Pyaasa & Letters to My Grandma

By Anusree Roy and Thomas Morgan Jones

Set in Calcutta, Pyaasa tells the story of Chaya, an eleven-year-old untouchable who dreams of nothing more than learning her times tables. When Chaya's mother begs a woman from a higher caste to give Chaya a job at a local tea stall, Chaya's journey from childhood to adulthood begins and ends over ten days. A moving and heartfelt play, Pyaasa illustrates with subtlety and nuanced truth the inequalities and injustices that persist through the Indian caste system.

In the haunting Letters to My Grandma, Malobee unearths letters detailing her grandmother's fight to survive the 1947 partition of India, which resonates with Malobee's own struggles to create a new life in present-day Toronto. A grand multi-generational tale of hatred, regret, love, and forgiveness, Letters to my Grandma weaves the remarkable stories of these two women together, inextricably linking their histories and delving into how the hatred bred between Hindus and Muslims in the Old World consumes families in Canada today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781770912274

Anusree Roy

Anusree Roy is a Governor General’s Literary Award–nominated writer and actor whose work has premiered internationally. Her plays include Trident Moon, Sultans of the Street, Brothel #9, Roshni, Letters to my Grandma, Little Pretty and The Exceptional, and Pyaasa. Her plays and performances have won her four Dora Mavor Moore Awards along with multiple nominations. She is the recipient of the KM Hunter Artist Award, the RBC Emerging Artist Award, and the Carol Bolt Award, was named as a protégé of the Siminovitch Prize, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

Pyaasa

This play is a solo play, it was written and intended for a single actor to play all roles.

Pyaasa was first produced by Theatre Jones Roy at Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, between September 25 and 30, 2007 with the following company:

Anusree Roy: Playwright / Performer

Thomas Morgan Jones: Director / Dramaturg

David DeGrow: Lighting Designer / Stage Manager

Evan Ayotte: Costume Painter

Ryan McDougall: Technician

Aimee Nishtoba: Poster Design

Pyaasa is set in present day Bengal, India.

Characters

Chaya: Eleven years old. She is bright, filled with energy and has tremendous determination. She is hopeful for the future.

Meera: Mid-forties. She is very shrewd, very strict with her daughter, and fully understands how to use her social disadvantage to her advantage. She is plagued with lower-back pain.

Kamala: Mid-forties. She is confident, incredibly manipulative, and enjoys holding power over the lower castes.

Mr. Bikash: Mid-fifties. He is a rich, educated, and stern man. He loathes the untouchables.

SCENE ONE

Mr. Bikash’s Home

Lights gradually come up on stage. MEERA is sitting crouched on the floor. She watches KAMALA come from stage right as she starts speaking in Bengali.

MEERA:

Oh didi! Kamon aacho didi? Mone hocche koto din tomake dhekhi na didi… saree ta ki bhalo lagche tomake! Notun shari naki? Na didi, aami kicchu dhori ne. Chup kore boshe aachie… dhako balti-o-okhane aache. Na didi chui ne.[1] (She gets up.)

No didi. You didn’t give soap no, so I didn’t put. Bishash koro didi… Kothai dile shaban bolo?[2] I wait here every day didi, until you come, turn the tap on and then I go in. When have I ever touched anything in this house? I would rather die, jump off a bridge, be killed by a bus, set fire to my own tent, didi, before I would touch anything. No didi, I didn’t touch it. I swear on my