War chronicles come alive

Theatre artiste Ira Dubey, on Sunday, wowed the creme de la creme of the city with her dramatised portrayal of nine survivors of the Iraq Gulf wars. Inner Wheel Club, in association with C Krishniah Chetty Foundation, brought this Lillete Dubey directorial to the city as part of a fundraiser for an initiative to construct infrastructure for a government school. The event also marked the 50th show of ‘9 Parts of Desire’, a poignant play penned by Heather Raffo.

The play, through a series of monologues, brings out the various emotions the women — a professional mourner; artist; a thrice-married-and-separated woman; an Iraqi living in London who bides her time talking politics and drinking scotch; a pregnant doctor; a teenager who has lost her father to Saddam’s (Hussein) men; a woman whose family of nine were bombed and whose house has become a war relic of sorts; a young woman living in New York, with relatives in the war-torn country; and an elderly street peddler trying to sell off dead artist Layal’s paintings.

The mournful music sets the stage for the play, preparing the audience for jolts of realisation of how terrible the situation in Iraq really was, whether it’s the defiant Layal saying that neither England nor America could strip her of the reputation of being a whore, the predicament of any promiscuous member of her sex or the girl who starts off dancing to some lively music but gradually realises that her father, taken away from home years ago, might never return. Or when the old woman in London says, “Iraq is so broken; they want Saddam back.” Or yet still when the doctor spends five minutes telling you of the horrifically mutilating infants being born with two heads or none, telling the audience second time she throws up, “No, I’m fine...I’m just pregnant.”

Humour invokes mirth without making light of the struggles these women are going through. Grief, fear, survivor’s guilt, helplessness and uncertainty are among the themes and emotions Ira explores, slipping in and out of a variety of accents and registers with the ease of slipping into another costume.

Kavitha Garla, a corporate trainer in the audience, described the play as an “eye-opener”. “It’s such a shocking and realistic portrayal of the war,” she said. “It made me realise how lucky I am to be away from it all, to live in Bengaluru.”