Mahmood Farooqui is an acclaimed author and performer recognized for reviving Dastangoi, the misplaced artwork of Urdu storytelling. He has obtained the Ramnath Goenka Award for Besieged: Voices From Delhi-1857. He has been visiting fellow on the College of Michigan and College of California, Berkeley. Mahmood has co-directed Peepli Dwell and produced The Nice Shamsuddin Household. On this dialog, he discusses ‘The Tihar Gamers’. Excerpts from the interview:Q: Let’s begin with the artwork of storytelling. A: After I started work on reviving this or finding out about it, I had by no means seen anybody carry out Dastangoi as a result of the final Dastango handed away in 1928. I used to be very blessed to have the scholarship and the steerage of the good Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, one of many biggest writers, novelists, critics and poets that fashionable Urdu, or certainly fashionable India, has produced. However he had additionally by no means seen someone carry out. So after we tried to place up the primary present, we had the tales, however we had nothing to emulate or no mannequin. So it was actually our instinct… that put collectively the primary fashionable present… And naturally, the tales themselves have been phenomenal. You already know, the story, the fantasies of tricksters and sorcerers, nothing of that type of creativeness and fertility and fecundity has been written wherever on the earth, so far as I do know… After which, in fact, I began writing my very own tales, I began doing workshops. So at present, 21 years later, we have now. Now the phrase ‘dastan’ is again within the foreign money of our utilization in an enormous means… We reside in a multicultural society. We reside in a multilingual society. So any textual content that I strategy, whether or not I am engaged on the Mahabharata or the Ramayana,… many writers in several languages, many literatures have labored on these issues. So each time we current the Mahabharata, individuals are startled that there are such a lot of variations of the Gita in Urdu or the Mahabharata in Urdu or in Persian, there are such a lot of poems to odes to Lord Krishna, equally for Ramayana. It is all our legacy. The world of Sanskrit, the world of Persian, the world of Urdu, the world of medieval Hindi. And we deliver all that collectively within the spoken phrase… Q: Whenever you have been in Tihar jail, you place collectively a motley crowd of novice actors, lots of them illiterate, and also you had nothing, and but you introduced this about. Let’s speak about that. A: I needed to do one thing which in jail phrases in India known as mashakkat — rigorous imprisonment. So I went to the schooling ward and I proposed that I ought to arrange a theatre class… You may suppose, what’s the level of this? You already know, my case is extra necessary. I am very tortured, as everyone in jail is. You already know, everyone is struggling. All people has acquired a plethora of issues as a result of there are court docket instances to cope with, there are households to cope with. There are issues inside jail. There’s meals, there’s medical well being. So amongst all these issues and preoccupations, if someone’s saying, come and do theatre with me, it appears a little bit odd… After which individuals began moving into it with workshops. After I began, you understand, getting them to play out scenes from their very own life, from their jail life, then they began having fun with the catharsis… I might think about myself immensely blessed and lucky that I may see them develop as actors develop in confidence. And it did wonders to their very own self-worth. A lot of them have benefited from it. Now they’re exterior, they’re working, whether or not as instructors, public audio system or you understand, photographers. And in addition it did wonders to the environment inside jail as a result of a jail is a really coercive house… We have been combating not a lot to be artists, however to revive our personal humanity and to seek out dignity which got here to us on stage, which got here to us as performers after we noticed the gleam in individuals’s eyes, after we noticed that for moments after we have been doing the Ram Leela, individuals forgot about the whole lot that was troubling them they usually have been misplaced in it. Q: How does the language of the efficiency shift? A: I took a Premchand Munshi known as ‘Nasha’ which we improvised utterly. It was a tool play. So we introduced in a whole lot of jail lingo…After we did ‘Charandas Chor’, I attempted to retain as a lot as doable the Chhattisgarhi dialect there as a result of when that dialect was understood by individuals in Edinburgh, why would not individuals in Delhi perceive it? After I did Molière, I lampoon jail medical doctors inside… I coined a track about paracetamol. You are dying, you get paracetamol… All of the capital and social and cultural capital that I had accrued exterior was of zilch worth inside… Nothing actually mattered as a result of we had all been decreased to the naked bones of being a human being the place we have been all being shoved and abused, not simply by authoritarian orders or officers, but additionally inmates. As a result of at all times, in every single place, there’s a chain of violence that comes from prime down, and then you definitely replicate it, then you definitely bully others in flip. If you end up stripped of the whole lot that you understand, the whole lot that makes your id, how do you kind your id and the place do you stand? How do you say that you understand who you’re? And I used to be fortunate that my drama class started to consider in me. They started to respect me. They shaped a core round me, and I used to be capable of finding a spot in jail with out cash, with out clout, which isn’t a imply present, you understand… And after I lived there, I realised individuals might have dedicated acts that are unlawful, that are perhaps reprehensible… Day by day they know their households are struggling… There’s shame, there’s struggling, there’s deprivation. Generally their kids have to depart college, generally they’ve to vary addresses. Their households generally journey hours and upon hours to only come and meet them. So an individual’s conduct exterior doesn’t imply that an individual has ceased to be a human being. And second, we ship individuals to jail as punishment. So as soon as an individual is inside jail, the individual has been punished as a result of an individual has been confined. An individual has been disadvantaged of their household, of meals, of consolation, of a cellphone, of hugging their kids, of hugging their canine, sitting on their chair, having a morning chai. So many on a regular basis issues and textures they’ve already been disadvantaged of when they’re inside jail.
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The legislation and guidelines and rules additionally observe them inside jail. So individuals are despatched to jail as punishment. However inside jail additionally, they’re being punished. Their mulakat is likely to be taken away. The place they’re staying is likely to be shifted. Their court docket instances are inflicting struggling on them. So there’s an infinite on a regular basis addition of struggling and punishment and retribution that an individual inside is already going via. Regardless of what’s occurring with their trial, they’re struggling humiliation, they’re struggling lack of respect, they’re struggling insults, they’re struggling lack of meals, lack of romance, lack of ladies, lack of hope, lack of time, lack of alternative. So when you find yourself inside, you are already struggling whatever the final result of the case.