Making a Wish

‘Hello Farmaaish’, which premiered in Chennai as part of The Hindu Theatre Fest, unfolds as a play, but in its soul and spirit, is a fantastically crafted game of hope, aspirations, imagination, resilience, freedom and sisterhood

- Akhila Krishnamurthy

Don’t judge me for being a feminist! Or, I wonder if it is because I still remember – and rather vividly – the twelve-hour labour leading up to the birth of my child, even after a full five years? Either ways, I simply can’t get over this one scene in Dur Se Brothers’ Hello Farmaaish, where Gyan Gita transports her listeners (on radio) – and the audience – to a planet where a husband and a wife are playing a cricket match that will determine, as Gyan Gita narrates rather dramatically, as the lights dim on stage and yellow lights shine and sparkle like stars, who will get pregnant and bear a child.

The woman wins – yay – and gets the man pregnant. And how! She starts tickling him until his balls become the size of his body and finally, with the wife vehemently nudging him to push harder, a baby tumbles out. ‘Didi, ladka hua ya ladki?’ (Is it a boy or a girl?), one of the girls at the NGO asks Gitaji with overwhelming enthusiasm. ‘We don’t know; in this planet, the child grows up and decides if it wants to be a man or a woman.’

Hello Farmaaish, written by Sneh Sapru and Yuki Ellias, adapted into Hindi by Vidit Tripathi, and directed by Yuki Ellias, which premiered in Chennai as part of the 15th edition of The Hindu Theatre Fest, unfolds as a play, but in its soul and spirit, it is a fantastically crafted game of hope; a game of aspirations, of unabashed imagination, of magic and mystery, of potential and wondrous possibilities, of resilience and resistance, of choice and freedom, of equality and sisterhood.