Mahmood Farooqui, dastango, writer and director, says notwithstanding Indian’s love for Urdu, the history of Dakhani must be recognised. “In old India, we divided regions differently from how we divide our states today. We had regions like Malwa, Daccani, Gujarat, Hindustan. We had regions divided according to climate and geographical conditions. The political boundaries that have been drawn today have been drawn because of British conquests and their expediencies,” says Mahmood, who was with his fellow dastango, Danish Husain, for a recent performance in Bengaluru organised by India Foundation for the Arts. “I want to return to Dakhani poetry and to tell the Delhi audience that this Urdu poetry that you think is your poetry is actually not your poetry at all. For 300 years, poets in places like Hyderabad, Aurangabad and Gujarat, honed this language and they brought it up, so I want to bring their attention back to their heritage,” says Mahmood, adding that Dakhani combined aspects of Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Farsi.
“It truly was a language that could unite North and South. In the 18 Century, Urdu got Persianised. What we know today is the result of the Persianisation of Urdu. But if we had Dakhani instead, it would have been a wonderful uniting language between North and South. We can’t help the fact that people of this country completely love Persian. Shailendra, the great lyricist chose the wonderful story Maare Gaaye Gulfam by Phanishwar Nath Renu for the film Teesri Kasam, which he produced. The protagonist is a courtesan, who travels from village to village, singing Urdu songs. Now that is the love for Urdu this country has. The Finance Minister even opened his budget speech with a shair.”
Mahmood is a historian, writer and director, who has revived the 16th Century form of storytelling — dastangoi — which has its origins in Persia and travelled to India. For their performance in Bengaluru, they performed Dastan Mehtaab Jaadu Ki and Dastan-e-Chouboli . While Dastan Mehtaab Jaadu Ki is an episode from the Tilism-e-Hoshruba chapter of the Dastan-e-Amir Hamza , the latter is a Rajasthani folktale adapted by Vijaydan Dehta. “This folk tale has variations in other languages too,” explains Danish.
“An American scholar Christi Merrill from Michigan took some of the stories of Vijaydan Dehta’s stories and translated them into English, which Katha published. And when Katha launched the book, they invited us to do a story for them. We saw Christi’s translations and instantly liked them. We decided that we would translate it back into a performance language. In 2011, September, we premiered the show in Delhi.”
Mahmood says they plan to train dastangos in every major city of India, a process they have begun. “We have trained pairs in Bengaluru, Lucknow, Srinagar, Bombay and Delhi.”
“We have an open house policy,” adds Danish, “We don’t expect or demand anything. Anyone can be a part of it, irrespective of whether they have any knowledge of performance. You just have to have a love for dastangoi. There’s no other restriction. The dastangos we have trained give us another perspective of how these stories can be performed. Each pair brings a new dimension to a story.”
Even in terms of performance, the duo has extended their repertoire to adapt other stories, from different cultures and regions. Besides Dastan-e-Chouboli , they have created Dastan-Alice-Ki and Dastan-Gupi-Bagha-Ki : “I wanted to create an Alice as a Delhi girl. I thought it best to combine Alice in Wonderland and Through the LookingGlass and take the best parts from them and create it as if a Delhi girl is experiencing those processes. Because those two stories are set in 19 Century England, the story is very deeply set in those contexts, so I had to remove those contexts and put it in a manner in which it speaks to a Delhi audience, a Delhi girl today. I am very happy to note that we have had 20 performances.”
Gupi Gyne Bagha Byne , a story by Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury, was made into a film by Satyajit Ray. Mahmood says adapting it to a dastango wasn’t originally his idea.
“It was Valentina’s, one of our team mate’s, idea. She and Fouzia put the performance together, which I supervised. But we made a new experimentation of it, in the sense of including singing in it, which is something we have never done in dastangoi.”
Mahmood says he also plans to go beyond performing for a bourgeois audience. “I would like to hire a van and travel all through North India, from village to village, stopping and telling them our stories.”
