Three Plays: Larins Sahib, Mira, 9 Jakhoo Hill

Three extraordinary plays by Gurcharan Das with a new introduction by the author The prize-winning Larins Sahib is a historical play set in the 1840s—a confused period after the death of Ranjit Singh when the British first arrived in the Punjab. Mira, ‘a rite of Krishna for five actor-dancers’, explores what it means for a human being to become a saint through the story of Mirabai, the sixteenth-century Rajput princess–poet. 9 Jakhoo Hill, the third play in this volume, is set in the autumn of 1962 in Simla. It examines a number of themes—the changing social order with the rise of a new middle class (while the old class foolishly clings on to spent dreams), the hold of Indian mothers on their sons and the eventual betrayal of sexual love. This trio of unusual plays, written by Gurcharan Das when he was in his twenties, will interest both general readers and theatre buffs.