Does the name Jamlo Makdam ring a bell anymore? No. However, the name made national headlines on April 21, 2020 — four weeks after the country experienced the first lockdown in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was reported that Jamlo Makdam, a 12-year-old girl, died while undertaking a 150-kilometre-long road journey from a Telangana village to her home in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh. She was 50 km away from her native village when she succumbed to exhaustion and dehydration.
Jamlo Makdam, a powerful Bengali drama based on the girl’s tragedy, reminds us about the fate of millions of migrant labourers when the nationwide lockdown was imposed. Halisahar-based Chena Adhuli, a familiar name in the off-proscenium theatre circuit, premiered Jamlo Makdam on April 2 last year. This reviewer caught the action on December 28 at Garia Ashani Natyam’s theatre festival. Scripted and directed by Rajat Das, it narrates the traumatic life of a child labourer working in a chilli field till the pandemic struck.
Gouri Das — a supremely-talented actress — who plays Makdam, did not need any effort to behave like a child. She had a rope tied around her waist and along her shoulders, restricting her movements within an arc on the performance arena. The arena also had suspended white ropes, symbolizing a screen, on a demarcated space on the stage right, where Arnab Roy, playing Makdam’s personal god, made occasional appearances, facilitating a dialogue between them. Instead of resorting to rhetoric, the director balanced gut-wrenching realism with soul-searching poetry, penned by Bhaskar Chakraborty. Held together by a rather loud soundscape, this 35-minute-long drama disturbs the complacency that seems to have set in as we negotiate with the recent wave of the pandemic.
Gouri infuses her passionate portrayal with innocence, making the most of her expressive eyes, reflecting the deep melancholy of Makdam’s situation. The rope-trick, which shocks the audience sitting at the edge of the performance arena, also underlines the exploitative nature of child labour — a disgrace to humanity.
