The lost art of dastangoee or story telling is perhaps not completely forgotten by all. With Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Hussain, who hail from New Delhi, audiences sit spell bound and fixated as the two delve into thick plots, and tell tall tales of djinns and kings and princesses and a long lost world that no longer exists in the sub-continent. They do not use props or take aid from lighting effects, music or even costumes. In fact the performance is simple, with these two men sitting upstage and telling a story using their vocal effects and simple gestures. While on the one hand it is a form of theatre, on the other it does not use many characteristics of theatre. This Dastangoi is based on medieval Urdu tales. Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Hussain have performed from New Delhi to New York. But they have something very interesting in their possession: About 46 volumes of forgotten stories from the late 19th century. And they claim they do not even know how these stories were originally told. They also have a rare 1920 audio clip of a performance by Mir Bakar Ali, the last great storyteller — or “dastangoh” — in this tradition.
According to information, at its peak from the late 16th to 19th centuries, Dastangoi performers entertained audiences with tales of war, magic and adventures that revolved around the adventures of Amir Hamza, titled “Dastan e Amir Hamza”, a man said to be an uncle of the Holy Prophet. These could be never ending stories. At Faiz’s centennial, this pair and its story telling became relavant as they gave a contemporary twist to their performance. (The event had been organized by the Faiz Gharm, held at the Ali Auditorium.) The pair gave the art form a contemporary twist, adding stories on themes from the trauma of the 1947 Partition, which created the two nations of India and Pakistan from the British colony, to the poetry of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
The storytellers weave a complex tale of the land of Kohistaan, whose natives have been displaced by the magicians. Slowly, the story weaves through the thick maze of politics, Along with traditional narratives, the Dastangohs break into Faiz, which makes it all the more enjoyable. Mahmood Farooqui is also a co-director of the Bollywood film Peepli Live, while Danish Hussain is a theatre actor. So while the original dastangoh engaged audiences at street corners in Lucknow or on the steps of the Jama Masjid, each story taking several days to be performed, today this art has become confined to the theatre. Nevertheless, at least someone has remembered to preserve this dying art.
