[Reader-list] respioDASTANGOI PERFORMANCE-IIC 4TH MAY

Fri May 6 22:49:52 IST 2005

Dear Vivek,

Lovely to hear from you? How familiar are you with
Urdu/Hindustani/Hindi?

You must appreciate that I categorise them and yet
lump them together.

I remember Chandrakanta quite well. It was a big hit.
I didn't much end up watching it, much to my current
chagrin.

Chandrakanta is very much a Dastan, in a bowlerised
form though which, nevertheless, does not reduce its
importance. 

And the Hatim Tai experience you have related are
quite apt. These Dastans were performed in various
ways. In the Middle East the performers walked about,
pretty often. They used pictures, gestures, movements
in a varied way through the lands where they were
performed. Since the Art reached its apotheosis in
Lucknow its performance genre needed particularly to
be specified. For the reason that that city already
had a very wide repertoire of performances, oral as
well as visual. 

There was dance, dance-drama and reputedly India's
first modern play, I am thinking of Amanat Ali's
Indrasabha in 1848, in addition to oral performances
of poetry, marsiyas, classical music and several other
oral recounters as Zakirs, Nassars, qawwals,
genealogists, bhands, acrobats, bahurupiyas,
qissakhwans not all of whom performed on stafe.

That is why we chose to give our performances as we
learnt some performers of yore did it in India. Seated
down, with restricted movements of hands. Without
pictures and other tools.

For very obvious reasons we were unsure of how to
react the language. I am well versed with Urdu so I
could appreciate even aracane usages and Persianised
turns of phrase and could therefore appreciate the
nuances better than my fellow performer. In fact I had
serious doubts about people apprehending the very
events/plot that was being recounted to them. Yet we
were overwhelmed by the universally gushing response
we received. Intitially we attributed the enthusiasm
of the response to the preponderance of the
Urdu-knowing lot in the audience. But we were
disaubsed soon enough by the response of many who were
quite far from being susceptible to the 'beauty' of
Urdu-an imperialist/hegemonic reaction if you ask me. 

When one couples this to the fact that we never seemed
to ourselves to putting any extra effort into
preparing ourselves for the performance other than
rehearsing regularly, the awesome beauty of stands
easily out. Our comparative lack of effort and the
vitality of the response is apt proof of the vibrancy
of the text, the very material, we had in our hands. 

For the moment all I want to do is to perform again,
to experience the thrill again, if possible, of a
small auditorium swaying to the very Indic rhythms of
waah waahi...

Mahmood.

I am copying to this mail to my fellow performer
Himaanshu Tyagi to invite his response.

--- Anand Vivek Taneja <radiofreealtair at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Dear Mahmood,
> 
> Thanks for an invitation for the wonderful
> performance. 
> A few thoughts arose as to the survival of forms of
> dastangoi, or of the 
> culture of the dastan (albeit transmuted into modern
> times....)
> 
> In your first posting you wrote, 
> "Last week I went to meet a scholar of medieval
> Hindi-Urdu romance traditions. He told me about an
> exhibition based on the Hamzanama, the illustrated
> text of the story commissioned by Akbar that was the
> first major art project undertaken in the young
> MUghal
> Empire. His guess is that the large size of the
> folios
> in that exhibition, as well as the fact that
> episodes
> drawn are written at the back, mean that the
> Dastango
> would stand behind the panel-folio narrating the
> tale
> and they would be changed as the scenery and action
> changed. Dastangoi as practice was then perhaps a
> proto form of Television."
> 
> What about Dastangoi on television?
> 
> I am thinking, of course, of the early ninenties
> mega serial 'Chandrakanta', 
> which was enormously popular when it was screened.
> it lived up to all the 
> traditions of dastangoi - stories within stories;
> and of course, razm, bazm, 
> tilism, and aiyyari. most notably tilism and
> aiyyari. who can forgte Kroor 
> Singh? Of course, Chandrakanta the serial (directed
> by Neerja Guleri) was 
> based on Chandrakanta the novel, by Devaki Nandan
> Khatri, generally agreeed 
> upon as being the first prose work in Hindi...
> 
> So Devaki Nandan Khatri via Neerja Guleri might be
> an intersting line of 
> inquiry to follow... the continuation of the
> dastangoi into other forms. 
> 
> Also, what about Hatim Tai? 
> 
> In my childhood in Lucknow, Lucknow DD used to show
> watercolours of Hatim 
> Tai's adventures, slowly dissolving from one to the
> other as the the single 
> narrator's voice told the story of the adventures.
> Very like the Mughal 
> Illustrated version of the Hamzanama.
> The Hatim-Tai story was also serialised in
> 'ChandaMama', the Hindi 
> Children's magazine; was used in at least one Hindi
> film (starring 
> Jeetendra) and has now seen a revival of sorts on, i
> think, Star Plus...
> 
> Thanks for wonderfully engaing postings so far, and
> I hpe these reponses are 
> of hhelp.
> Cheers,
> Anand
> 
> 
> 
> On 4/22/05, mahmood farooqui
> <mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Dear All,
> > 
> > We are trying to devise a Dastangoi performance.
> The
> > first attempt is on at the IIC at the 4th May at
> 6.30
> > pm. Obviously, as modern actors, we are wholly
> > ill-equipped to use our voices in the manner that
> the
> > Dastangos of yore could do it. Still, one would
> like
> > to find out what it was that could make Emperor
> 'Akbar
> > cry like a child' or make the poet Ghalib feel he
> had
> > attained heaven because 'it is raining, he has
> > six-volumes of Dastans with him and a few bottles
> of
> > wine, what more could he want.'
> > 
> > Do come.
> > 
> > MF
> > 
> > 
> > __________________________________________________
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> > 
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: "mohd tasleem"
> <mohdtasleem123 at rediffmail.com>
> > To: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com
> > Date: 20 Apr 2005 07:12:48 -0000
> > Subject: scan
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you
> are crunchy and taste 
> good with ketchup.
> (with apologies to Dilbert)
> http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/
> 
> Only that historian will have the gift of fanning
> the spark of hope in the 
> past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of
> humour you're basically 
> pretty f***ed anyway.
> (with apologies to Walter Benjamin)
> http://www.chapatimystery.com/
> 

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