Agony and ecstasy of life in an urban jungle

Living a good life is everyone’s dream – almost everybody’s. But one forgets there is a life beyond materialistic web that has taken away the very soul of our existence, and is jolted only when confronted by financial or health beating.

These conflicting issues found a space in the play The Siddhus of Upper Juhu--staged in the capital on Sunday evening, when Balvinder(Rajit Kapur) aka Bubbles’ high-rise flat in Upper Juhu is burgled, with thieves not even leaving a towel at his disposal.

Theft truly brings in pain, but Bubbles is disheartened because he has lost his job at the age of 50. In fact, he was sacked, as he confessed to his wife, Behroze, (Shernaz Patel) while she was consoling him. As the couple contemplates how to keep the household going, Bubbles reflects upon his “unnecessary” expenses – gym memberships, three or four newspaper subscriptions, a cable TV connection – and the furniture he has been collecting to make his home a place to live in the urban-concrete jungle. This layered conversation subtly hinted at the life we all aspire for which invariably makes us materialistic slaves and exposed the audience to the financial insecurities we all grapple with.

So when Behroze decides to take up a job and comes home every afternoon to have lunch with Bubbles, who has failed to get a job, even after two months,
director Rahul DaCunha brilliantly brings in the “ego” issue and paranoid composure of a man who feels insecure at the thought of his wife being the bread-winner of the family, during this lunch conversation. So when he tells her “By coming here every afternoon to have lunch with me, what do you want to prove? People are already taking a lot about me being jobless.” The heated conversation ends with Behroze calling her brother-in-law, Goldie, to help her rescue his brother from financial mess and nervous breakdown.

Distance often distances relationships. With everyone busy in their life, it is only during celebrations or mourning the families come together. In this case too, Behroze had touched base with her in-laws after 9 years; she being a Parsi could be one of the reasons for this estrangement. Nevertheless, Goldie comes with his two sisters to take a stock of the situation. As the three converse among them, DaCunha touches upon the sensitive issue of ‘sibling rivalry’ or jealousy, and in this case, Goldie, who is a successful businessman and owns a farmhouse in suburb Gurgaon, feels deprived of childhood affection and jealous of Bubbles for being the cynosure of the family.

With other twists and turns, the play ends with Behroze losing her job, as the company she was working for, runs into financial irregularities. It is the same spiral of depression that has now caught her which once was Bubble’s companion. She breaks down and asks where are “Aache Din”, as her husband tells her they are “on the way”, leaving the audience into splits. So, together, they finally decide to leave their “exhausting” life in Mumbai and head for a “quality” and “better” life in Lonavala and set up a cricket academy.

Laced with wit and humour, this play using comic situations highlighted the biggest irony: how urban living has cost us relationships, made us paranoid and how
no one’s life is perfect.