Sayeed Alam brought to stage the fascinating and untold stories of Mirza Ghalib. He tells Divyani Raghav that he chose the poet because he loved Delhi like his beloved
Mirza Ghalib had once said Haathon ki lakiron se kismat nahi badalti kyonki kismat unki bhi hoti hai jinke haath nahi hote...
The play Ghalib in Delhi held recently by Pierrot group rejuvenated the presence ofGhalib between us highlighting his trails, travails and tribulations. “I asked my soul, what is DelhiIJ She replied, the world is the body and Delhi its life,” once said the poet. That truly proves his love for the city.
Humor, as the main component of the play, did full justice to the soul and worked as oxygen to the message of the play — that modernisation and tradition should move together. This hilarious play crossed all limits of critical humorous sarcasm and one came out with a different perspective of things.
The play started with the poet’s rebirth in the 21st century. It showed how he wanted to pay a paan wala in annas, how he wanted to go to Balli Mahran and nobody was willing to take him and a lot of other antics. He was oblivious of the fact that he was in the 21st century and not in his times and that turned into something comical.
“Humor saves you from self righteousness, if I could have used tragic medium or a medium other than humor then I could have indulged in some sort of self righteousness where I would have ended up criticising the system, the society and the government. But when I use humor as a medium then I indulge in self destitution and also so it is self criticism to some extent. This is why humor, wit and satire is more relevant than any other medium,” said Sayeed Alam, director.
Ghalib was deliberately chosen as the main character of the play because the poet loved Delhi like his beloved, despite of belonging to Agra. Such was his love for the city that he got married and settled there and even during the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, when everybody fled the place he stayed back in Balli Mahran in a financially unstable state. He was also invited by the Nawab of Rampur which was not too far from Delhi to come and live there and was offered Rs200 per month. Even that could not convince him to leave Delhi.
Ghalib comes across as a person who has loved Delhi the most as compared to anyone in last 200 or 300 years. If one wants to associate someone with Delhi, the first person that comes across the mind is Ghalib. “His era was also very important as he was the person who had the neck of modern India also and was most relevant than Akbar or Kalidas because he lived on the verge of transformation from medieval to modern India,” said the director.
Undoubtedly, one would be amazed to know that the source of references of the play have been taken mainly from Ghalib’s letters, which makes his autobiography (there are 875 of them) and to some extent his poetry and biographies. Alam told us that the first biography on Ghalib was Yadgar-e-Ghalib by Maulana Alfas Husain. Ghalib never intended them to be published which is an honest account of himself, his time, of 1857. The poet was also quite modern in his approach and attitude as he liked railways, telegram, modernization in Calcutta, colony system, electricity, et al.
This was not the first time that this play was performed. It’s first presentation was in 1997 so the play is almost 20 year old. “When I did this play then I thought that I was the first one to tackle such subjects but later on I came to know that this is not the new theme. There have been several plays like Ghalib Ke Purze and was performed in mid 1700s. And other plays in Pakistan also like Ghalib Bandar road, but I have revived and doing it consistently for the past 20 years,” acknowledged Alam.
We came to know about the deeper facts about Ghalib. One such fact that the play put light on was the attention seeking habit of the poet, which was his legacy. “He was a publicity seeker since his time. So this is what Ghalib would have done if he took a second birth,” said the director. This was highlighted.
He was renowned because of the publicities which enlightened his contribution in literature and poetry. That is why, according to the play, when he came in this era he faced the same problem that he faced in his time. His problem was that he was not as popular as he wished to be.
Without taking sides, the play writer very critically showcased the wrong that was happening in the society, be it social issues like JNU, Jai Hind or evils like corruption. “Whether it is perpetrated by any political party or government we have to highlight the defaults of the system. We want to be neutral, critical as well as appreciable of the system. So everyone have to be blamed fairly and equally and we have to portray and highlight darker side of the picture as well,” said the director.
Six months of hard core practice and rehearsals bore fruits for the artistes as they very excellently portrayed realistic characters with comic acting which was derived from the humorous dialogues of wit which worked very well in favor and success of the play.
“Everything as per as modernisation, progress, development is not oozy there is a darker side to everything. We will best be able to connect if we know the darker side. Something has suffered also along with the positivism of the modernisation like human and interpersonal relationship, culture, language, et al. So a balance is needed in tradition and modernity. Find cord between truth and history, progress and heritage. We don’t wanted to give any message to audience other than this that modernity is co-existence with tradition, history and heritage,” said the director.
Strong message was been conveyed in a very smooth way that chuckled viewers bellies, relaxed mind and disseminated the hard facts. The play was worth watching and one who missed it, have missed a merriment evening.