A young woman and her equally young bridegroom approach a mystic at a fair, asking him to interpret a dream the groom, Neelandra, has had. In his unravelling of the dream the mystic warns against trying to fight fate. He informs the young woman, Anishaa, she is pregnant and that Neelandra desires to have a son. This exposition foreshadows the play’s central conflicts; the tensions between illusion and reality, encapsulated in the apparent gender of the child, Esha.

Sixteen years after the visit to the mystic, Esha is a keen footballer who is in training for a forthcoming cup final. Esha’s assumed gender is established through ‘his’ relationship with Farooq, a Muslim boy of the same age. The first complication occurs when Esha arrives home with ‘his’ football shorts stained with blood. The blood is both a symbolic and literal sign of Esha’s rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood and as such signals the end of the illusion. Esha, intuitively realises this and begins to dress as Kaahini, a beautiful Indian girl, with whom Farooq falls in love. The climax comes when the truth is revealed to Farooq and Neelandra, causing rifts in their once stable relationships with Esha/Kaahini. In a ritualistic denouement Neelandra and Kaahini explore the meaning of identity and the play ends with the two friends departing; Kaahini wants to explore her real self and Farooq is perhaps left confused about his real feelings for his first love, who was really his best friend.

This is an interesting and thought provoking play for young people. Set within the cultural parameters of a British-Asian family, the secret of Esha/Kaahini’s true gender identity is plausible. The blood stained shorts signals a reversal that is not necessarily immediately apparent to an audience and, as the true significance of this event gradually emerges, we are challenged to consider the inter-relationship of the biological and social self. Brought up as a boy, Kaahini is forced to question her real self as her biological clock kicks in. The play’s implicit theme is the social construction of gender and how a network of personal and emotional relationships are woven around the centrality of an individual’s gender identity.

A play is meant to be performed; that is its acid test. When it was performed by The Red Ladder Theatre Company, this play received high critical acclaim.

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2007-12-30