Gujarat Ni Asmita
The Glory of Gujarat
Gujarat Ni Asmita is a theatre and music journey through the literature that made Gujarati a language to be proud of — from Gujarat, by Gujarat. Conceived and directed by Manoj Shah, dramatised by Raju Dave and Satya Mehta, it gathers the great voices of Gujarati poetry and reform onto one stage across six centuries: Narsinh Mehta and Meera, Akho and Premanand, the Krishna–Sudama episode Premanand made his own, Dayaram and his garbis, Dalpatram and his historic meeting with Alexander Kinloch Forbes, Narmad with his fierce reformist prose, and Meghani with the folk songs of Saurashtra. The play projects these characters, their work and their lives alongside the ordinary people of Gujarat for whom they wrote. It is an epic staged in a contemporary register — built so that anyone with no more than a slight idea of Gujarati literature can discover the gem of the past, without lecture or apology. The verse arrives in the language it was written in, and the staging trusts the audience to lean in and listen. Suresh Joshi's score runs under the whole evening — thirty-nine cues moving from Narsinh Mehta's bhajans to Meghani's lokgeet, a parallel narrative of how Gujarati identity has always been carried in melody. Rajiv Bhatt's costumes date each century as it arrives, and the lighting by Ajinkya Sampat and Shekhar Phadke works against a painted pichhwai backdrop and projected images that put the poets' own faces behind the actors playing them. It first went up in 2003 at Gujarat College, Ahmedabad, as a forty-five-actor piece before an audience of fifteen thousand that included the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and was later staged for more than twelve thousand people in and around Morari Bapu's Mahuva in Saurashtra. In August 2008 a nine-member company took it to the main stage of Chaalo Gujarat '08, the World Gujarati Conference in New Jersey — Ideas Unlimited's third American tour after Master Phoolmani in 2004 and Apurva Avsar in 2007.
Commissioned By
Association of Indian Americans in North America (AIANA)
Invited to the main stage of Chaalo Gujarat '08, the World Gujarati Conference held in New Jersey in August 2008. Ideas Unlimited travelled with a nine-member company — the group's third American tour, after Master Phoolmani in 2004 and Apurva Avsar in 2007.
The People
Behind
the Play
Also Worth
Seeing
Mareez
Sufi on the Rock Since 2004
The longest-running Gujarati play. Two hundred performances and counting, at Prithvi Theatre continuously since 2004. Abbas Abdul Ali Vasi was born in Surat in 1917 into a Dawoodi Bohra family. He dropped out of school in the second grade. By fourteen, he was composing ghazals. By his twenties, he was selling them for five rupees apiece to wealthy men who published them under their own names. He drank. He loved a woman who would not love him back. He married another who stood by him. He contracted tuberculosis. He wrote 178 poems that the literary establishment ignored and the people of Gujarat memorised. His pen name was Mareez — literally, ‘a sick man.’ They called him the Ghalib of Gujarat. He died in 1983 after being hit by an auto-rickshaw on a Mumbai street. Adapted by Vinit Shukla from Raeesh Maniar’s biography Mareez: Astitva Ane Vyaktitva, and directed by Manoj Shah, the play does not tell this story in order. It weaves poetry, fantasy, hallucination, and realism into a theatrical fantasia — inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s letters Dear Theo and Charles Bukowski’s Barfly. Dharmendra Gohil has played Mareez since the 2004 premiere — twenty years in the same role — with critics noting that ‘Mareez was in his veins.’ Kumkum Das plays Sona, his wife. The set comprises six paintings by Padma Bhushan-awarded artist Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh. The music is by Uday Mazumdar, a tabla player trained under Ravi Shankar.
Apurva Avsar
The Spiritual Mentor of Mahatma Gandhi
Apurva Avsar — meaning 'a rare occasion' — is a Gujarati biographical drama based on the life and teachings of Shrimad Rajchandra (1867–1901), the Jain philosopher, poet, mystic, and social reformer whom Mahatma Gandhi called his spiritual guide and refuge in moments of crisis. Born in Vavaniya, a small village near Morbi in Gujarat, Rajchandra recalled his past lives at the age of seven. He became a master of poetry, Shatavadhana (the feat of simultaneously tracking a hundred different tasks), and astrology. His fame spread across the country — yet he renounced it all, concentrating on self-restraint and the pursuit of liberation from the cycle of births and deaths. Against his own will, he married and entered business, which flourished across India and beyond, but his hours remained consumed by spiritual inquiry. Wanderers and seekers visited him constantly. The play brings together three towering figures of Jain spiritual history on a single stage — Acharya Hemchandra (11th century), Avdhut Anand Ghanji (17th century), and Shrimad Rajchandra (19th century) — tracing 2,500 years of a living philosophical tradition. Three actors perform fifteen characters in a theatrical challenge that moves from Rajchandra's childhood visions through his meetings with Gandhi in Mumbai in 1891, their searching correspondence while Gandhi was in South Africa, and Rajchandra's final renunciation. Dramatized by Raju Dave and Manoj Shah after a year and a half of research, the play premiered at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai on 28 February 2007. It has since been performed across India and in the United States, including at the Jain Center of Southern California. A Hindi adaptation by Prayas Dave followed the same year. The subject matter is drawn from the everyday texture of society — the treatment is realistic, so that any common person can relate to how Jain culture has shaped Indian heritage, religion, language, literature, and philosophy in ways both visible and profound.
Bhav Prapanch
The Soul's Journey Through Worldly Illusion
Based on the Upamitibhavaprapancha Katha by Siddharshi Gani — a 10th-century Sanskrit text that Hermann Jacobi called the first allegorical novel in Indian literature, predating Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress by seven centuries. The play follows Dramak, an ordinary soul trapped in the city of Adrishyamool Paryant — a place that stands for the world as we know it, governed by greed, attachment, illusion, and desire. Dramak lives a bestial existence, wasting his time in futile efforts to preserve his meagre possessions. Caught in the bonds of attachment and illusion, believing the worldly illusion around him to be truth, he accumulates infinite karma and moves further from liberation with each birth and death. But there exists a Maharaja's royal temple — maintained with skill and devotion by servants who guide souls toward spiritual liberation through dharma, renunciation, compassion, and mercy. Their hands are always extended. The question is whether Dramak will take hold. The concept was distilled from Siddharshi's 16,000-verse original by Dr. Jitendra B. Shah, Director of the L.D. Institute of Indology, and dramatised by Prathang Dave and Raju Dave. Kabir Thakore designed the sets and Kanhaiya composed the music. The tagline reads: the end of sorrow is the beginning of peaceful happiness.