A new play Mr & Mrs Murarilal has a middle-age man and woman - played by SatishKaushik and Meghna Malik - have a romantic rendezvous in a park.

They have a defiant, ‘so what if we are not young, there is no age restriction on romance’ stance when the park’s watchman (Amit Pathak) tries to evict them. Though they refer to themselves as “old” Meghna Malik (famous for playing Ammaji in the TV serial Na Aana Is Laado), looks youthful and sprightly in a shimmery sari.

The not-so-young couple on a park bench setting is reminiscent of Rakesh Bedi’s superhit, Mera Woh Matlab Nahin Tha, starring Anupam Kher and Neena Gupta, about former sweethearts, who sit on a park bench and reminisce about their past (Rakesh Bedi makes an appearance too, but he is not a part of their story). The two had grown up together, fell in love and would have liked to marry, but for their parents’ interference. Her parents don’t want to see her end up as the wife of a kabaadi (junk dealer); his parents have arranged a marriage of conveniences for him. In a plot device that would not work in this age of computers and cell phones - their letters are intercepted and remain undelivered.

They are meeting thirty-five years later, to find out what had happened back then, and why they went their separate ways into ill-matched unions. In India, even today, parents choosing or approving of their children’s partners is common, with caste, religion, social and financial status as benchmarks in choice of potential mate. The fear of what people will say always remains.

In Mera Woh Matlab Nahin Tha, the man is still jittery when she sits too close or touches his arm; what if the neighbours see and gossip? But Bedi also acknowledges a less sexually inhibited India, as his character of the genial Mr Kapoor, offers his neighbor the use of an apartment for what he believes is a romantic assignation. Which it is in a way, though the romance is tempered with sweet and bitter memories and the unbearable burden of regret.

The characters’ past belongs to the gullies of Chandni Chowk, a community that stands apart in quaint isolation from a growing Delhi around it. Bedi evokes the memories of the area, its landmarks, its street food and the surreptitious cinema dates young boys and girls went on, hoping that no one they knew spots them. There’s a strange middle class Indian trait that lets boys and girls be friends and playmates up to a certain age—it is then bewildering for the kids-turned-teens to be told that they can no longer meet their friends of the other gender. Or what will people say?

The two in Mr & Mrs Murarlilal have no such inhibitions, and the explanation comes towards the end, but during the course of the evening, they are flirtatious and playful, singing and dancing with abandon, as the watchman sputters his disapproval.

Till a few years ago, it would have been unacceptable for a middle-aged couple to date or think of a future together. In fact, popular cinema has marginalized the post-fifty age group (only Amitabh Bachchan gets lead roles written for him), perhaps that is that added charm of these plays. Anupam Kher and Satish Kaushil still gets some decent supporting roles, but gifted actresses like Neena Gupta and Megha Malik, won’t get anything worth her while in films. On television, actors in their late twenties or early thirties are playing parents to grown-up kids. Ultimately it is theatre that respects talent… at any age.