There is another aspect ofAitmatov that fascinated me. I have always been interested in Western realistic drama but I have also been irritated with realistic drama for becoming so static, especially in production It is static because it has to happen in a drawing room, it has to happen so that people sit on chairs and lift cups and drink tea and only then can they talk. And when they have to come to the point they can't because they have to go on and on and on with 'Where do you come from ?" 'Where are you going r etc. All of it is terribly static, it just doesn't move And especially so for the Indian sensibility which has seen drama which can with such ease just swim in and out of situations You get really put off with this sort of realism I have constantly been torn between this I liked realist drama but I didn't like Ibsen and such dramatists though they are remarkable playwrights, because of this static quality in them And I suddenly realized that Aitmatov, in this play (The Ascent of Fujiyama), with just one sweep of the hand, has solved all the problems of the static, by simply taking the characters out into the open Just yesterday while talking to me, Vivan (Sundaram) mentioned that in the West whenever the painters felt stifled indoors they always went out into the open—Renoir and hs paintings of picnics, for example Any number of picnics NSD students' production of The Ascent of Fujiyama