Very few know that famous Urdu writer Khwaja Ahmad Abbas also wrote a story in English called Later Fraum a child to Gandhiji. It is based on five children writing a letter to Mahatma Gandhi in heaven soon after his assassination in 1948, requesting him to come back to the world, promising that they would never play a game that he asked them not to play.
The symbolic story has been adapted into an hour-long mono-act play by Dr. Sayeed Alam of Pierrot’s Troupe. Dr. Alam has changed the title to Letter to Gandhiji with Spelling Mistakes to make it more attractive.
In the play, five (Indian) children who play a game called Hindu Sena-Pakistani Fauj, divide themselves into two groups: two children play soldiers in the Hindu Sena while two play soldiers in the Pakistani Fauj. One child who, in the story, is a refugee from Pakistan, does not play the game. He only watches from a distance.
The children think that Gandhiji has gone to heaven because he used to ask them not play this particular game. They had promised him that they would never play the game and would immerse their (toy) guns in water. But actually, they didn’t throw their guns. So, when the first attempt on Gandhiji’s life happens in 1946, the children think he is just trying to scare them to keep them off from the game. But when his actual assassination takes place, they think that Bapu is angry and has gone to heaven to teach them a lesson.
While writing the letter, the boys face a problem. They have to write in English because after Partition, Hindi has become Hindus’ language, Urdu Muslims’ language. They are aware that all good people know and write in English. So, the letter should be written in English.
So the boys decide to do a division of labour: Anwar, a boy who knows good English — his spelling is also good but his handwriting is bad — will dictate the letter to Gopal, another boy whose handwriting is good but who is weak in English.
After the letter is written — there are some hilarious moments like the kids trying to write the correct spelling of pearl as ‘pirl,’ rhyming it with ‘girl’— Anwar asks the boys to go and play while he corrects the English and the spelling. But stealthily, he adds two more lines in the letter in which he shares his dream with Gandhiji. “In my dream, I saw that you were assassinated by my (toy) gun.” So he pleads with him to come down on earth to tell people that Anwar did not kill him.
The play is being staged in the Capital for the first time. It has been staged in Bhopal, Chandigarh, Aligarh and Bangalore to an “immense response,” says Dr. Alam.
