In the entertainment starved city of Lahore, it is not surprising that a duo from Delhi would draw the city’s entire intellectual population to Alhamra Hall No 1.
The fact that the duo was performing dastangoi, though not completely irrelevant, was at least an afterthought for most. And then there were those who, like me, were primarily interested in the art itself, regardless of whether the artists came from Delhi or Dera Ghazi Khan. We were eager to see a performance of the almost extinct art in Urdu storytelling, also known as dastangoi. Little did we know, what awaited us was actually the last rites being performed on an already dead art form.
What we saw, rather heard, was a Rajasthani folktalk Dastan-e-Chouboli, originally credited to Shri Vijaydan Detha, which travelled to the US and translated in English by Dr Christi Merrill. It was then adapted into Urdu by Mahmood Farooqui, who, along with Danish Hussain, also performed it. Needless to say, much was lost in translation, and that which was left was destroyed by the several modern improvisations. This included English language words and subtle Bollywood references like Dharmendra’s famous chakee peesing and peesing dialogue from Bollywood’s blockbuster Sholay. To the dastangos’ credit, in their attempt to make the entire experience as authentic as they possibly could, they forbade the audience from clapping and encouraged only a ‘waah’ as an appropriate form of applause. This entire exercise eventually turned out to be pointless, given the globalised background of the story and the many contemporary variations added to it by the dastangos.
It was a friend’s comment after the performance that almost summed it up for me. This erudite friend of mine, who is well exposed to the many art forms available to us today and a connoisseur of several of those, called the art of dastangoi an “exotic entertainment” that is not relevant to our times. It was precisely this feeling that troubled me too. Not to say that traditional art forms should not be kept alive, but to merely mention that this particular performance actually felt like a forced attempt to resuscitate an art that does not seem to make much sense in our times anymore. In this age, we can choose between numerous forms of storytelling; all of which are more accessible and tell stories that are more representative of our age. I don’t see any reason why we would choose to watch dastangoi performances, other than in an effort to save the art form itself.
It may sound like I’m being too critical, but I’m not. I am not even going to mention that this duo that came especially from Delhi to perform in Lahore, while narrating the story, made enough mistakes for me to have lost count. I am also not going to say that these mistakes included forgetting lines and speaking ahead of each other. I All I’m saying is that relevant or not, if dastangoi is the traditional art of Urdu storytelling, and the performers whose sole responsibility is to narrate the story, then what I saw at Alhamra Hall No 1 on December 8, 2012 was not exactly a performance of dastangoi.
I can almost bet my life that the intellectuality of Lahore is not going to forgive me for this, but truth be told, I sat there looking for the first opportunity to say my share of waahs, and that opportunity never came.
The writer is a self proclaimed film-maker and habitual critic. She can contacted at ayeshaarif86@gmail.com
Published in The Express Tribune, December 23rd, 2012.
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