language, his own bloody language, which he doesn't know, and he wishes to speak to the people ! Now in our theatres in Calcutta, people pay less and less attention to language— the audience, I mean—because they couldn't care less what they say or what they don't say. Nobody goes to these plays. But if you remember, jatra' still has to depend on poetic language. It is no longer in blank verse, but still the prose has to be poetic, because the village people still expect that the jatra' will not speak to him in the language he speaks every day, jatra language has to be an elevated kind of Bengali, otherwise he will be furious : E to amrayi boli ban ie ('But this is what we speak at home'). People who have tried to introduce dialects in jatra palas have realised to their misfortune that the people don't want it. They want to hear the nng of Bengali. And finally, our small effort inPandaberAjnatabas. The people of Calcutta—this great city of the petty bourgeoisie—came up from the audiencp and said, 'We couldn't understand what was going on, but we liked the ring, the sound of the dialogue. They have been starved for a very long time of really poetic dialogue: especially since Bohurupee stopped producing Tagore. MB, MRB: Thank you very much. No more questions. 42 July-September 1984