Photo Credits: tiatr lead
Recently the tiatr industry has been engulfed in an unwarranted controversy pertaining to a song sung by a renowned tiatrist over a public personality. The supporters of that personality stopped that tiatrist from singing the song and chased him in to the green room where he hid for protection. The police force had to intervene. They asked the director to either cancel the song or cancel the performance. The director did not relent and the public remained adamant that they would not allow the tiatr to continue without the song that was stopped. The director decided to go on with the show and later the tiatr had to be staged with police protection.
In the past tiatrists have sported controversies but never in the 123 years of tiatr history did the audience invade the stage and stop a singer from rendering a song.
Singing songs of zhupatti has been a cherished trademark of Konkani tiatr. We have heard singers singing songs laced with opareo and mhonn’nneo (Konkani proverbs) that had relevance to a particular person or incident. Recently Succorina, a tiatr by Menino de Bandar was staged based on the death of a girl called Succorina two and a half decades ago. The opening song had lines like this ‘Gharant astana xiv, konnem kaddlo zait jiv, ozun parkhunk na konnem’ or another line like ‘Gharant aslem vanxel, koleak kaddttalem tel, hem onttir ravon polle zol’lo.’ These were indirect ways of referring to a person or incident.
Over the years tiatrists have become a little bold and have begun singing political songs with the names of politicians. Today no political song is complete without the names of Parrikar and Parsekar. Whatever may be the topic of their song it has to end with the names of the former and present chief minister.
We live in a democratic country and tiatrists have the freedom of speech and everybody should respect it. The freedom of speech as enshrined in the constitution gives each person the freedom to express his opinion and as a free citizen he is entitled to voice his opinion. But, then doesn’t an individual have a right to privacy? Does the freedom of speech give anyone the right to peep into someone’s bedroom, record what is going on with a camera, sing a song on someone’s personal life based on what he has recorded and show the recording as a proof of the matter he has selected for his song?
A minister or any elected representative is no doubt liable for public scrutiny, but the scope for scrutiny is limited to his public domain and not his personal life. A decision taken by a Cabinet Minister or Village Sarpanch or a stand taken by an elected representative should definitely be debated and discussed. But commenting and singing on somebody’s personal and family life, dragging his wife and children who are not part of his public domain in the song is definitely unwarranted, unjustifiable, crude and disgusting and these genre of songs should be kept off the stage.
People come to the auditorium to be entertained; to receive ‘divertiment’ as our elders called it. Let the stage be a platform for providing clean and meaningful entertainment and not a medium for washing dirty linen in public.
