Nautankibaaz in its debut production One Latte Please explores the thoughts of contemporary Indian women on marriage and their concept of settling down

Nautankibaaz in its debut production One Latte Please explores the thoughts of contemporary Indian women on marriage and their concept of settling down

Are you married? No? Why not? These are questions that Indian women of considered marriageable age face everywhere no matter how successful and happy they are in their own lives. Whether marriage is the only way to happiness or not has become a matter of debate in contemporary society. This weekend, Nautankibaaz, a city based theatre group will be presenting its thoughts on the issue through the bilingual play One Latte Please.

Sharing that the play is the debut performance of Nautankibaaz, the director Ankur Sardana reveals, "The play does not question marriage but the point is to encourage people to ask questions on all issues that remain unanswered. The society looks at singledom as a stigma. If the society accepts being single then most people will choose to remain single."

Set in Bangalore, One Latte Please seems to be an attempt to reflect on the lives of all those singletons, especially girls between the ages of 25 and 35 years, who leave their homesu00a0 to pursue careers in big cities. Tanvi is one such person, on whom pressures from parents mount as they want her to settle down with the right person. Encouraged by her friends she decides to give it a shot and goes to a coffee shop to meet her three suitors.

Confiding how the name One Latte Please was coined, Sardana says, "Tanvi is sure of what she wants. In the caf ufffd she does not even look at the menu, just orders for one latte. So the name One Latte Please was fixed."
On the other hand, not all her suitors are so clear in their heads. Her meeting with them brings out thoughts and feelings of urban Indians. Dealing with issues like commitment, relationships with parents and so on, Sardana seems to want his audience to get a glimpse of the hearts and minds of young Indians.

Explaining how lives change once you start living on your own in a city, Sardana says, "The play questions what except biological age is the need for a marriage. Is it really the final solution to getting someone settled?"
One Latte Please seems to be an attempt to demarcate the thin line between being individualistic and selfish. The play tries to show how parents who want you to be independent often can't face it when you decide to choose your own course of life and your own way of being settled.

The conversational tone of the Hindi and English script seems to be a conscious effort to make the audience relate to the characters and their situations. One Latte Please apparently hints that if one feels so, singledom in itself can be a complete unit of life.

"We probably need to stop assuming that marriage is the logical culmination of an unsettled life," Sardana says.