An Urdu play, Tarana-e-Qafas was staged on the third day of the Adi Vidrohi drama festival. The play was presented at Ravindra Bhavan hall here on Wednesday.
Directed by a veteran Bollywood actor Ahmed Khan, the play was performed by the artists of Nazar Group, Bhopal. The play is all about the freedom revolution that evoked a quick pace in the country during year 1922. While talking to The Pioneer director of the play Ahmed Khan said, “This is not a play or a stage drama but it is something more than this. It is a compilation of the shayaris that were written in the year 1922 by some shayars.”
The play revolves around the life of Urdu poets who used to write the shayaris about freedom and its revolt. As they used to write for a mass awareness the British officials decided to arrest all of those and out them all in the prison. The shayars like Maulana Khuzandi, Maulana Mohammad Mustafa (Ahmaq), Raghupati Sahay (Firaq Gorakhpuri), Arif (Aashiq), Udaywar Singh, Ratan lal (Jamrrud), Mohammad Hafiz and many more were arrested by the British army and were prisoned for life.
As all of these shayars shared a single cell, they decided to organize a mushaira every Friday and share their poetries and thoughts with each other, as they could remain away from their passion of writing and poetry they decided to do so. The poetry recited by them in the jail about freedom fight and its struggle in some way or the other reached out to the masses.
“I read a book that was a compilation of the poetries by these poets. This book was published by Swaraj Bhawan and I was asked by Sri Ram Tiwari to produce a play on it. After much thought I decided that keeping the poetries as the central idea, I produced Tarana-e-Qafas,” said Ahmed Khan. Ahmed Khan played Maulana Khuzandi and totally justified the role with his fine Urdu language.
Shahvez Sikander played the complicated character of Ashiq, made the play even more thrilling leaving the audience in a sense of suspense. The stage design by Shavez Sikander gave a feel of an actual jail and the shades of lighting by Kamal Jain enhanced the mood of the play making the audience enjoy it.