‘Ghanta’s’ protagonists, Aaditya and Feroza, are your typical slightly mismatched couple: He’s an idealistic musician, she’s a sensible lawyer; he thinks she’s too careerist, but she thinks he’s just insecure because she earns more than him.

Feroza achieves economical class mobility hustling over years whereas Aditya comes from a privileged background. He is politically operative, conclusively an on-ground activist. She on the other hand is radically focused on her law practise and is dealing with her political uncertainty. Their differences are brought into focus when the government brings in a new law that forbids all citizens from speaking more than

140 words per day.

How could any couple survive in such conditions?

The so-called “Antah:Shanti / Quietude / Muskaatdaabi Kaayda” threatens the basis of their closeness, forcing them to water down their conversation to a meagre daily quota.

But whereas Aaditya is affronted and joins a protest movement to try to get the act repealed, Feroza, whose instincts are conservative, is initially complacent about its ramifications. This alters the texture of the dialogue as the couple look to economize their word count. Soul-searching discussions that had been long and involved must be resumed in near-monosyllabic tones. This constraint forces a stripping-down of language at the very point when emotion is most heightened, and the words should be flowing most freely.

Their relationship may or may not be unravelling. This newly formed equation becomes prone to ups and downs dictated by the disintegrating personal and political contests. The compulsion of being woke refrains Aditya from knowing that his sense of achievement is delusional. Feroza is too consumed and tired to let herself be taxed by the political discourses of the contemporary urban spheres around her.

Recent events in the country make many of its ideas feel not just interesting in the abstract, but alarmingly urgent.

The play’s strength is in its playful riffs on language, as Aaditya and Feroza adapt to the new regime of state-enforced quietude.