Celebrating the colours of Urdu

InstepREPORT

Dubai

The art of storytelling has woven civilisations together through time, since the beginning of time. Though the narrators may have varied from historians to professional writers, from opera singers to our own grandmothers - who for most of us are the best storytellers ever - there’s no denying the significance of storytelling. In South Asian context, within the walled cities of Delhi to the Qissa Khwani bazaar of Peshawar to the crossing that binds the Grand Trunk road to Kabul, this practice is called Qissa goi or Dastan goi.

Qissa Go, a theatre based collective, which is focused on the preservation, promotion and celebration of the South Asian languages and literature at its core, have taken upon themselves to continue weaving this fabric and bind centuries of literary traditions with the modern times.

A month ago, I started noticing teasers of the event on social media, then to be held in Dubai by the name of ‘Rang – An evening of performance poetry and music in Urdu,’ with a voiceover that went ‘Rang batein karein aur baton se khushbu aaye’. Soirees dedicated to the promotion of Urdu, a language known for its sophistication in both prose and poetry, were once very common in Subcontinent, but over the years their prominence and relevance seem to have faded away in the midst of mainstream, pop culture. For this reason, Rang seemed to have struck the right chords as one thing that we, the expat community, deeply miss here is the Urdu language. Hence it immediately caught the onlookers’ attention and left them asking for more.

The show, which was held in Dubai last week, was divided into two segments. The first was the recital (read performance) of the work of famous Urdu writers ranging from Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi to Habib Jalib, which was performed by the team Qissa Go and the second one was the musical tribute to iconic artists like Noor Jehan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen, performed by Mastam, a Dubai based band led by husband and wife duo, Schumaila and Faraz. This band is going places and making Pakistani expat community proud based on their unique approach to creating music. Schumaila Hussain is the same singer who has sung the very popular title track ‘Kya Kijiay’ for the play Muqabil.

Sarah Sohail, who is the founder of the UBP (UAE Based Pakistanis) forum on Facebook and was a well-known RJ during hey days of FM100, was the brains behind Rang. She is a writer herself and is also a performing member of Qissa Go. Looking at the response Rang received in Dubai, she wants to take this initiative beyond UAE to the countries where Pakistani expat communities exist.

“Rang has been a dream journey for all of us, because in the expat community there’s hardly anyone working towards the initiative of taking local art, music, culture and theatre beyond borders,” she says. “Our challenges were obviously to find people who would enjoy this kind of art, because it’s a very niche attempt. To get people to spend... to buy tickets for something like this was obviously very hard for us, but we were aware that what we were doing in terms of art form had an audience. It is my small contribution to strengthen the roots that we all belong to,’ said an excited Sarah Sohail.

An interesting observation that I made during the event was that there was also a significant representation of Indians who came to attend Rang. I connected with one of the attendee and enquired about her interest in this event and she shared some very interesting facts about how Urdu is revered within some parts of India.

“I booked the show as a surprise gift for my husband’s birthday because he is a huge fan of Urdu language and listens to many Urdu ghazals on a daily basis,” she said. “We are from Calcutta. You will not believe that in a museum in Punjab and Haryana, scriptures and hand written notes in Urdu are preserved.” Adding to that she said, “There are a lot of Hindu religious scriptures which have been translated in Urdu. A 105-year-old Urdu copy of Ramcharit Manas was found from a scrap market in New Delhi recently and is now preserved.” I verified this from the internet and also came across the fact that a Hyderabad based retired IAS officer Dr. Hasanuddin Ahmed had translated Bhagwat Gita in 1945 during the reign of the seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan.

Rang made me realise how important it was to keep Urdu alive and promote and take pride in this language; this is essential for preserving this beautiful treasure.

Pictures by Zuhair Javaid Photography

– Sadiq Saleem is a Dubai based entertainment journalist. He is also an Instep and SH correspondent and can be contacted on his page fb/sidsaidso.