Jungle Nama

In the dense tangle of the Sunderban, a shape-shifting demon Dokkhin Rai hunts humans in a tiger avatar. A band of ambitious sailors enter the jungle, where they are sucked into a world of manipulative illusions. Amongst them is Dukhey, a fatherless, forsaken Sad-Lad who must now survive the greed of supernatural forces. Jungle Nama illustrates the struggle between Mangrove and Mankind. It is a story of the Sundarban — a retelling of the Bengali folktale of Bon Bibi, Mistress of the Forest.

Based on Amitav Ghosh’s book Jungle Nama, illustrated by Salman Toor, this play is a retelling of the Sundarban folk tale. Tigers and tides make the Sundarbans a realm of great danger — humans living in such perennial harshness must invent stories that help them survive their everyday environment. But where there are humans, there is also a want for more.

Dhona and Dukhey travel into the mangrove forest with their crew. Dhona encounters Dokkhin Rai for the first time.

Click to watch the snippet.

performed by

Animesh Pradhan, Astha Gulati, Chrisann Pereira, Prerana, Siddhant Raj

Neev Literature Festival, September 2024

reviews

"Jungle Nama is filled with imagery that is evocative and gritty. It's a play for children, but one that's sure to keep the adults hooked, too."

"While the text has been adapted for stage, Shah has been careful to keep the syllabic meter intact. The result is a stylised rhythmic narrative that gives the actors enough liberty to play around, albeit within the framework of the verse. "

"The actors play many characters; the fight scenes (there are many) feature deft choreography that can evoke both humour and thrill among children."

"When Mati Rajput, set designer, read the black-and-white illustrated pages of the novel, she thought of shadow puppetry. But the early shows in Bengaluru were held in the open air and in broad daylight. "So we had to come up with a different world. The narrators of the story are fishermen from the Sunderbans, that's how the fish nets came to be." she says."

Audience Member

- Prachi Sibal

for Mint

Jungle Nama was introduced to me a couple of years ago, by a teacher who wanted to adapt it for an annual day. It never ended up happening, but I was bewitched by the text and its illustrations. I’ve been obsessed with the Sundarban since I was a child. There’s something about its topography that is so terrifying, alluring, mysterious. I really wanted to be a marine biologist, and at 12 years old, when the sea seemed too vast, it was nice to think of the Sundarban as a place-between-land-and-sea. Somewhere vast and wild and unknown, but still tethered to a continent. Between 11-15, I dreamed of escaping into that vastness. Maybe it’s because it’s the age one starts becoming more aware of the self in relation to the world, maybe because I grew up in a cramped city, but ideas of Outer Space, of the Open Ocean, of the tallest mountains, were very alluring to me. A call of the void… I enjoy grappling with these ideas in my work, and I enjoy engaging in them with young people.

The world of Jungle Nama is fascinating. Shape shifters, vigilante gods, humans, beehives, rivers and mangroves… tangles and tangles of rivers and mangroves. The text is nuanced in its meter, characters, and message. The magic realism of the tideland forest, merging man and myth, has given us fodder to recreate a playful, political, and visually exciting world on stage.