Our adaptation of Tagore’s great short story Jeevit ya Mrit is crafted as an extended monologue written by Geetanjali Shree. Kadambini talks to herself about what she sees around her – the landscape, the monsoon, the shamshan, and what she remembers, her life as a widow in her husband’s brother's house, her little nephew. She is perplexed by the circumstances that suspend her between life and death and by the pulls, hallucinations, and desires that haunt her. By structuring the short story as a long soliloquy, Geetanjali Shree makes us see this bewildering world entirely through Kadambini’s bewildered eyes.

In the performance, we have tried to use everyday objects, especially the detritus that death leaves behind at the burning ghat. A small square marked by miniature lights is the area in which this divested, dispossessed, denuded life is lived. Seema Biswas performs the soliloquy seeking to articulate the circumscribed worlds of widows in India who, even today, navigate different kinds of death all through their lives.