A Touch Of Brightness: Doongaji House

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A Touch of Brightness centers on Rukmini, a girl sold to a brothel in Mumbai and her relationship with Pidku, a street urchin, who tries desperately to rescue her from her life as a prostitute. Rukmini mesmerizes Pidku with her visionary stories of the Gods and her dreams of a married life. Even in a brothel, her extravagant optimism never ceases but only deepens. Doongaji House, winner of the Sultan Padamsee Award, deals with the last years of Hormusji, a partriarch fallen on lean days who strangely combines, in the face of penury and a disintegrating family, youthful idealism with fanatical orthodoxy. Hormusji is endowed with a strong zest for life. Yet, something has sapped it. What is this unspoken secret, often touched upon tangentially by him and his wife, Pooja, but never openly discussed? Cyrus Mistry uses the conventions of traditional Parsi farce only to stand them on their head and create a play that moves from comedy to pathos and sentimentality, through heights of great dramatic tension and moments of deep tragedy. Though rooted in the life of one small, unique community, the playâ€™s themes are universal and existential: the common human yearning for joy in life thwarted by incomprehensible forces; the ultimate loneliness, anguish and vulnerability of all human beings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Partap Sharma

Partap Sharma is a playwright, novelist (Days of the Turban) and author of four books for children. His best known plays, A Touch of Brightness and Begum Sumroo, have been staged in various counties. His books have been published in India, England, USA, France, Denmark, Holland and Canada. As an actor, he has played the lead in five Hindi feature films and won the National Award in 1971 for his performance in Phir Bhi. He has also played the role of Nehru in the film Nehru: Jewel of India. In the year 2003, he spent three months in China to take part, again as Nehru, in an international film titled Chou-en-lai in Bandung. He has directed a number of documentary films, including a historical series for Channel Four Television, London, titled The Raj Through Indian Eyes. As a result, England's Museum of the British Empire & Commonwealth, in Bristol, now has a permanent section devoted to film clips and interviews titled The Partap Sharma Archive on the British Raj. His voice is well-known to cinema, TV and radio audiences as he is one of India's foremost commentators and narrators. He is the recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.