pratik Gandhi, Bhamini Oza Gandhi, Satchit Puranik and Trupti Thakkar. Produced by Ideas Unlimited. The destinies of Sonali and Viraj are tied together since they were children — by a single note of one song. That note haunts them for years. Two decades later, the same note brings them back to each other, and they fall madly in love. But — yes, there is the usual but — both their families are staunch enemies. So love is in peril, and has to survive the trials and tribulations of the story. Sounds familiar? This love story is startlingly different. It is a laugh riot, a roller-coaster ride as never seen before. The stage is teeming with strange and weird characters — more than twenty-two of them. The action moves from Nal Bazar to Nepean Sea Road to New York and back at breakneck speed. There is singing, dancing, fighting, breaking arms and legs, and breaking hearts. And, somewhere in all of it, there is a race to invent something that will change the face of the planet. All this — enacted by just four actors. Love survives. The music survives. And so does the planet.

Achalayatan

Rabindranath Tagore's Allegory of Freedom

Tagore's searing allegory of an ashram so rigid that even light is forbidden entry. A young student named Panchak, unable to cope with the dead weight of rules, peeks through a forbidden window and discovers a world outside — free, simple, alive. His encounter with the untouchables beyond the walls sets him on a path of self-discovery that challenges the very foundations of the institution. When the Guruji finally arrives, he does not repair the system — he breaks it open. Adapted into Gujarati by Giridhar Kripalani under the guidance of Kaka Kalelkar, this production was Ideas Unlimited's tribute to India's first Nobel laureate. Manoj Shah spent eight months — six in study, two in rehearsal — preparing the play, calling it one of Tagore's best crafted works. The production premiered at the five-day Tagore Festival in Kolkata at G. D. Birla Sabhagar, where it was the only Gujarati-language play presented — a bold choice that brought Tagore's most scathing critique of institutional orthodoxy back to his own city, in a language he never wrote in.

Bombay Flower

The Untold Story of Ruttie Petit and Muhammad Ali Jinnah

A tribute to the legendary Parsi theatre — Bombay Flower tells the astonishingly daring story of Ruttie Petit (1900–1929), the fiercely independent daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, second baronet, who at eighteen married the era's most divisive political figure: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a man more than two decades her senior. Given the sobriquet 'Bombay Flower' by Sarojini Naidu, Ruttie's exuberance fills the first half of the play — her rebellion against family, faith, and Parsi society to marry for love. In the second half, shunned by her parents and increasingly isolated by Jinnah's consuming political ambitions, she becomes an embittered woman who finds solace in theosophy, opium, and solitary wanderings across Europe. She died at twenty-nine. Written by Geeta Manek and drawn from Sheela Reddy's Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India, the play took four years to develop. It began as a one-woman show before Manoj Shah brought in Jinnah, then Ruttie's parents, his sister Fatima, and their friend Kanji Dwarkadas. Bhamini Oza Gandhi leads as Ruttie, with Vishal Shah as Jinnah. The play premiered to a full house at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA on March 26, 2023 — an NCPA co-production. Bombay Flower is dedicated to Parsi theatre, which Manoj Shah discovered to be the pioneer of both Gujarati and Urdu theatre during his research for Master Phoolmani in 1999. It asks a question that remains relevant: why would an intelligent, sensitive young woman from a privileged background risk everything for a man whose world was entirely different from hers?