[Reader-list] Re: dastans, indian media

[Punam Zutshi]

Dear Mahmood ,

I seem not to have received the Reader List version of your mail, but I hope
it reached everyone else.

Thanks for not only the details but the 'feel' of the dastans and what
guided your performance.

I think I feel you're quite right in deepening your understanding of the
dastans before you frame it with apparent competence in the templates
provided by theorists.Certainly the latter should be engaged with, but not
without drawing out the structure/s of  the dastans and the capacity to play
with these by the dastangos themselves, and the theoretical insights they
provide.

The passage you reproduce from Faruqi is interesting for highlighting
British preferences.Why do you think the British patronised the ones they
did?

I do not know more about Prof Faruqi's work but would like the ultimate
triumph of virtue and justice not to iron out the earthiness , the non
ethereal aspects of human behaviour ( Also the fact that these were regarded
as subversive a point I will touch on later) ...Your performance gave us a
view that was quite different.I am more challenged by the fickleness, the
duplicity.. I feel however that what is equally important is the assumptions
the authors of these texts make about the human condition -- human beings,
their lives and motivations, their destiny -- The nature of illusion, the
nature of truth...

While the dastans speak of romantic love ( "on the surface") you also speak
of 'randibaazi'......This could be a theme for study...and could you
elaborate why Shibli and Thanvi felt women should be forbidden from reading
these texts which you describe as subversive, it also occurs to me to ask
were women present at the dastangoi.

You have clubbed your responses to two different mails in one but thanks
anyway.Shall respond to the latter portion  later.

Punam




----- Original Message -----
From: "mahmood farooqui" <mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com>
To: "Punam Zutshi" <pz at vsnl.net>; <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:20 PM
Subject: dastans, indian media


> 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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