[Reader-list] responses to performance of Dastangoi at IIC

[mahmood farooqui]

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.



		
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