Nothing seemed to work during the cultural evening today at the 15th century Hauz Khas monument orchestrated by Mahajan with help from stage veteran Aamir Raza Hussain. The Prime Minister, whom the play described as a dharmaputra in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, turned up over half-an-hour late, leading to a furious pacing of the stage by a bandhgala-clad minister, who kicked off the evening with the remark that the Government's first year in power was a fruition of national dharma.

Dharma, in fact, was the star of the show, with most of the Cabinet missing from the function, and mosquitoes and the aroma of kababs from the nearby restaurants assailing the senses of those assembled.

Apart fromNaveen Patnaik, Santosh Gangwar, Ranjan Bhattacharya and family, L K Advani's wife and daughter, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) president Rajesh Shah, Rajya Sabha member Prafull Goradia with his historian wife Nayana, anchorman Vir Sanghvi, and Mahajan's friends -- former DUSU presidents Arti Mehra and Sudhanshu Mittal as well as BJP MP from Chandni Chowk Vijay Goel -- there were not many of those who have fondly come to be known as the chatterati.

Traversing Indian history from the Mahabharata to Chandragupta Maurya, the play suddenly jumped to 1656 AD with the advent of Sir Thomas Rowe at the court of Jehangir, and then laid so much emphasis on Bhagat Singh, that it led people to wonder whether the Government had not kept one eye peeled on the tercentenary celebrations.

Ironically, of course, Bhagat Singh wanted to establish Communism and had set up a Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, but clearly no one was paying much attention to detail during the crafting of the play, the emphasisbeing on simulated blasts, leaping men on fire, the appearance of two trundling elephants and the arrival of the Sada-e-Sarhad, at which point the stage collapsed. It was left to Indian rock band Silk Route and their Sufi counterparts from across the border, Junoon, to liven up the atmosphere with a song of Dosti.

What was an even greater irony in this entire exercise was that the backdrop to the event was the Hauz Khas monument, very much a legacy of the Mughal-dominated period the play was so silent about.

It also didn't hesitate to put words into narrator Om Puri's mouth about how if Moses, Hazrat Mohammed and Jesus Christ had come to India, they would have found a hospitable climate for their faiths.