By Adam Rafferty
Australian playwright S. Shakthidharan, author of the widely awarded epic Counting and Cracking, seen as part of the 2024 RISING: festival, returns this year with the rather more concise, fable-like story of The Wrong Gods. A ninety-minute tale of a mother/daughter relationship tested by the challenges of growth, progress, tradition and loss.
Set on the banks and in the valley of the Narmada River in India, The Wrong Gods tells the story of Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera), a humble farmer, and her daughter Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar), who dreams of higher education, rather than working and walking in her mother’s footsteps. She’s a sweet girl who dreams of being a scientist, but Nirmala has been abandoned by her husband and as head of her village’s council, she expects Isha to forget going back to school in the city and instead stay to tend and reap the crops they sow in the fertile land that her family has lived on for generations.
Isha finds her mother’s views outdated and scoffs at her beliefs in old gods, so when the mysterious Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash) arrives in the village with a silver-tongued offer to pay for her place at university, the young girl is more than happy to back this stranger’s swathe of ‘too-good-to-be-true’ offers to her mother. Nirmala is wisely suspicious of Lakshmi’s persuasive offer of seeds that promise bumper harvests with less agricultural care than their traditional crops, but the assurance of guaranteed bank loans and free tractors eventually convinces her of a prosperous future where her daughter also gets to fulfil her dreams.
Seven years later we find Nirmala, now a farm owner with workers to look after, protesting the planned development of the land on which her farm stands, along with fellow villager Devi (Manali Datar). A large corporation plans to build a dam and flood the valley, wiping out the village and the sacred lands Nirmala holds so dear.
This fictional tale has its basis in fact, drawing on the controversy of the Sardar Sarovar mega-dam in Gujarat, India that was besieged with protests during its three-decade long construction period, over environmental damage and lack of compensation for the families living in the hundreds of lower-lying villages lost in the “submerge zone”.
Providing water for the greater good of the many in India’s cities, at the cost of homes, homeland and spiritual connection to the valley become themes argued with stunning detail and clarity by the four women this play centres around. As the audience we feel a natural empathy with Nirmala – thanks in no small part to Kammallaweera’s powerful performance – but as author and co-director (with Hannah Goodwin) Shakthidharan does an excellent job of prosecuting all sides of the argument in this cautionary tale, creating a highly engaging narrative that leads to no simple conclusion.
Keerthi Subramanyam’s beautifully organic set design evokes the water-etched rock pools and rock walls that could be carved by time or the river gods themselves. This provides a perfectly pure and simple setting for four very fine actresses to demonstrate their craft and, along with Amelia Lever-Davidson’s skilful lighting design, create a naturalism that perfectly befits this story.
The Wrong Gods brings light to the kind of big issues that sadly often affect the little people, and exposes truths that are difficult to address, but that inevitably, in one form or another, will touch us all. There are no simple solutions in stories like this and while that can feel tragic, this production infuses the perfect amount of energy to allow us to think that perhaps there could be another, better way.
Image: Brett Boardman
