If you didn’t know the source material of Rajat Kapoor’s playtongits go, Karamjale Brothers, before walking into it, then chances are high you’d be confused for some time while watching it, too. Because, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, it is less Russian vodka and more desi daru. It retains the original’s story and spirit—revolving around a patriarch and his four sons; the identity of his murderer; the questions of free will, rationality, theism (Dostoevsky’s eternal preoccupation)—but, set in Delhi, it unfolds in a hilarious, quasi-farcical tone.

Karamjale Brothers itches for a chance to crack a (silly) joke—its tomfoolery makes the play hilarious, compelling, and endearing. Here, Dostoevsky isn’t treated as a high-priest of modern realism—sombre, sincere, severe—but like a dost, a friend, with whom you can have a swig (or three). In a crucial scene, when the cops bust a party, a character says, “Yeh Noida waalon ko bulana hi nahin chahiye tha (We shouldn’t have called these Noida-types).” The third Karamazov brother, Alyosha, becomes Alok (or “Aloo”), who hears the compliment, “Tu toh sweet hai—you’re like a sweet potato.” A forlorn lover says, “Ishq ne humein nikamma kar diya, warna humaari bhi Kamla Nagar mein kapde ki dukaan thi.”

The performances, across actors, are brilliant, and their chemistry is so organic and free-flowing that, in the play’s first half, you’re swept by them. Vinay Pathak as Fauzdar, or patriarch Fyodor, towers above the rest who, despite his batshit humour, never looks contrived. Adapting a 1,000-page Dostoevsky novel into a 100-minute play, though, is a gargantuan challenge, and it starts to strain the latter half of Karamjale Brothers. The theism motif, for example, isn’t threaded well across the play. The second brother’s disdain for the Almighty—and his descent into madness—feels abrupt. Ditto the burgeoning fondness between the other two siblings, Meet (Chandrachoor Rai) and Aloo (Waris Ahmed Zaidi). As the play races to tie the loose ends, it becomes more abrupt, choppy, and unconvincing—struggling to balance its tonal variations—coming across as a piece that both soars and sinks.

We met Kapoor at Pathak’s house the evening after the play, wanting to untangle the motivations and mechanics of Karamjale Brothers. After its week-long shows at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, the theatre maker and the actor looked relaxed and relieved, as if emerging from a long spell of semester exams. Edited excerpts from the chat follow:

The first—and most—fascinating bit about the play is its comedic tone, something we don’t usually expect from the adaptation of a Dostoevsky novel. What did you want to achieve from it—was it intentional?

These things are not intentional. Because when we started reading, we didn’t even know what we wanted from the play, except that we wanted to get to the root of the novel. So, you start with the text, and you respond to it while rehearsing. And it takes you to places because of the actors. So, Ivan has to be Ivan, but the actor playing him also brings his own experiences and personality into it and urges you to go a certain way. But the growth of this play, and this process, is organic—of not knowing. And this idea of not knowing is very exciting to me.

You said in a recent interview that when you read The Brothers Karamazov last year—the only Dostoevsky novel you hadn’t read—it hit you like a “tonne of bricks”. What about it elicited such a strong reaction?

I started reading it when we were flying to Moscow for our show Macbeth. On the flight itself, I read 100 pages. And I knew—boom—this is it. The characters, the plot, and the writing itself are driven by—Dostoevsky uses this phrase some 200 times in the novel—“as if we were suffering from brain fever”. Half of his characters are suffering from that or hysteria or delirium. When Zosima [the spiritual advisor who is called Maharaj-ji in the play] is in the monastery meeting people, there’s a woman who has got both her hands on the cheek and she’s rocking from side to side, and when he comes to her, she says, “I’ve lost my three-year-old son. Bring him back. Bring him back.” I cried on the flight. I remember I had told some of the actors in the Macbeth team, “My God.” Now we open the play with that scene, and we close the play with that scene.

I’m sure you know that’s a reference to Dostoevsky’s own three-year-old son dying.

I didn’t know that.

Dostoevsky’s work in general and, especially, The Brothers Karamazov, have strong contemplations on faith. Since then, of course, so much has happened in its name. Take our country, for example, in the last few years—or Delhi, Karamjale Brothers’ setting, which witnessed the 2020 riots. Were these thoughts subconsciously charging your mind at some level?

