Sawai Ekankika’ 2013

So this year I completed a hat trick of watching the finals of Sawai. Like the previous 2 occasions, this too was a great experience. Most of the plays were good and the overall performance level was better than that of the 2012 finals. Most of the plays were based social issues like parenting, cynicism among the middle class, etc. Unlike the previous finals, not a single one was of romantic/love genre. Here is the list of finalists-

1. Nat S. M. R. T.
   We missed this one as we were late. But Viraj's father told us, this was similar to the play "Natasamrat" but a modern version.
2. Emotional Atyachar
   This was a story of an employee in an e-CRM firm which is hired by clients so that someone can communicate with their family. These clients are too "busy" with their work that they don't have time to speak with their wife/kids/parents. The agent/employee E26 slowly starts getting emotionally attached with his clients' families. Finally, when he is about to quit, he gets a new client whose identity forces him for a suicide.
3. Rishta Wahi, Soch Naee
   A story of relationship between father and son. Both of them usually don't get along well. But a new game between them changes their thinking about each other. Pretty funny with lot of punch lines. It was directed by Advait Dadarkar.
4. Pranimatra
   Here, a Tiger is trying to protect a Fawn after killing the mother Deer. Honestly, this play had those moments where I felt really sleepy. However, to give credit to the actors, their imitation of the animals they were portraying was commendable.
5. Bandh Nylonche
   This was another play with the parenting issue being handled. In the future, some agency has specialized in providing relatives which are Robots. A couple hires its services for getting grand parents to take care of their daughter. However, one day the girl's real grand parents come to know about it. The play basically discusses the fact that people have become so much mechanical and emotionless that there is hardly any difference between us and Robots. Bhagyashree Shankpal of Balak Palak fame ("Chiu") played the character of the daughter.
6. Anesthesia
   The most hard hitting performance of the night came from Aaroh Velankar. He had won the Best Actor award 2 years ago for "HTTP 404: Page Not Found". Last year, it was "Serial Killers". This year his play talked about how we are using "Entertainment" as an anesthesia against all the torture, pain we are getting due to the problems in our society, state and country. Again the dialogues were great and some of the scenes were incredible, including the mob scene where everyone dances on the tunes of "Deva Shri Ganesha" while Shivaji Maharaj is shouting and another scene where everyone is watching the inspector die and once he dies everyone press some button and walk away and you realize they were all watching it on TV.
7. Ekut Samuha
   Well, here it is the boring one. Actually, I saw this at Mrugajal competition and it won the best prize. But then I felt it wasn’t that good. It is about a family of three where each one is unique in its own respect. Many of the scenes were farfetched especially the “delivery” scene. The play was humorous at some points, but still lacked the consistency.

I am still unaware of the results. My guess is that Anesthesia might have won the best prize.