The Dread Departure

In an unusually irreverent text that plays with the traditional Marathi musical mode of the mourning keertan and the theme of death, Satish Alekar’s The Dread Departure tells the story of a dead man who will be cremated the way he wants to be and no other way. He lives on as a dead man till he stinks and his son battles with the civic authorities to honour his father’s last wishes, while his widow gets enamoured of a ghostly lover, ‘the third man from the left’ of the pall bearers. The play has a rich dose of black humour, pure fun, and the sense of a community coming to terms with death.