man sees a woman performing a thumri and finds her beguiling. The man notices other men’s gaze upon her and feels threatened. He feels the need to eradicate all other gazes. Remove her from the bazaar, or leave her there is the narcissistic impetus, or at least it would be in a story in which the man is the hero. That is certainly not the case here.

In the 1972 Hindi film, Pakeezah, the opening dance sequence to Thaaray rahiyo ends with one of Nargis Jaan’s patrons shooting the other one for making a duelling offer. Despite her soulful entreaties, her lover does not stay, but the show must go on. The camera zooms in on her feet, engaged endlessly in thatkaar and pans up to her face that has lost the hopeful glow of a woman in love and glistens with the sweat of the realisation that she must now surrender to the will of the bazaar, without the protection of the man she thought loved her.

The Colony’s recent stage adaptation of the iconic classic reimagines the story for a younger audience, adds a hip-hop style Greek choir to tell the audience (mostly the English-speaking youth of Lahore) how to feel whenever the plot becomes hard to follow. The play makes sense and provides a healthy evening out for a city that has slowly been losing its art and culture.

For anyone from the generation that has a nostalgic perspective on the film, the play speaks two different languages. It tells a story of unrequited love, but from a female perspective, in a world where the stakes of a romance prior to (or outside of) marriage are much higher for the woman: pregnancy, dishonour, spinsterhood, death.

She can be a wife or a courtesan, a virgin or a whore, and there is no room in the middle for her identity.

Nargis Jaan’s lover fell for her because she was a performer; but for the same reason, he could not marry her. If love is to exist, asserts Pakeezah, it must exist outside of the bounds of society, in a bazaar in Lucknow, in the world of Umrao Jaan, on a small boat in the middle of the ocean, behind the glimmering veil of a full moon.

lmost all women my age have experienced this over and over again: your friend gets married and then she’s gone. Either she literally has no time to meet her friends or she is no longer who she was in futile soul-crushing attempts to appease the susral. Azra, played by the fierce Iram Sana, stands in for all of us. Saada chiriyan da chamba wae. All the unseen tears over yet another sister lost to patriarchy.

This is the tragedy of Nargis Jaan. Worn down by a life of insecurity, in the middle of the bazaar and subject to the male gaze, not taken seriously for her art and navigating a marketplace where men are vying for control over her body, she craves marriage, family, the social and practical security of raising a daughter with a father.

When Pakeezah’s mother (played by a classically trained kathak dancer) dies and the younger performers take the stage, the play devolves into a mehndi dance sequence, in which no one is doing kathak or anything remotely classical. There is no synchronisation. The dancers are discordant with the music and one another.

For anyone from the generation that has a nostalgic perspective on the film, the play speaks two different languages. It tells a story of unrequited love, but from a female perspective, in a world where the stakes of a romance prior to (or outside of) marriage are much higher for the woman: pregnancy, dishonour, spinsterhood, death.

The play has some bright and funny moments, which get enthusiastic responses from the audience. There are witty one-liners that take a Gen-Z perspective to some of the more outdated implications of the story. But those are few and far between as there is song after song, most of which are not even from the original film, with very little dialogue in between.

It is a kathak play without much kathak, and the only performer who is actually doing kathak, in time with the beat and speaking the language of Meena Kumari in the opening song (Thaaray rahiyo), is not allowed to be the face of it. In the classical sense, the opening performance is the only part of the play that does credit to the skill and history that went into the original film. On stage, the performer seems to be in her own skin, radiant and alive in a way that I have not seen her be in years.

The female lead playing the role of Pakeezah (Meena Kumari plays both the mother and the daughter in the original, which they could not do in this case since it was a live performance) is a terrible dancer and an even worse actor. Iram Sana in the minor role of Azra Begum outshines her. Along with Hashim Ali, who plays the role of one of the nawabs that frequent a house of Lucknow courtesans, she seems to be the only one actually acting.

At the beginning of the play, one of the crew members makes a brief introduction. He ends by asking the audience whether they have seen the film. Some people say “yes.” He says, “You will be disappointed.” That unfortunately turns out to be neither a joke nor feigned humility.

But, Pakeezah is a story that is still relevant today. It needs to be part of the conversation, which is why writer and director Saad Sheikh deserves credit for reminding us of it. It is impossible to take your eyes off Meena Kumari during the opening thumri sequence. It’s also painful to watch velvet bundles of money and jewels landing coarsely at the henna-reddened soles of her feet — to watch such a resplendent manifestation of the divine feminine being reduced to a capitalist, masculine transaction.

The recent gang rape of a woman in Islamabad’s F9 Park sparked massive protests. That is why this story is still relevant today and is begging to be told.

The counter response to the protests from some men from various parts of society sought to victim-blame, excuse and avoid accountability. This society is a bazaar and women’s lives, identities and bodies are bought and sold every day, whether within the confines of marriage or outside of them.

The author is a writer and academic based in Lahore

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