In an age of inveterate and layered social crisis, comedy once meant for opposing what is incorrigible in life and providing the audience with a space beyond hatred and resentment, starts producing a narrative of tawdry amusement drawing on ludicrous jokes. Much-admired hilarity is not followed by a meaningful silence and people hardly get any opportunity to laugh at their woes and inherent contradictions of mundane life. It is no longer reckoned as an art of expressing pain, joy, agony, reflections of love alongside the baser instincts and elemental human predicament. This is noted playwright, critic and theatre personality Zaheer Anwar’s lament about the dying art of comedy. Zaheer’s poignant memories fetch up a semi-autobiography titled, “Lasting Impression” that appeared recently.
Zaheer, who has four volumes of plays, two travelogues, and two books on the art and technique of theatre to his credit, unveils the myriad story of his creative oeuvre within the ambit of lived reality in the form of letters and interviews. Skilfully divided into seven chapters, the book presents a judicious mix of different genres and candidly portrays the inner layers of thinking of people to whom the author is passionately attached and for him, “these voices are permanent part of my mental landscape”.
The unconventional book candidly acquaints us with ever-expanding frontier of creativity that reins in the psyche of hate that is seriously embedded in the world we live in. In a detailed conversation with well-known author Khalid Sohail, Zaheer described theatre a vocation of ever-changing and ever-becoming a new human being. Drawing an analogy between art and faith, Zaheer says the ultimate aim of both is peace and tranquillity. Being humble is to be religious and art inculcates a sense of humility that leads to a kind of self-discovery, the author seeks to set the terms of his own interpretation of the world around him that transcends the confines of religion and art.
Zaheer, famous for mentoring a whole generation of script writers,, actors and directors in Kolkata’s theatre and stage, describes non- violence as the highest religion and humility as the best weapon to conquer the world no matter how hostile it is .
Cross communalism produces a new kind of aesthetic that hardly touches perennial question of human existence and at present no art form seems capable of inculcating a sense of justice in the minds of the audience. This what Zaheer writes to an internationally known ethnomusicologist Peter Manuel with whom he shares his solitary moments frequently. The U.S.-based exponent of western and Indian classical music, Manuel is a close friend of the author for more than three decades. He explained to him the misuse of music and cassettes and its becoming a tool of poisonous proportions in the hands of politicians to fan the religious sentiments of the teeming millions of India.
Lasting impression carries the author’s three detailed and perceptive letters addressed to Peter Manuel, Khalid Sohail and Ziaul Hasan. These letters completely devoid of rhetorical flourish but apparent straightforwardness are not to be confused with simple ordinariness. Zaheer does zero in on the compelling ugliness of communal strife and ever-shrinking pluralism but he does not offer any quick solution. His letters reveal a complex and nuanced existentialist streak that mocks at artificial harmonisation. His writings conjure up varied exultant images of the characters that live on the invisible boundaries of faith and doubt. The story of nullity inspires the author a lot and Kafka, Flaubert, Andre Gide, Sartre, Camus, Becket and Ionesco taught him to think freely and stretch his innate creative prowess to depict the savage in the civilised society.
For Zaheer theatre is the perfect medium for exploring the possibilities of body that connects with the people their joys, pains and sorrows. Stage is the place where one can find action both self-revelatory and self-concealing and the actors harp on same external verities that constitute the mainstay of human existence. The author visited the U.S. and Canada and with multiple focalisations he maps out the creative terrain of New Jersey, New York, and Toronto but he remains concerned with the common man who surfaces in every part of the world but has no idealised image of himself.
The book, “Last Impressions” simultaneously reveals Zaheer’s creative response to radical structural changes occurring across the world and a graphic account of individual‘s failings and triumphs. His passionate engagement with theatre unfurls his biography that leaves the reader delightfully bewildered. His lexical exuberance grasps various patterns of things seen and of things thought about and it makes him an outstanding exponent of contemporary theatre and literature.
