No war, only love

SET SOMEWHERE in the period between the first and second World Wars, ?Bury the dead? is a saga of the Army, by the Army and for the Army! Written by Erwin Shaw, the story deals with six soldiers refusing to get buried in the warzone without living their lives to the fullest despite even their families against them.

SET SOMEWHERE in the period between the first and second World Wars, ‘Bury the dead’ is a saga of the Army, by the Army and for the Army! Written by Erwin Shaw, the story deals with six soldiers refusing to get buried in the warzone without living their lives to the fullest despite even their families against them.

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The soldiers demand an end to war as a condition for their burial as they believe in the dictum that war doesn’t serve any purpose which is also the moral of the story adapted into ‘Dafan Karo’, a play in Hindi staged by actors and students of Bhartendu Natya Akademi in Lucknow recently.

Six soldiers and their stinking dead bodies, four soldiers( still alive), two company commanders, the battalion commander, the group captain, the hawildar major and five rifles formed the ensemble cast. Naresh Bhartiya, who played the battalion commander, says, “When I say ‘Lagta hai poori army ne pee rakhi hai’ as the battalion commander, I felt a sense of guilt at what I was saying but when I got into the skin of the character I realised that Armymen are straight-in-you face kinda guys,”. Ditto with Amit Srivastava, who played the hawildar major, “I realised how fortunate we civilians are when we said, ‘In lashon mein aur hum mein koi zyada farq nahin, jaldi karo dafan karo’.

Abhimanyu Arun played one of the four ‘living’ soldiers in the play. He said, the Armymen are always under stress and I empathise. Anup Kumar said, “I felt I was giving a social message.” Surely, the play captures the imagination of the civilians and appeals to the Army men as well.