For an hour and a half , writer William Dalrymple and singer Vidya Shah tried to convince an art-loving crowd that the 17 century of the Mughal era was a better time to live in than now. It didn’t matter that the audience was physically present under the open skies on a chilly night at the CCRT, Madhapur for the commencement of the Krishnakriti Fest in the city; the heart was in Delhi where Bahadur Shah Zafar’s reign (who was an eminent poet himself) was buzzing with sheer artistic revelry.
What the author said in words synced with the singer’s vocals in a seamless space, bridging the gaps between drama, cinema and music with a rare finesse. The story explored the cultural space that ensured a reverse-colonisation of sorts, an interspersing of British and Indian traditions, in contrast to other parts of the country in the early 1800s. The opportunity to adapt this era into a musical concert was utilised adeptly considering these were times when the world was waking up to recognise Ghalib’s value as a poet, when khayal gayaki began reaching out to the common man, the madrasas were being considered the equivalents of Oxford and Cambridge.
Then came a timely dadra , ‘Kaisa Jaadu Dala Balam Matwale’ by the singer. Court music’s essentially what Vidya Shah focussed through the evening, while her tone attained a sense of patriotism, when the threads surrounding 1857 Sepoy Mutiny and the post war effects were underway. There was Begum Akhtar’s ‘Dil Hi To Hai Na Sango Khisht’ that one couldn’t miss, similarly ‘Mere Saiyyan Looten’ from Meerut . William and Vidya were terrific in complementing each other, sharing little humorous yet informative snippets, one of them being a Asimullah Khan composition that later inspired Iqbal to compose ‘ Saare Jahaan Se Accha’ , and another being comparisons of a courtesan’s costume to a Tarun Tahiliani outfit.
The story meanwhile underlined clear reasons behind the 1857 mutiny, spoke of the rarely reported post-war blood bath in Delhi (reportedly worse than the Jallianwalabagh massacre), where all males in the kingdom but the king were killed. It also discussed how the extraneous focus on art compromised on the manpower that the Mughals had. For nearly every situation and turn here, Vidya chose a composition that best reflected the mood, Altaf Khan’s ‘Na Suna Jayega Humse Ye Fasana Hargiz’ being another example.
The evening culminated with supposed events surrounding the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the words of poetry describing his helplessness. An alternate version of the same, dug out during a Britisher’s research in the early 1900s, which talked of the king fleeing to another country on exile, also transformed into a song, ‘Ab Kaisa Kari Ho Namak Haraami’ . All in all, the format of the writer and singer presenting in tandem brought about interesting results. The contributions of Ghulam Ali and Shanti Bhushan Jha on the sarangi and tabla respectively added rich value to the exercise.
