Director Mahmood Farooqui has received his fair share of bouquets and bric-a-bracs over the last decade or so. In 2005, he reinvented and revived dastangoi — an art form of Urdu oral storytelling from the 16th-century, rendered dead for a while — with his uncle Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, an Indian poet and Urdu critic. Farooqui has he spread the artform across the Indian subcontinent alongside his performances in Michigan and Berkeley, where he was a scholar.
In 2015, he was arrested on charges of rape, and was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment but was acquitted by the Delhi High Court in September last year. After the long period of scrutiny, Farooqui returned to stage earlier last month with Dastan-e Karn Az Mahabharat, a profound meditation on the life of Karna, at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi. The 90-minute solo performance was in his trademark style of dastangoi.
Farooqui brought forth several episodes from Karna's life — his identity crisis, generous nature, warrior skills and the much-discussed dilemma when his birth-mother Kunti asks him to stand by his brothers, the Pandavas but his heart wants him to stand by his friend Duryodhan. Dressed in a white chikankari angarkha, Farooqui brought out Karna's angst through his words and vigorous hand-movements.
"Several people have attempted to engage with Karna's life and his dilemma. His personal duty asks him to beholden to Duryodhan and public duty demands that he deny Duryodhan's friendship. Karna is also disadvantaged because of his origins and considered a low caste person, a relevant in our society. The story also offers a parallel between the conflict of the Pandavas and Kauravas, and the Hindu-Muslim conflict, which can also be called a conflict between brothers," said Farooqui, who calls himself a devotee of Karna since childhood. Interestingly, it was his time in prison that gave him the opportunity to fulfil his long-cherished desire of creating something based on the Mahabharata. "The library in Tihar has all the volumes of Mahabharata and Ramayana. It is there that I read the actual Mahabharata and wrote a part of the script," said Farooqui who has used five languages — Sanskrit, Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Hindi — in this dastan and relies heavily on text material in Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian.
"I have read several texts besides the Sanskrit and Hindi translations of Mahabharata; like Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's Rashmirathi, a translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Pakistan's Khalifa Abdul Hakim; a 200-year-old Urdu verse translation of the Mahabharata by poet Tota Ram Shayan; a Persian translation Razmnama, which was commissioned by emperor Akbar, and a series of essays by Irawati Karve titled Yuganta: The End Of An Epoch," added Farooqui, who has mixed his storytelling skills with his understanding of languages and history. He has also drawn many parallels between the Bhagavad Gita and the Quran.
Although the art form is his forte, Farooqui frankly admitted being nervous ahead of his debut performance last month. "The past few years have brought a lot of setbacks for me; my repertoire has suffered. But I have also learned a lot in prison where I saw misery very closely. The Mahabharata was a long story and I'm also nervous about how it will be received. Frankly, there is also nervousness on how will I be received after this case. But, I am lucky to have worked with prisoners whom I trained during my time there. In fact, a part of Dastan-e-Karn was performed in the prison for the first time," says Farooqui who has performed this act thrice since then, including a
performance in Tihar Central Jail. In coming days, there will be a performance in Baroda followed by another in Gurgaon.
About his case, Farooqui says, "I am writing about it but I don't know whether it will be a book or article."
