This past week’s served up a treat, theatrically speaking. The Urdu Drama Festival staged numerous plays, odes to names which have now become legendary. And soon after the curtains came down on the festival, Jamia Milia Islamia opened up another venue, and on its 94 Foundation Day, “Dhoban Ko Kapde Diye”, one of the plays performed at the Drama Festival, was re-staged, this time with the title “Chacha Chakkan Ke Karname”. Directed by Danish Iqbal, with the seasoned actor M. Sayeed Alam in the lead role of Chacha Chakkan, the play was a tribute to Qudsia Zaidi, its script extracted from the famous Chacha Chakkan series by the author.
Even without its giveaway name, Chacha Chakkan is the star attraction of the play, carrying the lead role with impressive aplomb. A gentleman, going by his own estimates, 45-year-old Chacha claims a distinguished Lucknow birth and Aligarh Muslim University education, wants a finger in every pie and believes that no one better than him can do a better job of any thing that comes along. The introduction of Aligarh in the play is an improvisation, absent in Zaidi's original work, adding yet another layer to Chacha's character.
The play keeps from becoming too farcical, and Chacha Chakkan, modelled after Jerome K. Jerome's creation, Uncle Podger, is a complex character. As we see him pick faults and criticise everyone he meets, striking a laughably ludicrous pose, his self-proclaimed superiority becomes suspect, without becoming annoying. As his wife keeps up an almost non-stop stream of criticisms, and even his washerwoman doubts his claims to superiority and fine education, his character is almost pitiable, but once again, the play manages to keep the emotions its elicits balanced. He blunders, nags, suffers rebukes, and bounces back, and surprisingly, makes his character very difficult to dislike.
Already a very popular part of Urdu literature, and perhaps its most famous comic one, “Chacha Chakkan” has been brought to stage several times, in countless adaptations. The trick, it would seem, is to find just the right on stage Chacha. In this version, Alam plays his role with just the right variations, alternating between the obnoxious, ridiculous and loveable till a most interesting character emerges, far from the flat farcical one it could easily have become, given the genre. Couple with Zaidi’s genius and Iqbal’s careful, artistic directions, the play becomes one of the successful comedies that make you laugh exactly when they intended to.
