There are plays that entertain, and then there are plays that linger in your mind long after the curtains fall. Khelaiya Productions’ Dastak – the company’s first production of the year – falls squarely into the latter, more powerful category. With a two-day, house-full weekend run, it’s clear that this story of a Haryana family’s toxic patriarchy has already struck a deep chord with audiences.
And what a chilling opening. The scene begins with the horrifying act of a grandmother (played by director Harsiddhi Mody) tossing a newborn infant into a well. The reason? The child is the third girl. Unwanted. Disposable. In that single, gut-wrenching moment, writer Vishal Bhardwaj establishes the stakes of this world – a world where a boy is a blessing and a girl is a burden to be drowned.
The play centres on a traditional Haryana household ruled by an unapologetic, domineering patriarch Sube Singh (payed by Gopal Ganwani). He dismisses his meek wife Satya (Komal Mehta) with casual cruelty, a woman taken so for granted that her suffering becomes a silent, internal haemorrhage.
She has now borne three sons, but the ghosts of her three daughters – dropped into the well – double her torment. She grieves them in silence while enduring her husband’s daily domination. The play’s genius lies in how it shows the slow, corrosive inheritance of this toxicity. Bhardwaj plays Sooraj, the eldest son, a police officer, who exhibits flashes of his father’s dominance. The youngest son Arun (played by Yuvam Nathwani), is a clear reflection of his father.
The catalyst for change arrives via the middle son Vicky (played by Vaibhav Hanshu), a college-going boy who falls for a girl from another community. Initially, even his approach to romance is tainted by his upbringing – brash, entitled, and expecting submission. In a scene that drew sharp applause, the “woke” girl slaps him. This is not a moment of defeat, but of awakening.
Unlike his father, Vicky internalises. He seeks answers from his cop brother, reflects on his behaviour, and returns to the girl not as a conqueror but as a student. Their friendship blossoms, she tutors him, and his group passes with flying colours – with Nitya (played by Mehak Mahajan), his girlfriend, topping the exams.
But in this household, happiness is a trespasser. To celebrate their results, Vicky invites Nitya and his friends over for lunch in his father’s absence. When the patriarch finds out, he demands they return – only to humiliate Nitya in a searing confrontation, declaring that no amount of education can change a woman’s ‘natural’ place: the kitchen. He also orders Vicky to abandon his education and take up the plough like him. It is a line that lands like a punch, precisely because it feels so familiar in many Indian families. He also opposes the blossoming romance between Vicky and Nitya.
The inevitable elopement triggers a manhunt. The father wants both dead for defying caste and tradition. And here, in the play’s penultimate scene, Dastak delivers its masterstroke. The once-silent mother rises. Snatching the sword from her husband, she does not just attack him physically, she disembowels him with decades of suppressed grief. She names the infant girls. She names his disrespect. She names her own erasure. Her speech, raw and emotionally devastating, moved the audience to visible tears.
Credit is due to the entire ensemble, but especially to Vishal Bhardwaj for writing a script that refuses easy catharsis. The father does not become a saint; he is simply forced to see his own monstrosity. The mother does not win a fairy-tale freedom; she wins a moment of truth.
Dastak is not merely a play about Haryana. It is about every Indian household where women are demeaned, subjugated, and expected to endure in silence. It knocks on the door of your conscience and demands you answer.
After two sold-out shows, as the lights dimmed on Sunday, Mody – also the producer and the force behind Khelaiya Productions – thanked patrons for their support. “This is close to everybody’s heart,” she said.
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