Mahmood Farooqui And Anusha Rizvi On The Politics of Dastangoi, Islam And Mahabharata In Urdu

Mahmood Farooqui virtually single-handedly revived a mesmeric 13th century Urdu oral storytelling tradition. At Algebra on April 15, Farooqui was both a performer and an incisive conversationalist as he - along with producer and wife Anusha Rizvi, who directed the rapier-sharp Peepli Live - served up a double treat with a riveting conversation followed by an exclusive 45 minute performance of the Dastan-e-Karn az Mahabharata.

This was a particularly rare treat since the Mahabharata is rarely recited in Urdu and marries an extraordinary epic with a storytelling form compelling for its raw power.

Dastan-e Karn Az Mahabharat the new presentation by Team Dastangoi is an unique and unprecedented effort at many levels. It is after some considerable time that the Mahabharata is being orally recited from the stage. Unlike the Ramayana, oral recitations and performance of the Mahabharata are rare and they are rarer still in Urdu, the base language of this Dastangoi show.

The Dastangoi performance draws upon a very wide variety of transcontinental texts, most of which are rarely presented together. It draws upon the original Sanskrit Mahabharata, its Persian translation called the Ramznama commissioned by Emperor Akbar and supervised by Faizi and Abdur Rahim Khan-e Khanan, its 200 year old Urdu translation by Tota Ram Shayan, an Urdu translation done by the Pakistani author Kamran Aslam, a Gita translation done again in Pakistan by Khalifa Abdul Hakim and another translation by the Indian Urdu poet Anwar Jalalpuri, Hindi poet Ram Dhari Singh Dinkar's magnum opus on Karna Rashmi Rathi, Marathi writer Shivaji Sawant's great novel on Karna called Mrityunjay, Tagore's poem on Kunri and Karna and on Irawati Karve's bestselling essay on the Mahabharata. In addition the performance quotes and draws on many parallels that exist between the Gita and the Quran.

The language of the performance is Urdu in the main but there is substantial usage of Sanskrit, Hindi, Farsi and Arabic. Again, it is rare to have so many different languages employed by a single performer in a single show.

A seated down solo performance of this length has not been attempted for a long long time, perhaps not since the last great Dastango passed away over a hundred years ago.

The text of the Dastan was compiled by Mahmood Farooqui when he was in prison and it was through the prison library that he had access to the original texts of the Mahabharata.
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