We Steal Your Senses: The Initiation

With words we construct
a sarai ten feet by eight,
a river of magic,
fire, blood with
a bridge of smoke,
a building of three tiers
stacked over it
with fairies in it
throwing pearls
at the piranha
floating
in the river of magic –
With words we create
all this and more
on the proscenium
of an auditorium.

But beware!
These are not tales
of horses and mare,
of fairies and angels,
of Lord-smudged gospels.
Here desires heathen
would deepen with
every twist of the tale
that you choose to veil
your senses with –
Your senses Ha!
Like some former lover
are no more
a part of your tale.
Like a bedouin’s loot
in this bazaar of lies and truth
they’re up for sale.

So we wait at the gates
of the kingdom of Afrasiyaab,
the sorcerer supreme,
the king of devils and djinns
before whom sixty-thousand
warlords
each with an army
of a hundred thousand
or more
genuflect, kiss his girth,
wash it with their blood.
He, The Arrogant One
whose kingdom
runs from The Upper West Quarter
to The Lower East Trough
even he,
even he bows
to Zammurad Shah Bakhtari,
also Laqa, the ultimate in sorcery
but only a wily old bastard
with fungus in his teeth
and beads in his beard
who sits on a throne
smelling of his own faeces.

Together they fight
Amir Hamzah –
The Lord of Conjunction,
Sahib-qiran,
before whom the moon
and the sun both bow,
whose valour instills fear
in many who’d kill, tear
with their swords and their spears
and not once show remorse
even they, when they’d hear
his name their pride would run
like a disease from a medicine.

But the point where
we choose to enter –
our senses surrendered –
the point where we
let ourselves be
in this magical world,
this magical world
where the difference
between the real
and the imagined
is perhaps a trick
between the awake you
and your sleeping self,
the point where we enter
is the one where Amar Ayyar,
confidant, friend, chief trickster
Amir’s lieutenant, masquerader
has murdered Mahtaab Jadoo
and has in a jungle taken refuge…

© Dan Husain
March 27, 2007



PS: Mahmood and I came together for the first time as a team on March 27, 2006 at the India Habitat Centre to perform Dastangoi. This is the first of the series of poems on Dastan-e-Amir Hamza that I intend to write to commemorate this partnership. :-)

Dastan at Kala Ghoda

Pranav Sharma, a fellow blogger, was at the Dastan performance at the Kala Ghoda Festival. He took few snaps and a video of our performance. I am stealing the links from his blog and posting them here. I hope he would not mind it. :-)

Enjoy,

Danish

Dastan in The Walled City

Hey Everyone,

I don't know whether you're getting bored watching us in the same postures at different settings or not. But I feel we're obliged to serve you with each of our performance detail. Afterall, we live from one performance to another. So, please bear with us.

We were invited to perform dastan at Balak Mata Centre in Matia Mahal in the Walled City. It has been one of our desires to perform in the Walled City. Though Mahmood once performed on the steps of the Jama Masjid but it was a solo act. It was my first chance to be in the Walled City and I was kicked about it. The place was a portico of an old haveli that has now been converted into a children education centre. Yasmin Sahiba, the director/ principal whatever you may call her of Balak Mata Centre, is a petite enthusiastic lady and had seen our performance at The Attic. She was keen that we perform at her centre's annual function and when Fouzia extended this invitation to us, we readily accepted it. Though the place was noisy with kids fluttering around us, we still loved it. Afterall, the yesteryear dastangos didn't perform to a captive audience. It was an open forum where people walked in and walked out, gossiping, sipping tea, chewing paan, etc.

Our friend G Rajaraman, a sports editor with the Outlook magazine, clicked some photographs. We bring them to you here. :-)

Thanks for supporting us.

Your Dastango,

Danish

What is he picking upon? Your senses. :-)

Are you ready for our tales?

Hindustan Jannat Nishaan.

Ok, I've got you now!

Amar Ayaar concocting a story.

A tale being spun.

Barq Firangi never tires of his Ayyaari.

What possibly could be my thoughts? Ah! The Kids!

The tale ends.

Almost Island Revisited

The Preamble

The Dastngo's prepare for a performance.

The Post-performance Dinner (From L to R): George Szirtes, Clarissa Upchurch, Munir Mohanty, Sharmistha Mohanty, Nagai Mariko, Ian Allan Sealy, Vivek Narayanan, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Kabir Mohanty, Ashwini Bhatt, Danish Husain, Mrs. A.K. Mehrotra.

Photographs courtsey: Clarissa Upchurch

Limited resources, unlimited talent

By Kavita Nagpal

Two performances in the very last month of the year are indicative of where Indian theatre may be going. With spare sets and lights, a sharing of space with the audience, and focus on the text, these were superb displays of the art of acting and the rich variety of the narrative idiom. Mahmood Farooqui, who is known as William Dalrymple's 'research assistant' on his book The Last Moghul, will now be acknowledged as the man who brought the ancient art of storytelling, or Dastaangoi, to the stage...

For the rest of the piece read it here.