Dwarka: Rangashree Terrace Theatre stages 'Raghunath Jee Ki Gawahi'

Dwarka: The prohibitive cost of popular auditoriums has given rise to the concept of Studio/Terrace theatres in Delhi. The Rangashree Terrace Theatre, in Dwarka, sector-12 is one of them having a capacity of 40 persons. Recently, a musical play, 'Raghunath Jee Ki Gawahi' was staged by the theatre group Rangashree.

The play is an adaptation of a folk story by Law Kant Singh. The story revolves around a saint popularly known as Judge Saheb in Vrindavan. He always pays his reverence from outside the temples but never enters any one of them. He considers himself guilty of not paying respect to the Lord when he appears in his court as a witness.

Cut to flashback in a remote village where an innocent village man “Bhola” lives in a temple of Raghunath Jee and attends to all services without any remuneration. His devotion to Lord Shree Ram (Raghunath Jee) was selfless. Once Bhola took a loan for his daughter’s marriage from a village lender and refunded it with interest within one year. But the lender fraudulently gives him a scribbled piece of paper as a receipt, knowing well that Bhola was illiterate and filed a recovery suit in a local court against him after one year. The Judge asked Bhola if there was an eye witness to prove his claim that he had repaid his loan with interest?

Also read | Sukh Dukh Ke Sathi felicitates two community heroes from Dwarka

Bhola had no other evidence or eye witness except for Raghunath Jee. A summons was issued to Raghunath. To the utter surprise of all, Lord Shri Ram appears in the court like an old man, and the lender’s fraud was proved beyond doubt. Bhola won the case and the lender got punished. When the Judge came to know that the witness was none other than the Lord, he renounced the world & became a saint. The musical play was full of devotional songs which made the audience emotional.

Characters of Bhola, Judge, Lender, Priest, Raghunath jee &  Advocates were powerfully portrayed by Akhilesh Kumar Pandey, Mahendra Prasad Singh, Law Kant Singh, Saumitra Verma, Deepak K Singh, Gourav Prakash & Shivani Srivastava respectively. Kriti Kumari (Bhola’s wife), Rustam Kumar (Bhola’s son), Kiran Arora as Judge’s daughter, Ravi Kant and Dheeraj as villagers acted very well. The background music of Raja Singh and songs of Anil Gupta made the whole presentation very entertaining as well as touching.

Rangashree has been organizing theatre workshops for children and adults for the last 22 years in Dwarka. The founder of Rangashree, M P Singh said that he has an ambitious plan of staging this play in Bhojpuri too in the states of Bihar, UP and Jharkhand promoting honesty and selfless work.