[Reader-list] dastans, indian media

[mahmood farooqui]

Dear Punam,

YOu have got me where it matters...most certainly time
for me to make amends..

((Some preliminary questions for Mahmood :
What is the tone/style of  the bazm and war stories
> ( razm?)? Would the
> style adopted by Mahmood and Himanshu be appropriate
> to the narration of
> these other streams?))

The bazm sections in the Dastans follow a set pattern,
but the pattern itself has many streams. ANy single
magician from any one side can wreak havoc on the
other side...one day it might be Bahar Jadu, who has
defected from Afrasiyab's side to Hamza'--and they are
forever defecting to the good side without it
affecting the overall strength of the sorcerers-whose
magic consists of making everyone see Bahar/spring all
around them, the smells, the breeze, the sights and
they all fall in love with her and follow her around,
enchanted.

The pace of the bazm sections accordingly varies with
the kind of action being described...very often the
Islamic armies may attack at night, although Hamza
usually desists from surprise attacks or from pursuing
his enemies and always pardons those seeking
redemption..and then the sorcerers, unable to
distinguish friend from foe, fall upon each other,
decimating large sections of their own side...

Then there are set piece accouts of the opening of
battles-people come forward, challenge the other side,
the bards sing accounts of their genealogy and their
valour, the naqib shouts to all to be prepared for
battle and to be willing to sacrifice their all, the
battle begins and their might be hand to hand combat
or again any particular magician may carry the
day...there is no previously set logic as to how the
battle would unfold and what would be its outcome.

The descriptions of these battles changes therefore
with what is being described...there might be fast and
furious accounts of the swords, the battlegear, the
armoury, the weapons with a lot of room, obviously,
for alliteration and punning and rhymes...

There might be irony, humour and scatology when the
sorcerers are in utter confusion and are falling upon
each other..

Accordingly, it requires a greater mastery over the
Art of narration to describe battle scenes without
succumbing to declamatory peroration...further, in
bazm scenes it is not the content(the nature of
action) that is as important as the style...for
audiences generally unattuned to the Dastanic world it
might not be as easily comprehensible or enjoyable...

((The magical universe is also parodied in some ways
> in some ways isn't it?
> Have you thought of Bettelheim's 'uses of
> enchantment' in this context?))

Certainly parody is always present around the corner
when the magical universe is being described...but on
the other hand, as in the passage we narrated about
Amar Ayyar getting trapped in a tilism where all food
turns to dust, the world of tilism can also be
presented as an object lesson, for its creators as
well as its opponents...in this particular case Amar
is reminded of his own unworthiness and smallness
because for all his cunning, for all the wealth of the
zambil(bag/pandora's box)full of goodies from Prophets
and other notables he is unable to feed himself...

Really, eventually it depends on the Dastango and what
he wants to make of the action...the same passage or
event may be treated with sarcasm by one teller and be
filled with terror by another. 

Of course uses of enchantment would be highly useful
in apprehending the world of Dastans as would
Todorov's study of the Fantastic and Jackson's
explication of the fantasy as the literature of
subversion...I am yet to get to them for I am still
fascinated by this freewheeling run of the
imagination, the construction of an imaginary run
where the world is rearranged as the writer sees fit
which has an autonomous moral economy of its own...but
this would al be more useful once I have dwelt longer
and better at the Dastans themselves...

it is a wondrous creation after all, as ABru says-

Daaman-e Dasht kiya naqsh-e Qadam soon pur gul
Kis bahaaran ka yeh deewaana tamashaai hai


((There is blood and violence and 'aaiyari' in these
> stories...what is the
> world view of the dastans? What do the dastans say
> about love and war and
> magic? What of the relationship between Khuda and
> Shaitan, and between their
> powers and tilism?))

