Park - the play! - my reflections

‘There is enough for everybody and more’.  One of my mentors used to tell me during my
early years of career. She was referring to professional insecurities.  I got reminded of her statement while
revisiting the play – Park.  Apparently, the
play is about three people communicating over three benches in a park one
afternoon. Three persons and three benches; there indeed was enough for
everyone in the park, if not more. However, there still was a fight, a struggle
for a bench of one’s choice.  The play involved
tale of these choices, cost of them and nuances of who pays for them. It also involved
issues of pain, priorities, and freedom to choose. It questions the pressure of
societal expectations and individual struggles to meet up to these
expectations.  Whenever one deviates from
societal norms, one is labeled as an outcast, something which is too high a price
to pay for most of us. Due to this inability
to pay the high price, one keeps living life of this ‘expected self’ and keeps struggling
with ‘real self’.  The play depicts this struggle
of space where one can just be, without having to bother about society and its
expectation.  This space is what the
benches are. Benches in the play are metaphors of individual spaces from where society
displaces us and we keep struggling to reclaim.

The three characters ranged from a) a normal person who
is struggling to get rid of an ‘expected self-image’ of a genius, b) a normal
person who struggles with various labels of ‘bad person’ and seeks momentous
self-image of a good person who is accepted without being judged, and c) a normal
person who is struggling with society to accept his differently-abled son as
normal person. Each of them escaping from their realities and trying to find
momentary solace in the park.  At a very
superficial level, all three are normal people leading normal lives. They have met in the
park and have started fighting over benches of their choices. As the play
unfolds, the fight appears to be within each of them and not with each other.

While references of physical displacement were made
in the context of ethnicity and political spheres (Jew/Arab and the conflict of
Palestine and Israel), there was also a mention of Kashmir issue too. All these
humorous references ultimately culminated into individual displacement from
spaces of choices and freedom to choose.  Society and culture expects people to operate
and behave in certain way; to me, these are collective spaces. These collective
spaces include societal norms around religion, spirituality, family and gender
roles, professional roles etc.  Any deviation
- carving of individual spaces - from the collective and socially accepted space
is always met with resistance.  Many a
times, most of us are not able or willing to fight the societal resistance, and
consciously or subconsciously give-up the demand for individual spaces.  In this forced process of giving up to please
someone, we displease ourselves and remain dissatisfied, discontent and
unhappy.  

The play brought so many personal struggles out for
me. I strive to carve my spaces and tend most of the time to question the
societal norms around things.  Sometimes
I succeed and pay the price of success, but most of the time I fail and
continue to pay bigger prices of failures. 

Lastly,  I submit that play was good enough to bring this much out of me.