Coming of age and coming out as deadly lines split India
Photo: Aiyana Bartlett stars with Farah Ashraf in Santi and Naz
Daniel Nelson
For a play about India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1947 “Tryst with Destiny” speech is the equivalent of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s dictum that "a gun shown in the first act will inevitably be fired later in the play".
Santi & Naz is a two-hander about girls growing into women in a small village. it’s India so you know that at some point you will hear Nehru declaiming “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”.
The story starts when Santi and Naz are children, inseparable friends. They are vaguely aware of Mahatma Gandhi and of British rule, but have no understanding of the spikey shards of news and views they pick up from older relatives and friends. The years pass and they come of age and out against the backdrop of India’s independence and its partition into two countries - a miniature version of the sweeping idea behind Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
Miniature it may be (a simple stage, less than 90 minutes), but Guleraana Mir and afshan d’souza-lodhi have written a heart-warming, sad, humane, moving, delightful, thoughtful play. Delightful in the playful affection between the girls, which flowers into erotic longing, interrupted by social taboos and a couple of hopeless men; thoughtful in the way that national politics, initially dismissed as having no relevance to the girls’ quiet rural lives, begin to impinge on their homes, community, relationship and futures.
Naz, who is Muslim, is the first to realise that change is underway and that she will have to leave; Santi, a Sikh, insists that everything will be ok. Threatened minorities almost always spot trouble ahead: their antennae are — have to be — more sensitive; apolitical members of majority communities see the impending changes and the threat of violence, as less serious: deep down they know they probably will be ok.
Fissures in the village forced by outside pressures are echoed in the two friends’ attitudes. Angry words are thrown. “You know Muslim men beat their wives,” says Santi, frustrated by her friend’s marriage acquiescence, “Why would you say that?” resorts Naz, angry at the unexpected prejudice behind the generalisation.
Their respective responses, including Santi’s blind lust and Naz’s grudging resignation, to the men who intrude on their lives are nicely drawn.
Santi’s honesty and intelligence finally overcome her raging hormones, and she realises the passion of the man who makes her heart beat faster is driven not by love for her but by hatred of Muslims. Naz realises she cannot go through with her planned marriage: “I’m scared he doesn’t like me. I’m scared he really doesn’t like me.”
Their bond draws them together at a moment of crisis, but leads to a tragic incident with terrible consequences.
The boundary lines drawn on a map by a British official with no knowledge of the people or land whose fate he is fixing leads to an even more catastrophic event. Partition splits the village and the girls. This romcom does not end happily.
* Santi & Naz, £11-£22, is at the Soho Theatre, Dean Street, W1, until 8 February. Info: Soho TheatreG