Dr Palta & his comedy of errors

SD Sharma

Chandigarh, May 21    

The Theatre House group, supported by the Department of UT Cultural Affairs and the Tagore Theatre Society presented a Punjabi play, “Dr Piara Singh Palta”, as part of the Jaspal Bhatti comedy series at Tagore theatre here today. The play, originally written by legendary thespian,  author Balwant Gargi   as one-act play, had many additions, made young playwright Sukhpreet Singh to evolve a cohesive dramatic structure under the direction of acclaimed actor Neetu Sharma.   

The play dwells on the life of a practicing dental surgeon, Piara Singh Palta, delineating the pseudo persona of  the protagonist  dentist, with a poor practice,  who always pretends  to be awfully busy for nothing, attending false calls only to impress his prospective  patients, especially when somebody knocks at his door. Unfortunately, the situation always  turns ugly as instead of patients, people like his landlord come for unpaid rent, a heavily drunk Majnu  in search of his Laila, a dacoit with Rs 50,000 prize on his head. A Haryanavi enters his clinic for the treatment of his buffalo.        

Deputing his wife as a nurse, as if, was not enough, Dr Palta  never realised the factors affecting his business. The play  attains climax when a telephone mechanic, who comes to install the connection of a new phone, is amazed to observe Palta  as awfully busy taking calls on his landline phone for which the connection was yet to be authorised.