It is difficult for me to sum up the Dastani world
view...I will reproduce a para from Faruqi's
marvellous book on it-

"“Here virtue always prevails over vice and so does
justice over tyranny. War and peace, love and
duplicity, valour and bravery, friendship and enmity,
human prowess versus the supernatural, human knowledge
and gnosis, fate and inspiration are all themes which
meet a very sophisticated and consistent treatment,
and all daastaans contain a developed world view,
which was in every sense contrary to the one then
being imposed by the colonial order. Unlike
Daastaan-e-Amir Hamza, Fasana-e-Ajaib and Bagh-e-Bahar
(the ones patronized by the British) lack this
metaphysical, moral dimension.”

The Dastans, on the surface, are all for romantic love
as is obvious from the number of Muslims who fall for
women from the sorcerers side and vice versa...this
'randibazi' sometimes gets Amar's goat for oftentimes
it gets in the way...but most of the action in the
Dastan is led by people falling in love then being
attacked, or in turn attacking their opponents...or
magician women betraying afrasiyab and releasing
captive Muslims...perhaps that is why both THanvi and
Shibli had forbidden women from reading this
subversive text...

((What is the relationship of these stories to speech
> , literature and poetry?
> Could you elaborate a little on Ghalib's view of
> these dastans? Have other
> major writers commented on these texts?))

The Dastans are obviously embedded in the same
literary culture where poetry was always meant to be
recited aloud...the poetry encountered in the dastans
may be of several kinds...the compositions of the
dastango himself, of his ustad or patrons, of rival
poets who may be ridiculed, there may be dohas, kabits
or quatrains from braj and awadhi, there might be
masnavis, long poems, ghazals, qasidas and even
hujus...that is satricial poems...basically poetical
interruptions, I surmise, would have servedthe same
purpose as present day song breaks...a time to refill
the huqqa to replenish the opium and to refill the
glass..

as far as speech is concerned, obviously the template
for many scenes was the actual spoken language..so
ofeten in scenes depicting common people or the bazar
or particular classes like dhobis, kalwars, mochis or
kumhars you find a rustic awadhi being used...but
eventually the Dastango was creating not only his own
world, but also his own language..his virtuosity lay
not in imitating the speech patterns outside but in
creating a speech that was in consonance with the
progress and pattern of his Dastan...

We do know for sure that GHalib loved these Dastans
for he has commented in a letter how he was thrilled
because he had six cases of wine, six volumes of a
Dastan and it was raining...and he wrotea few poems
using the chief characters of Dastans...but he did not
write or elaborate much more than that about
Dastans...we can also surmise that Mir loved Dastans
but again, he has not directly commented upon it...it
is the same with other major writers...we know there
were Dastangos attached to courts but it was such a
self-evident part of the cultural life that not too
many people commented upon it formally. 

((but have there been Dastans/ narratives 
about
'historical' events.))

As far as I know there haven't been any...you might
find the occasional reference to actual historical
events as such, like firangi aiyyar, but no actual
historical Dastans...they were a means purely for
secular entertainment but a mode of story telling in
which the story mattered as much as its telling. 

((In deciding to adopt or create a certain
style...what forms of
conversation/speech went into the making of this
performance?))

It took us some time selecting the text...what I
wanted was to select portions that were humorous and
bawdy...but no clear narrative pattern would emerge if
I only chose those scenes...most people I read them
out, Urdudaan people, were quite pessimistic about how
much of it would appeal to the wider public...then
there were the highly Persianised introductory
remarks...traditionally there was only one Dastango
but I was apprehensive that it would get monotonous
with only one person and with two people we could
weave in a lot of simple dramatic devices...speaking
together, one person taking over from another, both
coming together, breaking the poetry into two
portions...I thought it would keep the audience
busy...

INitially we were wondering how much imitation and
mimicry we should employ..whether we should try and
create voices of women, Kings...whether we should
overplay the seduction and underplay the terror...

Eventually, though our rehearsals boiled down to
earmarking the portions each of us would recite...I
preferred to take the more Persianised passaged and
let Himanshu tackle the more demotic and commonspeak
portions...

I retained the declamatory style that I am familiar
with and HImanshu brought in more subtlety and
easygoing recitation...mostly it was a foray in the
dark for while we realised the fluency of the language
on repeated readings we were unsure how it would
communicate with the audience...and we were also very
unsure about what people would understand of the story
for the narrative is vast and the number of characters
massive..there was no way we could fill the audience
up on the whole story especially since we outselves
were not fully up on it..

