"Also, although Sri Lanka and India are close neighbours with a lot in common, I'm Sri Lankan and not Indian, so I have a bit of distance from the culture and background of the play. I think this is an advantage because I can bring a slightly different perspective, and I also know if I have to ask questions to figure things out, we need to make it clearer for an audience. I can be the eyes and ears of an audience."
Besides, he adds, he has a special "resource" in the form of actor, dramaturge/producer and one of Prayas' founders, Amit Ohdedar. Karunaharan describes him as "like having all the resources of Wikipedia right next to you" when it comes to providing a first-hand account of the events A Fine Balance deals with.
Ohdedar was a teenager in the mid-1970s when a state of emergency rule was imposed on India. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was given the authority to rule by decree; elections were suspended, civil liberties curtailed, Government opponents imprisoned and the press subject to strict censorship. A forced mass sterilisation campaign was launched, supposedly to limit population growth.
The son of a professor and librarian at the liberal Jadavpur University in Kolkata, Ohdedar recalls increased police patrols and football games abruptly ended by nearby clashes between students and police who opened fire on protesters. He also remembers makeshift hospitals, where surgeons worked under kerosene lanterns when electricity failed, carrying out sterilisations.
"I think there were some people who wanted to have the operations but others, well, you could see the agony and anguish on their faces."
He says Prayas has wanted to stage A Fine Balance, which was adapted for the stage by Britain's Tamasha theatre company, for a number of years. With this year being the company's 10th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of emergency rule in India, the timing seemed better than ever before.
Karunaharan knows many will come to A Fine Balance carrying memories of Mistry's richly-detailed and sprawling epic story. The line "government problems - games played by people in power. It doesn't affect ordinary people like us" comes early in Mistry's 614-page epic but it is a key to understanding his intentions.
The novel and the play all but ignore details of the people in power, instead concentrating on how the state of emergency rule impacted on ordinary people. Economic necessity sees four strangers - a student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, two tailors who have fled the caste violence in their village and a spirited widow - forced to share one cramped apartment.
"Unless you are staging an eight-hour [Canadian theatre maker] Robert Lepage epic, detail does have to be cut," says Karunaharan. "I am very aware many in the audience will bring to it expectations based on the book, and there will be comparisons as to whether a re-telling can capture the imagination of the author, but we are aiming to make it as epic as we can.
"There are 25 in the cast, the focus on the stories of the four main characters is tighter and there's live music. It is quite a dark script but the aim is to find the light and to emphasise the moments of kindness, compassion and hope."
In keeping with Indian traditions, the music is percussion-driven and all instruments have been made using found objects - tins, bottles, water and paper - to reflect the slums in which much of A Fine Balance is set.
Ohdedar and Karunaharan are aware A Fine Balance is more political and provocative than Prayas' previous works but, they say, so be it. "We've grown as a company and that should be reflected in the work we take on," says Ohdedar. "This is a play dealing with age-old problems which surface time and again around the world. It asks us, 'how much have things really changed?' and 'are we happy about this?' It emphasises that politics does indeed affect everyday people."
Performance
What: A Fine Balance
Where and when: Tapac, Western Springs, October 8-18
