Natak Samagra 3 by Bratya Basu [Hardcover]

Deconstruction: A play is deconstructed in the reciprocal reflections of time and life. Does life, standing beside the play, ever search for its own spiritual essence—a feeling mixed with both the nectar and poison of self-realization? In that space, there is love and vengeance, affection beside hostility, and the intrusion of politics into the courtyard of social values. Among contemporary playwrights, Bratya Basu stands out as someone who most profoundly intertwines these fragmented scenes with meaning, merging theater and life not as separate orbits but as two windows in the same room, allowing light and air to flow equally through both.

Without any formal definitions or entanglement in theoretical debates, every line of Bratya’s plays boldly explores all the nooks and crannies of life. His characters reflect the "I, you, you (formal), and you (informal)" of our identities, roaming across our multifaceted selves. Life stands opposite life itself, questioning one another from the boundaries of birth to death. Bratya’s plays, bound by neither literary conventions nor theoretical fences, encompass a vast sky of diversity—like a rainbow of countless colors.

Following the first two volumes, the third volume of his Collected Plays features twelve successful plays from the past five years. In life’s apparent labyrinth, human-animal figures might momentarily find a hired killer or Anandi Bai’s love. Characters like Altaf Gomes walk through these pages as if on a cinematic screen, evoking feelings from the lives of Ila and Guhaisha. Someone sounds the “fourth bell” of life, while another gathers the gunpowder of ignorance to ignite a destructive bomb. Searching for the playwright, these characters traverse from one act to another, where the play itself becomes a challenge to its creator.

Deconstruction.