Ten Years to Home
Writer: Sonal Moore
Director: Neel Banerjee
KXT Broadway
September 26 – October 5, 2024
A production made possible by the collaboration of the Nautanki Theatre and KXT Bakehouse, Sonal Moore’s autobiographical and tender-hearted Ten Years to Home tells the story of the South Asian diaspora through the eyes of three generations. The play, while looking with clear eyes at the difficulties of immigrant families, also celebrates the contribution made by Indian traditions and beliefs to a culturally diverse Australia.
Simply staged, several boxes hinged and hasped hold props but suggest the transitory location of the family as well as the receptacle for several secrets that pop up as the family’s narrative unfolds. Their story, initiated by Sonal (Shabnam Tavakol), the daughter of Rushi (a Taufeeq Ahmed Sheikh), and Vasant (Reema Gillani) who wants to connect her own family with their shared Gujarati heritage. Who better to start with than her own mother, Aaji to her granddaughters, who made a conscious decision as a newly arrived immigrant to always wear a sari as a reminder of her identity.
While Rushi, Papaji to his granddaughters, is a significant figure in the narrative, Vasant whose strength, grace, humour and frequent confusion is brought to life movingly by Gillani. While the kindly and hardworking Rushi’s motive for immigrating is motivated by his role as provider and personal ambition, Vasant’s removal from a world she knows to one entirely unfamiliar is the greater challenge as she must create opportunities for herself to engage in this new environment and make friends.
Having lived in a household where domestic duties were performed by several servants, Vasant must adjust to a life with one servant and an outdoor toilet – and she must learn to cook traditional Indian dishes. However, she does enjoy – and this was Rushi’s major bargaining point – the freedom from the constant and burdensome supervision of “extended family”, however her new independence entails loneliness and lack of support at a time of great personal loss.
While a dialogue-heavy play, Moore has added variation by telling the story in an interrupted timeline and by having it narrated by different voices. Sonal opens the play with an evocation of a significant moment in her childhood, and she, and her daughters Radhika (Karina Bracken) and the younger EV (Madhullikaa Singh), give “bulletins” about important social changes taking place between the 1960s and ’70s. Each generation is less traditional, a point made well through their attire – the youngest EV lounges around in torn jeans and backwards baseball cap – and the two sisters have some fun at the expense of Anglo-Australians’ odd-ball customs.
Telling stories, as Sonal (the character) realised in bringing the family together, is a way of achieving appreciation and reconciliation of differences and as Sonal (the writer) hopes telling her family’s story is a way of integrating the immigrant journey into the shared history of contemporary Australia. Their complicated story is the star and director, Neel Banerjee has made the wise decision to present it as simply as possible.
