Play depicts woman’s fight against regressive customs

Amritsar, February 25

The inaugural play of the Nutan International Theatre Festival, ‘Vani-Dafan’, received an applause from the audience at Virsa Vihar here on Tuesday.

Often, women become an easy prey to gender-based societal crimes masqueraded under the garb of customs. Vani, one such custom prevalent in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan among tribes, was the central theme of the play. Vani is a custom where girls, often minors, are given in marriage or servitude to an aggrieved family as compensation to end disputes, often murder.

An arranged forced marriage that is decided by the elders of a tribe, called Jirga, is a result of punishment decided by a council, which is banned by laws of the land. But, it still continues to be practised. In 2004, judicial authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan had outlawed all such parallel justice systems.

The story of ‘Vani-Dafan’ starts with a young girl, Vaziya, offering herself to embrace Vani in place of widowed Darkshna, which the council agrees to. Young Vaziya agrees to be bride of older Bakhtawar Ghazi whose tribe had killed the husband of Darkshna and won her as Vani.

Vaziya yearns to end the custom and manages to do so with help of a domestic help by killing her husband and convincing the tribe elders to make her the head of her tribe. But eventually, she has to choose between her son and her resolve to abolish all such customs, when he rapes a girl of another tribe. The play had lot of sub-themes, including emotional and psychological scars that several society-pushed crimes against women leave on the victim. Directed by Kajal Suri and performed by Rubroo, a New Delhi-based group, the play was written by Vikram Sharma. — TNS