Kailash Kaur: A tribute to the matriarch of Punjabi theatre
It had just been a month or so since their wedding when Kailash Kaur suddenly found herself on stage, acting in her husband’s play at Nangal. An engineer at the Bhakra-Nangal dam site, Gursharan Singh had formed a drama company along with his colleagues. The year was 1959 and the play was Kartar Singh Duggal’s ‘Deeva Bhuj Gaya’, on the unrest in Kashmir after Partition. Women in theatre were a rarity those days, but Gursharan Singh had found his heroine. Kailash Kaur, with MA and LLB degrees, wasn’t too sure though. “I don’t know how to act,” she had argued. Gursharan wasn’t the one to relent. He told her she didn’t need to act. “Just be yourself.” This marked the beginning of a three-decade journey in theatre, winning accolades and hearts. Kailash Kaur died earlier this month.
Amritsar-based theatre director Kewal Dhaliwal says women in theatre were unimaginable; women performing in villages more so. But nothing could stop Gursharan, who was to redefine theatre in Punjab by taking it to villages, with Kailash by his side, through rain, sun and fog. Floods, too.
In 1961, they were to participate in a theatre competition organised by the Language Department at Patiala. Their younger daughter Areet recalls how with her year-old elder sister on Gursharan’s shoulders, they navigated their way through flooded roads. “The water was knee-deep and mummy was worried the child would be swept away, but they went on. Such was the dedication.” The play was ‘Ghumman Gheri’, about a clerk, his wife, his younger sister, who is sick with TB, and his younger brother, an unemployed youth. ‘Ghumman Gheri’ won the award for best play and Kailash for best actress. The play had been written by Gurdial Singh Phul, who called Kailash ‘mere natkaan di rani’, ‘the queen of my plays’.
Meanwhile, Kailash had inspired Gursharan’s colleagues, who began allowing their daughters to participate. When he relocated to Amritsar, women colleagues joined, some of them, like Jatinder Kaur, regularly travelling with the team. Later, both his daughters joined in. “We would be picked up from school and taken for performances. Mummy would make us do homework behind the stage while preparations for the show went on. On the way back, we would sleep in the car while mummy would be preparing for next day, buying vegetables on the way, planning the future,” recalls Areet.
Her favourite play of her mother will always be ‘Ek Maa, Do Mulk’ by Harsaran Singh, the story of a Sikh man who abducts a Muslim woman during Partition. Kailash played his mother who sided with her son; Gursharan played the father, who felt the son had committed a wrong. “She was a natural actor. Hers was a very subdued, realistic acting. Father found her perfect. He scolded me on several occasions for my bad acting, but not once did he say anything to her. He found no fault with her,” Areet says.
Kailash quit acting in the mid-1980s. A fall from the roof in her childhood had rendered one leg short and, thus, a limp. Areet says this is never talked about. “She had a visible disability but she did not let her handicap become a point of discussion. I think this was remarkable.”
Gursharan Singh went on to become a legend of Punjabi theatre. Kailash Kaur retreated into the shadows, but remained his backbone. Gursharan Singh’s protege Anita Shabdeesh says Kailash Kaur was very much a part of theatre long after she had quit acting. “She would join us for readings and offer suggestions. She loved us. She was the mother of Punjabi theatre.”
