THE DRAMA OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

On the 21st of December, many years ago, the first ever drama by the Faculty of Sciences at Allahabad University was enacted on stage at the largest Drama Hall in the University, which was located in the Faculty of Arts!
When the students in the Arts Faculty found out that some students of the Physics Department at Allahabad University, led by myself, were about to enact a drama, there was much hooting and jeering!! It was considered a big joke indeed that anyone in the Physics Department would know how to act or know anything about dramas at all.

Science students were generally considered lackluster and dull, and without any interest in anything even vaguely touching upon the Arts.
What kind of a drama would they put up on stage anyway!! More jeers and booing!!
So when the date for the enacting of the Drama came up -- December 21-- the Drama Hall was so packed that people had to stand in the aisles. The Science students had come to back up their fellowmen and the Arts Students had come to boo and jeer!!
By the time the drama was over, there was thunderous applause and the audience rushed up on stage to congratulate the actors, all but lifting them up on their shoulders!!

I must admit that the bursting of Fire Crackers close to the microphone at the last scene of the drama really shook up the hall and some nearly fell out of their seats!!
We of the Physics Department could hardly believe that such a thing could happen!! None of us were actors.
The Physics Department had a budget of Rs. 10 only for entertainment!! Which was $ 2 in those days!! We were dissuaded by everyone, including our own professors, from making fools out of ourselves on the stage!!

The professor who gave us the story of the making of the Atomic Bomb was a certain Dr. Mehrotra of the Physics Department, who later turned into our worst critic when he saw the comic episodes with which the drama was rife, amongst the eccentric scientists of the time.
Most of the eminent scientists of Europe had run away from Europe and taken asylum in the US with the coming of the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists embodied in Hitler and Mussolini in the 1940's..
Germany itself was on the verge of making an atomic bomb and one of its most eminent scientists, Ottohan, was fast on the way to making the bomb, just before the timely defeat of Germany.

Albert Einstein, Dr. Enrico Fermi and Prof Niels Bohr from Europe, who were all living in the US, were adding their brains together to make the bomb before Ottohan of Germany made one!
It was a race against time. If Nazi Germany had got the Atomic Bomb first, the world today would have been a different place to live in, with the German flag flying over the whole world.
But the scientists in the USA won and the bomb was made in the USA. But unfortunately it was dropped on Japan which had not yet surrendered, and that was the greatest tragedy.
When the hundreds and thousands of deaths from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came to light, the scientists were the first ones to be shocked beyond measure and cursed each other for the tragic weapon unleashed upon mankind!!
The drama was conceived by me, written and directed by me and produced on a budget of Rs. 10, with most of the props being used from the Chemistry Lab of the University!
And speaking of double roles, I managed to play the hero and villain both at the same time. I was Ottohan and his rival Einstein as well.
To brush up our English we went to see the only English Movie we could find in the Allahabad Theatres of the time, "Solomon and Sheba" a film referring to an episode hundreds of years back!! It starred Yul Brenner and Gina Lollobrigida.
Perhaps the most tragic mistake in the drama was an aide rushing up to tell King Hirohito of Japan that Hiroshima had been destroyed by a bomb. And the background releasing the sound of the Firecracker bomb after a brief delay!! When the audience almost fell out of their chairs!!
Here are some portraits of the time: From left to right
1. Dr. Ottohan of Germany firing his assistants, telling them : "I will quantise you!"
2.Dr. Bohr, Albert Einstein, President Truman of the US, Dr. Enrico Fermic confabulating.
3. Albert Einstein and Prof Niels Bohr playing chess, each one absent-mindely forgetting whose turn it was next.
4. The last and most poignant scene of the drama in which Einstein enters the room with a newspaper showing the dreadful consequences of the dropping of the bomb on Japan, and his sadness, remorse and rage at the time-- which made many viewers say that I had beaten even Dilip Kumar the famed Indian Actor in my enactment of the scene! Comments I have yet to forget!
It was a Drama the faculty of Arts and Sciences of Allahabad University were to remember for long, perhaps the only Drama ever enacted by the Physics Department of the time-- the most unlikely of departments for acting, drama and directing. For a while the Physics Department had almost rivalled a Flim Making Institute. Sadly it was not filmed and remains only in the memories of the actors who enacted it on stage, remnants of memories being left in these few photographs.
CAST: ALL FROM THE PHYSICS DEPARTMENT
Dr.Einstein --- Priya Nath Mehta,
Dr. Ottohan....Priya Nath Mehta,
Dr.Fermi ......Ashok Kumar Gupta,
Dr. Bohr..........Bal Krishna Chaturvedi
President Truman .. Chandra Mohan Bhandari
REAL REASON FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE DRAMA!
The Real reason for the grand success of the Drama was my Father, HH Shri Bhola Nathji. I was too shy to act before him and so I had asked him not to come.
When the show began at 6 pm the entire hall was empty. And the actor who played Hitler said to me-- there is only one man in the hall. I looked out though the curtains and saw it was my Father sitting alone in the front row!!
And within minutes the Hall was full. A strange Divine Light shone from His Face throughout the time the Drama lasted and each of the actors appeared possessed by this Divine Light, and acted beyond themselves.
The Commissioner of Allahabad was sitting next to him and said to him:
"Mr. Mehta, the man who is playing Einstein and Ottohan both has really outdone himself!"
My Father did not tell him that Mr. Mehta, i.e. myself, was his son, because he did not wish to boast about me.
At the end of the Drama Hitler came to me and said:
"Do you know the reason for the unprecedented success of the Drama --- it was your Father!!"