They’re always there. You’re also responding to the world around you, though one tries not to be directly political. Because that’s not me and, I think, that’s also an easy way out. But you can’t deny it, and it shows up in every conversation, even while rehearsing.

What made you set the play in Delhi and not somewhere else?

Simple: I wanted something that’d translate the Russian winter. I think it’s worked well. This feeling of the sweaters, the coats, the gloves, the fur caps, somewhere for me it’s related to the Russian winter. There was a scene in the book that impacted me very much. After meeting someone, Alyosha is disturbed about what’s happening to his brothers, and there’s a moment where he just lies down on the snow with his hands outstretched, as if he’s hugging the ground. I thought, “How, wow?” I’d have really… but here, it’d feel as if he’s hugging the stage, kyun kar raha hai bhai [laughs]?

So, in essence, you were both responding to the moments in the text and its overall spirit.

And the plot. Because 98 per cent of the people who would watch the play wouldn’t have read the book. So, it’s important that the plot makes sense, that the story catches people, and that they’re taken along with that. More importantly, why is one doing this as a play anyway: why not something else, why not Gabriel García Márquez? Because there was something that attracted you, affected you, and you want to explore that. No, I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t even know what I want to address. But I do know I want to do this because it’s evoked something in me—and I want to discover that. So, it’s that journey: the journey into that book and the journey into me.

Adapting a 1,000-page novel into a 100-minute play must be immensely challenging. How did you choose what to include and how to structure the whole thing?

It happened [smiles]. Because, really, I didn’t have any idea how we’d do it. I wanted to do the play, and we started rehearsing, reading scenes, trying them out. And it troubled me a lot for about a month because normally—whether it’s a film or when I’m writing a script—I know how it ends. I knew Babu-ji would jump at the end in Ankhon Dekhi. I don’t know what happens in between. Here, I had no idea, till I found that scene with Maharaj-ji.

We couldn’t include everything from the novel. There’s a whole chapter, around 200 pages, about a boy dying. Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor scene, a celebrated part of the book, was reduced to a minute-and-a-half. So, there’s a lot that’s not there, but I hope we got the story’s essence. And now when I’m watching it with the audience, I’m like, ‘My God, this not only has the madness, the despair, and things about faith, but it’s also a fucking love story.’ It’s almost like chick lit.

Love stories in fact. Love storiyan!

Yeah. Does Katerina love Ivan, does she love Mitya? It’s almost like Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice.

Coming back to the previous question: How do you know what to include from a novel as voluminous as The Brothers Karamazov?

As I said, while reading, I didn’t know. When we started rehearsing, then it started to become clear. We tried other scenes, but we left them out because they were interrupting the flow of the play or slowing it down. So, there’s a lot of editing; it’s almost like film editing. You try something, then you put a scene there, as you’d do in a film edit, and then you watch it with that. And you’re like, ‘No, it’s working better, this should go there’, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s hard because you’re doing it with live actors, and they start saying, “What the hell, make up your mind.”

It almost feels like you’re ‘co-writing’ the play with your actors.

Nothing was written before our rehearsals. We also had 25 days of auditions where I met a lot of actors—about 60 or 70 of them—and everyone did the scenes in their own way. Out of that, we chose 15, and out of those, 10 are on stage. What I really enjoyed—besides the editing and the adaptation—is the idea of removing spaces on stage with light. Alyosha is talking to his brother; the brother leaves, Alyosha stands, the lights change, and now he’s in Katerina’s house. Then Katerina leaves, and he’s again somewhere else. For me, that was the play.

Why did you not have a set?

I wanted to get away from realism of any kind. Realism and theatre are completely opposed to each other. And I hate that kind of realism in theatre. So, initially, we had actors sitting on chairs; we did that for some time. And then I was like, “No, no, nobody sits.” Or [a dialogue like], “Would you have tea? Should I get you something else?” I wanted to take out all those superficial things and get right into the scene. For me, that’s more theatrical, without pretending that we’re in the real world. Because we’re not. We’re watching a play.

Given that faith is so central to The Brothers Karamazov (and Dostoevsky), I wonder: What’s your relationship with the Almighty?

I’m an atheist. I’m more of an atheist than Ivan. He struggles with it; I don’t. I don’t believe in any organised religion or a presence of Godtongits go, but I believe. I believe in something else. I believe, in some kind of an order, which is random and chaotic and meaningless, and yet it’s something that makes things work.

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