It's the love story of Shashi and Shashi

BENGALURU: It is not a period play, it is modern," stresses playwright Ramu Ramanathan about his play 3, Sakina Manzil, that is being staged at Jagriti Theatre till October 25. Directed by Deepak Dhamija, tbe play has Puneet Sikka and Tarun Singhal playing its protagonists, Shashi and Comrade Shashi respectively. Set in Mumbai in 1944, the play throws light on the Bombay Dockyard Blasts, a historical tragedy that has very little written about it."It is the tragic love story of Shashi and Shashi, Mumbai's Romeo and Juliet who inhabit a city with one million and one other people. I visited (the blast sites) Dongri, Keshav Naik Marg, Chinch Bunder with Amrit Gangar and wrote the play in one draft, with almost no revision after six months of research and groundwork," says Ramanathan in an email interview with TOI. Edited excerpts: Would you say you wanted to tell a story around the Bombay Dockyard blasts - an incident, which curiously, not many know of?
Yes, very much so. It is a huge tragedy. April 14, 1944 was the day of the Bombay Dock Explosion. The official count was 336 dead, 1798 injured.As usual, the unofficial guesstimates were ten times the official count. The Bombay Dock Explosion had transpired on the thirty-second anniversary of the day the Titanic struck an iceberg. The world knows about the Titanic; but very few have heard about the Fort Stikine. The ship, with its hundreds of tons of explosives, bombs, oil, cotton, tim ber, sulphur was a time bomb. Plus the ship laden with explosives should not have been allowed into the docks. It was illegal An accidental spark triggered off the ammunition in the hold.
You'd met quite a few blast survivors as part of your research. Have you used any anecdotes that they'd shared with you in the play?
One beautiful anecdote was: In the sultry days of 1944, when there were no air-conditioners, there were theatres like Baliwala Grand Theatre (Playhouse), where a play opened with a loud bang of explod ing potash, whilst the curtain was being raised. For some of the per formances in the Gothic-style theatre like Victoria, Rippon, Bali wala, the drama companies used to bring their own main curtain which was operated by two men Since the curtain pullers often dozed off, the cue to bring down the curtain was a shrill blast of a whis tle. During one of the shows, the curtain pullers who were asleep were awakened by a shrill whistle and so, they hurriedly brought down the curtain in the middle of the scene. It was only later that it was found out that the whistle was not blown by a prompter but by a BEST traffic conductor on the street. I used the above scene in 3 Sakina Manzil. I plagiarised from reality. I borrowed from the city.