Playwright: Rabindranath Tagore
Director: Usha Ganguli
Group: Rangakarmee, Kolkata, West Bengal
Language: Hindi
Duration: 1 hr. 25 mins

Based on a story from a Buddhist text, Tagore’s Chandalika tells the tale of Prakriti, an untouchable girl forced to live on the periphery of society as ‘chandalika’. One day a Buddhist monk, Ananda, passes by and asks for water. When Prakriti tells him her caste, thinking he would move on, he dismisses her hesitation with the simple statement that God created everyone equal. Recognized as a valid human presence for the first time in her life, Prakriti falls desperately in love with Ananda, and pleads with her mother, a woman with extraordinary magical powers, to cast a spell on him so that he returns. The play follows this plot and develops events as they unfold. While presenting the manifold forms of love, including conflict and violence, and the manner in which deep emotion is capable of operating, Chandalika also allows a certain insight into the polarities of life in the 21st century.