In the loftiest heights at the extremities of paradise... A being too ethereal to be sentient... An entity untainted by the temporal... Known in the ancient scriptures as one who can never be brought down to earth... Homapakhi...
The Vedas described Homapakhi as the mythical bird perpetually in flight, who even lays eggs that hatch in space as they fall through the immense distance between other beings and Homapakhi. Their young ones learn to fly in space, where they incubate. They remain in perpetual motion because they never need to return to terra firma.
When Sraboni returns to Kolkata for her vacation she brings back the emptiness of her life in London, with her successful but unsatisfying professional life as a consultant psychiatrist, and a deeply dysfunctional personal life with an imminent divorce. She returns home with the hope of reaching out from her cocoon of loneliness.
Her mother, unable to comprehend the reasons for her divorce, can offer no shelter. Interactions with her mother leave Sraboni feels accused, though subtly, for lacking her mother’s forbearance and patience, the hallmark of good Indian womanhood.
That strange sense of personal failure along with the pain of loneliness drives Sraboni to seek the company of people who would not share her mother’s point of view. The only one left seems to be her old professor, Niranjan Ganguly, always a maverick with an existential twist. Though Niranjan is happy to see his most favourite student, Sraboni finds her old professor adrift in a personal world, where nobody features, where nothing matters. Even wife Aditi is a stranger to him who inhabits the perimeters of his existence.
Sraboni however manages to breakthrough to him, yet she soon realizes that there is no personal family life left for Niranjan Ganguly beyond the shadow and ruins of habit. Clinically, he has been diagnosed as manic-depressive. The one person Sraboni could have reached out to form the prison of her own loneliness, is himself a prisoner.
Yet he welcomes her, not to provide succour, but with a correlative that allows her to confront herself. Like the quintessential teacher of psychology he invites her to look at her own life, without himself entering into her private space, even though his own life is clinically chaotic. But then he does not wish to contribute order, but only to help Sraboni confront her own disorder.
Sraboni faces her own angst about Nazia, a Pakistani patient of hers who committed suicide, for no apparent reason. Yet Sraboni knows in her heart of hearts that she had failed Nazia in providing a reason to live. Her sense of guilt, and the turbulence within her lead Nazia to reappear as a deeply disturbing leitmotif.
The play gives us hope that Sraboni will be able to deal with her personal hemisphere, but will Niranjan Ganguly be able to do so for himself? Is there no one to unlock his world for him, to free him from his manic loneliness? Or must he be in perpetual flight, uncontaminated by the temporal?
A Homapakhi of our times...

CINETEL
Presents
“Homapakhi”
Funded by : Eastern India Cinetel Welfare Trust
Play By : Dr. Amit Ranjan Biswas
Director : Soumitra Chatterjee
Program Profile :
Dance Choreography : Poulami Bose
Set : Bilu Dutta
Light : Badal Das
Sound : Swapan Banerjee
Visuals : Barin Infotech
Music Director : Partha Sengupta
Singers : Swagata Lakshmi Dasgupta
Sushanta Mukhopadhyay
Srikanta Acharya
Composition & Singing of
‘Ure Jao Homapakhi’ : Rita Gangopadhyay
Singer of Rabindrasangeet
‘Bona Jadi Phutlo Kusum’ : Krishnakali Dasgupta
Voice over : Deepankar De
Trina Banerjee
Anamika Saha
Make-up : Mohammed Ali
Publicity Designer : Gautam Halder
Production Controller : Ajit Das
Cast :
Soumitra Chatterjee
Poulami Bose
Uma Bose
Alokananda Roy
Anandi Ghosh
&
Others.