It is easier any way to identify with the ruthless
aiyyar and his shenanigans and those were the portions
we restricted ourselves up to...but the Dastans
actually come into their own when the Tilisms are at
play...and there are as many kinds of tilisms as there
are volumes...that is where the Dastans desciptive art
reaches its apogee and in future tellings we hope to
include some flavour of those as well..


DER AAYAD DURUST AAYAD...

about Rana's mails...obviously that bit about
ethnography was a bit of a joke but the point I did
want to share was where this 'thriving intellectual
culture' lay and a point that rana hasn't answered is
why it can lie all around us, in drawing rooms and in
Sarai, and not appear in the media or public
culture...is it because the media/public culture is
formed of personnel who are outside this vibrant zone
or is it that the same people may be exciting in the
drawring room but deadened in their public roles?

In that case how do any 'crossings' happen>? ANd when
they do happen what kind of mediation is required?
Does it take 'necessary balls' to plunge into them as
is shown by the fact that Rana's piece critiquing that
public culture/media was carried in one of its leading
constituents? 

And if there is such vibrancy around us then why do
not more crossings happen? 

galiyon ko chup lagi hai
nagar bolte nahin
awwal to bolte nahin
is shahar ke log
jo bolte hain baar-e
digar bolte nahin...

Many apologies and thanks,
for drawing me out...
MF. 


--- Punam Zutshi <pz at vsnl.net> wrote:

> Mahmood, Himanshu and Sarai, Congratulations on a
> perfectly riveting
> performance at IIC!
> 
> Mahmood and Himanshu seem to have pulled off a
> masterly recreation of the
> dastangoi in tandem.The feat surely lies in
> presenting a dastangoi style
> which has both originality and integrity.One finds
> it difficult to imagine
> anything but the wry and not so wry humour and
> sophistication with which the
> " tilism " stories were told.
> 
> Wish though, that there was more on dastans and
> dastangoi in the limited
> time available by Prof Farooqui and Mahmood.
> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> Regards,
> 
> Punam
> 
> Prof S.R. Faruqui mentioned tales in Bosnia ( was
it?)  that seemed to
recount  histories of wars.The Dastans you drew upon
were both very 
oral and
very writerly, and fantastical.Of course there are the
46 volumes found 
in
no one library to reckon with 

Some day, you may consider contacting Dr.Roma
Chatterjee of the Dept of
Sociology, DSE  who has extensively read and written
on the analysis of
narratives. Her thesis on Purulia and its oral
traditions may be of
interest.(Purulia is also home to one type of the
Chhau dance)

(A propos the 'historical' I specifically recall from
Dr.Chatterjee's
fieldwork a song that was composed about the Damodar
Valley 
Corporation's
entry into the scene...But all this is not meant to
take you too far 
afield)

You may certainly believe that what you did was
effortless but perhaps 
all
your life you have prepared for this,absorbing the
language and the 
world
that the dastan belongs to... that's a lot, isn't it ?


Some of the Farsi/Urdu usage certainly did elude me,
but when I think 
of it,
I would rather that a small preface/ longish sub title
as in pre 20th
century style of  titles  for the uninititated be
added.( Example " In 
which
the hero ....undergoes..../journeys ... et al ) 
Recently, I watched an
Opera performance in Delhi which had the English
translation of the 
Italian
scrolling down on large screens on either side of the
huge stage. I 
think it
a huge achievement that what you accomplished was to
include the 
audience in
its variety without any such intervention.

The text certainly provides the base for the
performance but it was the 
act
of storytelling that Himanshu and you undertook that
conveyed a  
'nafasat'
combined with directness, the horrific/fantastical
juxtaposed with the
scatological, a vitality that was palpable... The
bareness of the stage 
was
wonderful, a wonderful foil to the emroideries and
ornaments of speech,
never taking away from the hold of the storytelling.

Punam

> 
> 


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