‘The Siddhus of Upper Juhu’: A decade of laughs

Having shifted to their new 14th-floor 2.5-BHK flat in the Upper Juhu area of Mumbai, Balvinder Siddhu aka Bubbles and his wife Behroze expect life to be a bed of roses. Their building is called Sea View Towers, but what they experience are sounds from the neighbours, the barking of stray dogs and the stink of uncleared garbage.

Ten years after their story was first told by director and playwright Rahul daCunha in the English comic play ‘The Siddhus of Upper Juhu’, things remain the same. Bubbles, a 50-year-old Punjabi financial executive played by Rajit Kapur, and Behroze, his Parsi wife enacted by Shernaz Patel, encounter the same problems as faced by many urban residents. To make matters worse, Bubbles is sacked from his job and their flat is burgled.

While all this may seem like fodder for serious drama, the play takes the lighter, hilarious route, and yet maintains an identifiable theme. As Rahul says, “Nothing has changed in 10 years. The same honking, the same digging of roads. Though this play is set in Mumbai, people in any urban city will relate to these problems. From the play’s perspective, the same jokes are relevant even today.”

The show at Mumbai’s St Andrew’s Auditorium on August 10, held as part of the 10-year milestone, attracted a receptive audience. Presented by Rage Productions, the theatre company started in 1992 by Rahul, Rajit and Shernaz, ‘The Siddhus of Upper Juhu’ premiered in Mumbai in March 2015 during the first season of Aadyam, the theatre initiative of the Aditya Birla Group.

“I had been wanting to write a play on the madness that is Mumbai. The problems were the same, whether you lived in a high-rise or a small-rise. Those days, there was also this thing of renaming areas to make real estate sound more upmarket. So, your Upper Juhu is actually Andheri,” says Rahul, the creative brain behind the iconic Amul girl advertisements.

Shernaz points out that they were delighted by the way Rahul had created the characters just for them. “Rajit is a Punjabi and I am Parsi, and we had also worked a lot together earlier. So, things fell organically into place. And since Aadyam was giving financial support, we could create the kind of set and production we wanted.”

The trio had earlier worked in the plays ‘Class of 84’, ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ and ‘Love Letters’. Says Rajit, “Since we have run a theatre company for 33 years, our association is based on trust and respect.”

For his role, Rajit kept observing people he knew, especially family members. “I also had to connect with those in that age group, and affected by job losses.” Adds Rahul, “It always helps to write about people you know. In Rajit’s case, his character had to be Punjabi. So, we had these instances where Bubbles breaks off into Punjabi whenever he’s angry or frustrated. Likewise, Behroze is someone who accepts his idiosyncrasies.”

To show Bubbles’ background, his brother Goldie (played by Shishir Sharma) and sisters Smiley (Meera Khurana) and Pammi (Kajli Sharma) are introduced. As Rahul says, “In a play, everything can’t be haha-hoohoo. You need context. You need an ebb and a flow. In India, family is such a big thing. The relatives show where Bubbles comes from, though he is based in Mumbai. There are also these neighbours whom we hear from next door. These things bring in other elements.” Similarly, Shernaz says one of her focus areas was timing. She elaborates, “In a comedy, the energy, the pace have to be just right each time. Once you catch the ‘sur’, you can fly.”

Besides different cities across India, the play has been staged in Australia, Singapore and Dubai. Shernaz feels the best thing is that the reaction is the same everywhere, because everybody identifies with the subject. Rajit is happy to see more youngsters attending the recent shows. He adds, “Some of them are even watching a play for the first time. They also relate to the subject because they must have seen their parents face similar situations.”

Rahul, who forayed into cinema by co-directing the Hindi film ‘Pune Highway’ with Bugs Bhargava Krishna earlier this year, says ‘The Siddhus of Upper Juhu’ is a classic example of the magical nature of theatre. “One can always say that cinema and theatre are different in that one is visual and one is verbal, one is captured on celluloid and one is live. It is fabulous to be on Prime Video with the film, and one can’t match the reach a film has. But the stage is the stage, and you hear that uproarious laughter in front of you.”

As Shernaz says, with a play like this, people want to laugh away all the stress they go through. No wonder audiences keep coming back after 10 years.

— The writer is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist