The Tale of the Story-teller
The ring-tone sets the mood for the talk with Dastangoi artist Sunil Mehra. It is the soulful Khwaja mere Khawaja, the A R Rehman number from Jodha Akbar and when I point it out to Mehra, he tells me that his friends love the song so much that they ask him to pick up the phone after a few dozen rings to savour it. His Dastangoi – the art of Urdu story-telling based on Ismat Chughtai’s stories plays today at the Junction, Al Serkal Avenue and on 21st September, tomorrow at the Indian Embassy Auditorium in Abu Dhabi. Mehra performs with his talented co-host, the lawyer turned performer, Askari Naqvi.
How did you turn to Dastangoi? Your background has been journalism, TV, yoga, academics and more?
I am passionate about Urdu. I grew up in a home where language was a doorway to beauty, to another world, another way of living and being and conducting yourself. NOT a value. I grew up using Urdu with the
charming UP inflection that came courtesy my Lucknow Dad, some robust earthy Multani courtesy my Punjabi mom and of course Hindi and English which was my spoken language through eleven years of Jesuit school. Together I have been exposed to Zauq, Mir, Ghalib, Faiz, Bulle Shah, Waris Hussain, Sahir Ludhianvi, Amrita Pritam as well as
Shakespeare, Wodehouse etc. All this and then journalism makes you court idealism. And in today’s day and time in India we live in an environment where one searches for answers to explain the illogic that other people, languages, cultures. We live in a world of jingoism, chauvinism, aggressive advocacy of medievalist patriarchal mindsets intent on subjugating women/ minorities, conscious and deliberately engineered " othering" of communities; whether social/ religious/ political or sexual, blinkered religious nationalism seems to be the order of the day. A whole lot this angst is poured out on social media, in op-ed columns etc. and I realized that venting my rage out on social media wasn’t getting anywhere.
Reading a book on Dastangoi by Mehmood Farooqui, a performer I respect, whose talent I hugely revere, whose intellect I admire, offered direction: he'd brilliantly used the format as a tool to inform, question, challenge, rebel. Dastangoi was powerful political tool in his hands: using historical narrative, anecdote, memoir he crafted masterful subversive contemporary Dastan's that challenged every prevailing orthodoxy. Dastan e Sedition, Dastan e Taqsim e Hind speak with lacerating directness of the deviousness, the manipulation, the betrayal of the people by the State. He put me in the mind of the Shakespearean joker who even as he entertained and regaled his audience, called out falsehood, can’t, duplicity, spoke truth to power.
So, you took to Dastangoi because it blended all your concerns together in art?
As a student of literature, it's clear to me that the cataclysm we're experiencing today is mere repeat.: such upheavals have always been a part of the cycles of history. How have we dealt with those upheavals? What are the lessons we could learn? They too are right there between the pages of books: chronicles of our times, repositories of our collective wisdom even as we foolishly blunder ahead, uncaring, unmindful, oblivious. The answers are all there in our stories: we just stopped listening/ looking/ reading.
The Dastangoi today is not unlike the Shakespearean clown: speaking truth to power in the Age of Post Truth. For me, it's a wonderful format to deliver powerful, often incendiary, v often uncomfortable, socio political messages that will, hopefully, resonate even as I tickle and entertain my audience
A Brechtian character says, and I paraphrase:
But in the dark times will there be singing and dancing?
There will be singing and dancing
