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Kabuliwala Calling
Languages of the Heart
Directors
60 minutes | English
Written and designed by Vijay Padaki
Directed by Murtuza Khetty and Vijay Padaki
Kabuliwala Calling is the third event in the series jointly organised by BIC and BLT to celebrate the 160th birth anniversary year of Rabindranath Tagore in 2021-22. The story of the Kabuliwala was written by Rabindranath Tagore towards the end of the nineteenth century, published in 1892. That was more than twenty years before he received the Nobel Award for Literature. It was a short story, merely fifteen minutes in narration. It went on to become one of the most loved, most translated and most cited of Tagore’s works in prose. The deep bonds developing spontaneously between a child and a grown up stranger from two entirely different cultures is one of the strongest testaments of the goodness of humankind. The play Kabuliwala Calling is an original adaptation for the stage developed at Bangalore Little Theatre. The story is presented by the Kabuliwalas of Kolkata themselves.
Cast & Crew
- Naveen Tater portrays the Kabuliwala;
- Maitreyi DT appears as little Mini;
- Minti Jain and Murtuza Khetty are the parents;
- Ranjitha S is the grown up Mini, the bride to be;
- Karan Singh is a writer researching the Afghans in Kolkata;
- Vijay Padaki appears as Ajmal Khan, carrying the institutional memory of the Kabuliwallas of Calcutta.
- Aditye Nair, Mayank Tater, Ranjitha S and Vincent Fernandez form the backstage team.
Directors
Vijay Padaki
Vijay Padaki is a theatre educator based in Bangalore. He has worn two caps all his life. One of them is in management, with a special interest in Organization and Institutional Development. The other cap is in the theatre, especially in writing and training. He was responsible for several long term thrusts of BLT – a Children’s Theatre programme, including Education Enrichment initiatives, the annual Summer Project on Theatre (SPOT) and the highly acclaimed History of Ideas programme for biographical pays. He has written over 50 original plays in English. He is the Series Editor of BLT’s monumental publications project that s bringing out 10 volumes of plays.
Murtuza Khetty
Murtuza Khetty was trained in BLT’s director training programme. Has worked in multiple capacities as a trainer, mentor, director, set and light designer at BLT, assisting successful productions. He made his solo directorial debut with Madhu Rye’s psychological thriller Tell me the Name of Flower’. Among his recent works is Monsters in the Dark, based on the highly acclaimed history of cancer treatment, “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddharth Mukherjee. In the 2019 Festival to felicitate Vijay Padaki he co-directed the award-winning play Credit Titles. A trained trainer, he is an experienced researcher-facilitator in BLT’s Education Enrichment programme.
