Children of the Atom: On creating perspectives over grief

Clockwise from left: Oninthough, H. Todd Thomas, Sampada Joshi, Tarun Chakraborty, Nischal Parthasarathy, Ishan Capoor, Parisha Dutta, Shruti Sharma, Henry Al Muthanna, Subhash S., Somya Tewari, Sadhana Subramanian.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Recently, the theatre at Atta Galatta, a bookstore in Bengaluru’s Indiranagar was filled not with silent prayers but with thoughts, grief, life and struggles created out of the questionable choices of a nation that triggered a million deaths and left many to suffer.

The event, Inheriting Shadows: Children of the Atom, was organised by Non-Aligned Poets Collective (NPC), a poets community in the city. The show was based on the United States’ bombing of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II in 1945.

The show presented nine stories from nine perspectives told through poems woven in a blend of emotion and word play. Ranging from Albert Einstein and the bomb, to child victims, each perspective presented listeners with food for thought.

Somya Tewari as Oppenheimer.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“There are movies and books detailing the tragedy, but they are almost always one person’s perspective, which is partial in a way,” said Tarun Chakraborty, curator of the event. “How is it fair that only the protagonist’s version is presented? There are many others who are probably not as articulate or outgoing as the protagonist, whose point of view is never heard. So we made this piece around those whom we believe were in the shadows throughout history.”

Tarun said the show was meant to create a point of view, where each of the people in the stories get an equal amount of time, space and importance.

The two-and-a-half hour show was presented in a narrative-led format, with a presenter who described the events and introduced the poets. The poems were crafted with wit, sarcasm and seriousness and welcomed by deep sighs, long silences and small cheers by the audience.

“I became necessary heat in the heart of the cold war. On a bright Monday in August I painted the sky over Hiroshima in shades of death no one had ever seen before. In the land of the rising sun, I became the longest shadow. I am the answer to the question how far will you go? The world would count the bodies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not their names, because history remembers the makers of death never the ones who die,” recited Sadhana Subramanian, who presented The Bomb.

Nischal Parthasarathy’s Military Complex went as follows, “No matter what the conspiracy, we have to agree that we are all in this magic show where the powerful and elite or the organisers and the media as the magician who distract you with war and arms race in the right hand while they steal your money from your own pocket with the left.”

Nischal Parthasarathy as the Military-Industrial Complex.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“I feel like I am abandoned because I belong to this place. You wearing black outfits and keeping your mouth shut for two minutes is not going to help me here. I want to scream and yell at someone or anyone. I want this fire inside me to be gone,” recited Sampada Joshi who presented the perspective of a child born with defects due to radiation exposure.

“Or are we just born into violence, destined to trade in ache?” said Tarun in his concluding act of the show, adding “still impossible things need poetries to win important battles.”

Each of the stories were creative and engaging; the poets had sharpened their pencils to weave their words to perfection in a bid to leave no tear or grief unnoticed.

H. Todd Thomas as Heisenberg.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Though the show introduced the listeners to new perspective, one question still lingered, “Was there another way to end war?”

The presenters of the show included Tarun Chakraborty as Albert Einstein; H. Todd Thomas as Heisenberg; Somya Tewari as Oppenheimer; Shruti Sharma as President Harry S. Truman; Henry Muthanna as Col Paul Tibbets Jr.; Sadhana Subramanian as Little Boy (bomb); Subhash S. as a Japanese civilian; Ishan Capoor as a doctor in a burn ward; Sampada Joshi as a deformed child; Parisha Dutta as the Emperor of Japan, and Nischal Parthasarathy as the Military-Industrial Complex. Oninthough was the narrator of the whole show.