Dastan-goi in India
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Contents |
What is dastan goi?
Daastaan= story; hence dãstãn goee= story telling
Modern dastan goi
Malini Nair | Manto & mobiles: How the art of dastangoi has morphed | 2018-01-07 The Times Of India
From Turkey into 16th century Persia, over the Caucasian range and into Ukraine and Russia, and then India, dastangoi, the fabulous art of storytelling, has travelled a long way, carrying with it tales of sorcery, war, romance and fantasy. Set in the glorious fantasyland of Tilism-e-Hoshruba (wizardry that stuns the senses), where shapeshifting trickster Amar Aiyyar pitted his magic skills against the might of sorcerer-emperor Afrasiyab, these stories chronicle the real and imagined adventures of Amir Hamza, believed to be the Prophet’s uncle.
But [2005-18] its renaissance in India have seen nearly as many dramatic changes as its fascinating 500-year-old history in the country.
Actor-director Mahmood Farooqui, who reinvented dastangoi for modern theatre after its last performance in Delhi in 1928, returned to stage [in 2017] after nearly two years. He was recently acquitted of rape charges.
“The gods can turn mountains to straw and straw to mountains,” was about all he would say before introducing to a packed hall the three dastans for the evening, two from the traditional repertoire and one, a pungent political satire on the laws of sedition.
In the time Farooqui has been away — and to an extent even before that — there have been seismic shifts in dastangoi. Some relate to those performing it, and some to the content. Today, almost every kind of literature, from short stories to novellas, has taken the place of epic narratives. There are adapted works of folklorist Vijaydan Detha and Tagore, short stories of Manto and Ismat Chugtai and novellas of Rahi Masoom Raza. There are freshly written contemporary political texts on communalism and Partition, and biographical works on Amir Khusro, and Dara Shikoh.
Actor-writer Ankit Chadha has scripted dastangois on millennial topics — the inequities of Digital India and allegories on mobile phone technology and corporate aggression. He believes that the art’s greatness lies in its capacity to tell a range of stories. “My background in digital marketing, before I quit to do dastangoi full-time, made technology a familiar theme to work on,” says Chadha.
1570-1928: from the Deccan courts to Mir Bakar Ali
The first historical reference to dastangoi goes back to 1570 in the Deccan courts, where a raconteur Haji Qissakhani Hamdani is believed to have arrived from Iran. It found its way to the court of Akbar, who was so besotted with the dastans that he commissioned 140 massive illustrations on the stories. It then became a hugely popular art with both the elite and the common folk, and was recited in courts, salons, outside Jama Masjid and in gallis. The last known dastango, Mir Bakar Ali, who wowed Delhi with his brilliance, died in 1928.
There are no survivors to recount how the stories were traditionally told, leaving the field wide open to interpretation. “All we know is that dastangoi was a huge umbrella of stories with wide branches spread across the Deccan, Rampur, Lucknow and Delhi in the 18th and 19th centuries,” says Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, the Urdu scholar whose exhaustive research into dastan traditions was key to its revival. “But it has changed form and content.”
2005
In 2005, the first reinvented dastangoi was staged. The production was designed using whatever historical inputs were available but new elements were also introduced: that there would be two storytellers seated on a bare stage in vajrasan, that they would wear white angrakhas and flared pajamas with a jaunty dopala topi, and a silver bowl with water on either side.
“The only real information we have from an Akbar contemporary, Abdul Nabi Fakhr-i- Zamani, is that there must be no dramatic body movement or gestures and the storytellers must sit rigid and only use the strength of their voice and facial expressions,” says Faruqi.
The art today has been claimed by many, and there is a sharp debate on who makes for a dastango. Danish Hussain, Mumbai-based actor-director, says dastangoi is not obliged to stick to conventions because it had none to begin with. The actor was among the earliest of Farooqui’s collaborators on stage (to complicate matters, he was also a prosecution witness against Farooqui) but he now performs a variant, qissebaazi, that is more dramatic, draws from stories across India and incorporates music. And he abjures the white ensemble.
His qissebazi troupe’s recent performance in Delhi included a text from Bharata’s Natya Shastra and Tilism-e-Hoshruba, toggling between the language of the original text and Hindi. “We effortlessly shift between languages in everyday life so I thought why not have bilingual storytelling,” he says.
Farooqui is dismissive of those who undermine dastangoi’s exalted narrative. “Now there are new dastangos every day in (white) costume and a highly aesthetic narrative art is in danger of becoming a pulp form.”
Chadha feels the art shouldn’t be reduced to just reading texts. “The masters knew the art of weaving stories and making them their own. Readings of texts written by others isn’t dastangoi.”
