Note: I have had the privilege to interview theatre personality and actor Arundhati Nag many times over a decade or more and this piece recalls many conversations about her life and work.
You saw her award winning turn in Pa recently and even if she comes for a few seconds in an advertisement, you know, you are watching an accomplished, gifted actor but Arundhati Nag’s earliest memory of herself as a performer is when as a child she would not take off her ghungroos!  “I had ghungroos but no dance teacher. I went chham chham regardless!’’ she laughs that deliciously full-throated laugh and adds, “I have no theatrical background. No one from my family had ever acted.’’
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But something happened to those placid genes when she got a part in a college play because of her “good Hindi’’ and won an award for it. “That gave me a taste of the joy of being in another person’s mind and spirit. I had a flair for languages and never looked back after that,’’ she reminisces.
An accidental introduction to IPTA, the legendary theatre group put her before writer Shama Zaidi who took one look at her pigtails and decided to cast her in Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Ek Chadar Maili Si. That play never got produced but she became an intrinsic part of the group. She got to act with stalwarts like Farooque Sheikh, Sulbha Arya, Ishan Arya, Manmohan Krishan  and AK Hangal and still savours the aftertaste of the enriching years. “At one point I was doing nearly 42 performances a month in various languages! Alongside television and college theatre as well! It was just destiny that picked me to do this otherwise I was just another young girl standing with my pigtails at my door,’’ she says.
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The unearthly rehearsal hours were an issue for her family and she still laughs at how the IPTA seniors made it a point to drop her home every night. “I was expected to come home when the street lights came on and that is the time when the rehearsals actually started! I remember how later Shankar (Nag) and I dropped the young girls in our theatre group to their doorsteps at night as well!’’ she chuckles.
Ofcourse, no conversation with Arundhati can be complete without Shankar Nag.They first met as rival actors during university fests in Mumbai, eager only to take the overall dramatics prize away from each other. “I used to be the best actress and he was the best actor,’’ she recalls with mirth. Somehow, they ended up doing a theatre production together and then love took over. “I was 17,  he was 19 and I was the only girl in a cast of nine boys! Shankar and I stuck together because we were not Gujaratis! Then ofcourse Shankar came to Bangalore and his film career made him a star. Initially I came down to work in one of his theatre productions but when we decided to marry, I dumped my career back in Mumbai for good. I was never ambitious but am happy to have a solid body of work as an actress that ranges from Brecht to Badal Sircar to Karnad to Woody Allen adaptations to commercial Marathi theatre and TV and films. Strangely though we were never paired romantically onscreen or on stage. He has once played my son onstage and we have done the old couple in Sandhya Chaya but we never did the hero, heroine bit! Infact, I never visited him on his commercial movie sets and he kept on saying, “Please come. I will take you out for lunch!’’
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Shankar’s memories always flood Arundhati with joy because their time together overflowed with it. She recalls, “ In our 17 years of marriage, we never fought once. We always agreed to disagree. He took suggestions and valued my judgement. I respected him immensely as well and we never took professional differences back home. He appreciated my sense of colour, design and texture because he did not have any! I designed the costumes for his productions but I knew how to leave spaces in the relationship. He always conveyed to me that I was special and gave me my due. He was a man who wore his success and his manhood (which is such a big deal for Indian men) lightly. Not once did he do, “I am a man and you are a woman’’ thing.  I am yet to meet a man as special as him. I miss him so much today because we did so much together and grew together. There were no frictions or insecurities. At a very young age, he had cracked what love is all about. He had told me at 19 that love is not about what someone else gives you but about what you feel for that person. It was enough for him that the person he loved existed. It did not matter to him whether I was going to be with him or not. His love was unconditional and Ranga Shankara has that spirit running through it even though we have not put his image across the space. He has walked with me through everything.  I feel, Shankar is growing old with me as we experience  Ranga Shankara growing up before our eyes.’’
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And yet Ranga Shankara was just a bare  plot of land  in the middle of Bangalore’s JP Nagar for years. Even after  Arundhati had watched the ground being broken by a swooping, steel caterpillar for the first time and  told herself, “This is it. You can’t turn your back on this now.’’Arundhati, Aru to friends, had no reason to believe that the broken ground would ever have a structure. In a distance, her friend and architect Sharukh Mistry stood next to a model of the imagined space dedicated to the memory  of Shankar who had died in a tragic car crash, leaving behind the unfulfilled dream of a creating a cocoon for exponents and lovers of  theatre.Those watching Arundhati were a little incredulous.The inevitable question was asked, “How will it be done?’’Arundhati had smiled and said, “It will be done. I don’t know how but it will be done.’’

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And it was. It  is the second theatre space in India (The first being Prithvi) where theatre takes precedence over everything else. Today when Arundhati sits in her little office overlooking the roomy corridors,  listening to the chatter of young voices, incessant footfalls, laughter and  applause, she says, “I can’t believe this is real. It is the same feeling that a mother feels when her baby suddenly grows taller than her. Like a  man who carries around a fistful of earth from the land he hopes to build his home on one day, I used to carry the model of Ranga Shankara in my car everywhere! I would take it out and show it to anyone who I thought could contribute something. And it is done now. It really is.’’

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She reminisces, “There was not a single moment of dissolution in my being. I never thought that it could not be done. It was as if life chose me to do this. I am just an ordinary woman. A lot of women see tragedy, lose their husbands but I was driven by an unseen hand.’’ It was decided at the onset that Ranga Shankara would be a friendly space. Till today there are no doors dividing the building from the outside world.’ Arundhati nods, “A lot of people worried for our security because there are no gates but we have done just fine till now.’’ Infact, very recently she was introduced in Germany as a lady who has created a theatre without doors! Ranga Shankara really is metaphorically and otherwise, an open place. Anyone is welcome to walk in. The rock from her farmhouse which Arundhati carried to the plot on the day of the ground breaking ceremony, stands tall at the entrance. It is a symbol of her steadfast love for her husband and her faith that never wavered during the years it took to build Ranga Shankara.“It was too big a dream and we did not have all the money we needed. We raised the money as we built!’’ she laughs.

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Big and small contributions like floor tiles, cement bags, elevators, hand painted steel almirahs,  computers for the office were made by corporates and ordinary people along the way.  Arundhati says, “The space has become its own person today. It beckons people to come and keep coming.’’ It is hard to not feel a little moved when you enter the lobby and see not a portrait or statue of Shankar Nag but a window pane embossed with his image. His arms are open, as if welcoming each person who steps in. And you see the reflection of each visitor mirrored in his embrace. Once in the building, your heart, spirit and mind react afresh to stimuli and overflow with the  pure, deeply satisfying joy that comes from watching red paper lanterns sway in the lobby and from the beautiful  pillar candles lighting up the evenings.

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In the open café, on wooden benches are perched actors, playwrights and theatre lovers sharing anecdotes, kokum juice, coffee and akki rotis. A stray dog adopted by Ranga Shankara, strolls in and out at will. In a book shop across the lobby, you can leaf through the biographies of film actors, books on art, theatre and more. The shell is circular as if to remind one that all things do come full circle in life. A staircase  curves gently upwards to take you towards the auditorium where sweeping seats in a rising semi circle face a wooden stage.

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The day Ranga Shankara was finished, Arundhati chose to stage five short dramatic pieces in the auditorium rather than do any Pooja. “We do not need any religion here,’’ says she and adds, “We all have dark chambers within. What we need is to walk out and find a purpose. ”

Or allow it to find us.

Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7YucnhfXw–&ref=4fe1efd1-de20-4a30-8eb8-ef81a99cb01f