Acting up: The prisoners rehearse for Tasher Desh (Pix: Anindya Saha)

The heavily-guarded iron gates of Berhampore Central Jail in Murshidabad will be thrown open on May 16. Twenty-four convicts, serving life sentences, will be let out. The next morning, they will be on stage in Calcutta’s Rabindra Sadan, performing Tagore’s musical drama, Tasher Desh.

Rehearsals are on in a cell inside the prison. The performers are going to talk about their impending production, the training experience and what freedom feels like, even if it is just for a day. But there is a condition. They don’t want their killer or rapist tags to be displayed.

“When we perform out there, we want to be treated as ordinary human beings,” says a 32-year-old-man, convicted of murder. “We don’t want the audience in Calcutta to point to us and say: ‘Look, that man slit his wife’s throat or that one strangled his business partner.’ We are trying to put the past behind us. We want to move forward.”

The fears are genuine. A fellow inmate recalls an incident: “I was shifted to a hospital for a few days because I was ill. Two little boys, whose father was in the same ward, used to come near my bed and scare each other by saying: He’s a daku (robber) and he will take out his chaku (knife) and stab you.”

In fact, so concerned are they about this issue that they have even sent a written request to the inspector general of prisons, B.D. Sharma, asking him whether it was possible not to mention their individual crimes to the public. Sharma, of course, is only too happy to pay heed. It was he, after all, who, after seeing the same play performed within Berhampore jail as part of the prisoners’ cultural activities, declared that the production was good enough to merit an outside show. He has had rules bent and ordered a 24-hour parole for lifers, who had no hope of ever going outside their prison cells, forget performing on stage.

“I will do everything to boost their morale,” Sharma says. Besides, at this stage he does not want to take risks. “Everything is set. We have invited the chief minister and other prominent personalities to the event. We cannot afford to have anything go wrong.”

iNDEED, THE PERFORMANCE has all the promise of being a high-profile one, not to mention, historic. “This is the first time in the history of prisons in West Bengal — or India , for that matter — that prisoners are going to perform in public,” points out Sharma, who insists on “according them the respect of any performing artist, treating them as free individuals for that day.”

But what about security? Sharma doesn’t deny that it is a big concern. “It was the risk factor that initially dissuaded me from letting the idea actually hatch. Even if you trust each and every one of the performers, you cannot be lax as far as security is concerned.” While not wishing to divulge the details, Sharma explains that “there will be adequate police arrangement.” The performers will be brought from Berhampore Central Jail in police vehicles and lodged in Calcutta’s Presidency Jail, where they will spend the night. Once the performance is over, they will be taken back to Berhampore.”

The director of the play, theatre-person Pradip Bhattacharya, too is confident that there will be no breach of security. He claims that his training — which, he says is not limited to histrionics but includes a range of exercises for psychological, physical and spiritual uplift — would go down so well with the prisoners that they wouldn’t want to escape even if they were shown the open door.

Rhetoric? Not really, if the prisoners themselves are to be believed. For instance, 41-year-old Swarnendu Chowdhury, who owned a hotel in Digha and is now serving a life sentence for a crime that he does not wish to disclose, says his take on life has changed.

“I have been in prison for over 10 years now. Every morning I used to wake up and think of taking my own life when I saw the iron bars in my cell. It felt as though only death would bring freedom,” says Chowdhury, who has the all-important king’s role in the play. “But in these drama sessions, I have learnt to train my mind to roam freely in any part of the world. I fly in imagination and go back to my house and meet my wife and two daughters.”

Others too long for the time of day — from 1:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon — when rehearsals start. Says 35-year-old Sudarshan Bera, also serving a life sentence, “Life has changed since October last year, when the rehearsals started. Earlier I used to drag myself around, going about my chores without any purpose in life. Now there is meaning.” Tarit Kundu, 32, who was arrested while still in college and is serving a life sentence, says, “I had many dreams, all of which were shattered when a fellow student was murdered.” Now, he says he can pursue his dreams again through drama.

Budyadeb Meta, 32, who will sing during the performance, hopes to find solace through music. He has composed a song about prison life, which he sings for the inmates during rehearsals. As he does, a 20-year-old woman named Runa Bibi, who is serving a life sentence, sobs. “His voice is so full of pathos, it makes us cry.”

Not surprisingly, Bhattacharya claims to have “assured the prison authorities, that if anyone flees, I am willing to be hauled off to jail for it.” But prisoners escaping was not the only concern. Says Kalyan Pramanick, superintendent of Berhampore Central Jail, “The play includes the use of strings and ropes and we were initially reluctant to permit that.” So Bhattacharya assured them, “No one will commit suicide by hanging themselves.”

But perhaps the most difficult hur- dle to overcome, as far as Bhattacharya is concerned, was getting the prison authorities to agree to allow women inmates to act in the play along with the men. “We were a little apprehensive,” admits Pramanick. “The Jail Code demands strict segregation of male and female inmates.” But Bhattacharya put his foot down, insisting that men would not do the roles of women. So Sharma made special arrangements. Now out of 24 actors, eight are women.

All of them, without exception, say that the thing that they are yearning for most on their day out is acceptance by the public. “Freedom is nothing if you cannot be accepted,” says a woman who, in a fit of jealousy, killed her husband’s second wife. “We were not born criminals. We hope society condones us for our mistakes.” All of them can also identify with Tagore’s message of breaking barriers in Tasher Desh. As Inspector General Sharma sums up, “With this play we hope to be able to break the barriers of stigma imposed on prisoners by society.”