Synopsis :

Nabanna (New Harvest) – a Bengali cult drama was written by Bijon Bhattacharya and first staged by Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). The classic play is set against the backdrop of the man-made artificial Bengal famine in 1943 that took away millions of lives due to starvation, malnutrition and the resultant diseases. The play represents the horrific reality of hunger, dehumanization and death.

The drama revolves around the Samaddar family, headed by the old Pradhan Samaddar, a peasant in Bengal, who has been driven to near madness due to the prolonged famine and the gnawing hunger that had killed two of his sons of starvation. In addition to the highhandedness of land sharks, a tidal wave destroys the family’s crops, homes, hopes and everything. In a desperate bid to survive, they walk all the way from the fictional Aminpur village to Kolkata, however, the apathetic Kolkata middle-class renders them disillusioned very soon. Pradhan returns home, enraged and humiliated to join his starving fellow villagers and vows to restart a quest for dignified survival by countering their fate with a new strategy.