Djinns, demons and their Dastans

In the past decade, Mahmood Farooqui has reinvented Dastangoi, an ancient art of story- telling, for a modern audience

October 16, 2014 04:29 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:31 pm IST

Danish Husain and (right) Mahmood Farooqui.

Danish Husain and (right) Mahmood Farooqui.

Perhaps they wore colourful robes as they entered to perform. Or, may be their clothes were plain and only the words they uttered carried a froufrou that conjured vivid images in the minds of the listeners, of djinns and demons on the prowl in the adventurous landscape of the story they were narrating.

They were storytellers of course, but do we know anything more about them? Where did they come from and what were their performances like? One does not know for sure and can only surmise from vague mentions in the pages of history, what exactly Dastangoi, the art of storytelling, was like way back in the 16th century when it became popular in the subcontinent, especially the courts of the Deccan and Mughal rulers.

A compound of two Persian words (- ‘Dastan’ - story and ‘goi’ - to tell a Dastan), Dastangoi is believed to have thrived as a performance form for a long time in India. However, there is little information that survives to construct its conclusive history.

Interestingly, there is a ‘modern’ version today. Widely performed in different cities across North India, the contemporary rendition has many distinct features: two Dastangos or storytellers, dressed in stark white angarkhas, are seated next to each other on a white diwan-like structure with white bolsters on either side. Beside each performer is a wine cup, the only piece of ostentation on an otherwise bare stage. Sometimes, there is a candle that accompanies the wine cup with a shining flame almost as if to illuminate the words coming out of the performer’s mouth.

The performers, mostly well-versed in Hindi and Urdu, choose a story from a wide array - swashbuckling tales of Amir Hamza, the uncle of the Prophet whose adventures became the traditional text of the Dastangos in the 16th century, or Sadat Hasan Manto’s stories or even Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Memory and the power of utterance are key for the performer. In a jugalbandi of sorts, the lines of the story oscillate between the two performers, in a dramatic give-and-take where one instantaneously picks up the story from the part where his partner trailed off. The performance generally begins with a ‘sakinama’, an invocation to the wine server. This fragment also summarises the story in a few lines. And then, the dastan unfolds. In a typical performance, it is the pace and wit of the rhetoric that flows seamlessly from the body of one performer to the other, that holds the audience’s attention guiding their imagination carefully into the landscape of the story.

Mahmood Farooqui, the man considered responsible for the form’s modern-day revival or as he likes to call it ‘reinvention,’ believes the current version is not an attempt to resuscitate the 16th century form but in fact a reinvention in itself. It is now almost a decade since he first brought it to the stage in 2005. After multiple performances across North India, primarily in New Delhi, Farooqui and his team of Dastangos, having performed mostly for adults well-versed with the literature of the performance, are now focussing on children. Dastan Alice Ki, based on the Caroll classic, performed recently, is a step in that direction.

When there is hardly any information of the ‘original’, what exactly is the reinvention based on? In the lecture he delivered at INTACH in 2011, Farooqui attempted to outline a history of the form and contextualised his attempts at reinventing it. “By the 16th century...specialised storytellers of the story (mostly the collection of tales of Amir Hamza), called Dastangos had emerged. There is very little information on what the ingredients of their art were, but they were sufficiently distinct to merit a separate genre for themselves. Akbar himself was exceedingly fond of the narrative and used to recite it himself.”

The form is believed to have donned an Indian look in the 1730s. “The poet and writer Mir Taqi Khyal… brought in a realm called Tilism, an enchanted realm created by sorcerers which have characteristics, properties and life features which are unique to them.” Then, there was Aiyyari, the element that is full of tricks and disguise. Farooqui explains that “the popularity of Tilism and Aiyyari allowed the Dastangos to develop a fantastic world which wholly parallels this world so the existing social world around them could be easily featured into the narrative.”

Dastangoi is believed to have reached its apogee in Lucknow during the 1857 Uprising. Farooqui says that along with many writers and poets, Dastangos too travelled to Lucknow as part of the mass exodus from Delhi. Charting the end of the historical timeline, he says “with the passing away of the last great Dastango, Mir Baqar Ali in Delhi in 1928, the tradition died, almost abruptly.” The oral tradition is also believed to have encouraged print editions making it a literary form.

Farooqui first came across Dastangoi in the work of S.R. Faruqi, an Urdu critic. Intrigued, he began research for a documentary on its history. He also began to explore its performative potential. “How did Dastangos sit, how much did they move around, what were individual stylistic feats, did they have breaks, how was the audience arranged, did they sing out the poetry… none of these things were clear and are still unclear. Working closely with Faruqui Saheb and drawing on our experiences as theatre actors, we devised a way to putting together a one-hour show.” One of the first things Farooqui did was to innovate and bring in a second performer to join the single traditional storyteller on stage, to alternate recitations.

The modern history of Dastangoi began on May 4, 2005, at India International Centre, Delhi, where Farooqui staged ‘Dastan-e-Amir Hamza’. “I had roped in writer William Dalrymple to deliver a lecture. I had also invited members from the Urdu theatre and literary community. It was a full house!” recounts Farooqui.

Since 2005, Farooqui and his team have not only explored many texts but contemporary issues as well. Dastan-e-sedition is an example in this case. It spoke of the arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen, extra-judicial killings and corruption by setting the story in the fantastical landscape of Kohistan.

Farooqui hopes to reach smaller towns in the next few years. “Word is spreading about the form and now there are a considerable number of storytellers.”

He says the form champions and encourages women as performers. “Our next performance will have two women executing the entire show. What I cannot ignore is that traditionally, the form championed men playing roles of women because there is that fun associated with a man playing a woman,” he explains.

What about people who may be deterred because of the ornate language of the performance? “Anyone who has seen a Hindi movie is a potential dastangoi audience,” says Farooqui.

Specially for children

A story of two men, fairly unimportant one could say, is about to be narrated next week. Goopy and Bagha’s story. Goopy wanted to be a well-known singer and Bagha, a celebrated drummer. Now, while one had a gruff voice, the other played the drum rather badly. Exiled into the forest for their lack of talent, their fortunes changed when the King of Ghosts granted them three boons.

“What’s left to hear of the story?” you ask. Mahmood Farooqui , the man behind the team that is going to narrate the story, answers, “The story is never the most interesting aspect of storytelling. It is the manner in which one narrates it that makes it irresistible.”

Fauzia and Valentina Trivedi will plan to narrate ‘Dastan Goopy or Bagha ki’ to an audience comprising children at India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on October 19.

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