Last month my Industrialist neighbour Ashok Bhai Parekh informed me that a play named ’Yugpurush’ about Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual mentor Shrimad Rajchandraji will be staged in Khartoum. I had never read or heard about Shrimad Rajchandraji. I revisited the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi –‘The stories of my experiments with truth’. There I found in Chapter 26 the title ‘Raychandbhai’. This was the person Gandhiji often referred to as Kavi (Poet).The other name for Raychandbhai was Rajchandraji and Shrimad was an honorific or title. The play directed by Rajesh Joshi, written by Uttam Gada and music scored by Sachin-JIga is an award winning play. Besides many awards, Yugpurush has won the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Excellence Award 2017. The creativity and techniques in the play are par excellence. The actors were amazing with 11 actors playing the role of more than 50 people. The lead role of Shrimad Rajchandraji was very well portrayed by Parthsarthi Vaidya . Gandhi was influenced by three persons in his life: John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy and Shrimad Rajchandraji and of course Shrimad Rajchandraji a living contact had the deepest impression. Raychandbhai sowed the seeds of Truth, Non-violence and Compassion in the mind of Gandhi. They had met in Bombay and continued to exchange 200 letters while Gandhi was in South Africa. The spiritual relationship transformed Mohandas to a Mahatma. Kavi told Gandhi how one can’t wash the blood stains of violence with violence. You need the pure water of non-violence to wash the stains of violence. He also taught him that life is temporary and the body is perishable but prayers lead us to God and the prayers remain forever. This play has had more than 900 shows in almost 300 cities in many languages all over the world and touched the hearts and minds of more than 600,000 viewers. Many of us in Khartoum were lucky to view this play at Friendship Theatre Hall on Friday 29th September. There were two shows one in Gujarati in the morning for the Omdurman Indian Community and another in English in the evening. Ambassador of India H.E.Amrit Lugun welcomed the viewers and the Chief Guest was Federal Minister of Culture Altayeb Hassan Badawi. There were other dignitaries present at the show including Actor and Director Ali Mahdi Nouri who found the play amazing from every department. We remain ever grateful to the benevolent sponsors of the play and the joint organisers namely Embassy of India, Khartoum and Omdurman Indian Community for bringing this heart touching and thought provoking play to Khartoum.
