Manjari Chaturvedi tells Iknoor Kaur about mixing qawwali with Sufi Kathak for the first time to revive a lost legacy
In a city that landmarks some of the greatest Sufi saints of our country, the lack of knowledge about these saints is unbelievable. We may have named Chirag Delhi after Nasiruddin Chiragh Dehlavi but a few know who he was. To revive the legacy of these Sufi authors, well-known Sufi Kathak dancer Manjari Chaturvedi started a series of performances called Baais Khwaja with an intention to revive the legacy of 22 saints and poets who have contributed to the Sufi thought extensively. While Dehlavi was the first in the series, her next is a tribute to Hazrat Bedam Shah Warsi. It will be staged tonight at the India International Centre.
Chaturvedi feels that Bedam Shah’s philosophy of secularism was extraordinary. “The poetry of Bedum sahib is very profound and is a fusion of different religions. Only a few people who know the Sufi thought are aware of this. He puts love above everything else and doesn’t bother about religion,” she said.
She stressed on the fact that the work of these saints has never been officially recorded. Hence, her aim is to be able to create a record of their works which can be available even 50 years later. She said, “A lot of people came and told me that nobody is interested in the work of these saints. But I disagree. There are a lot of people who are interested even today but they don’t have an access to the old Sufi work. Most of them don’t even have the right knowledge about it even if they are interested. A lot of people feel that if a song has the word maula in it, it becomes a Sufi number. That is a very wrong concept. I want to revive the Sufi tradition in its purest form.”
Thus, Chaturvedi created a mix of qawwali and Sufi kathak through Bedam Shah’s poetry in order to make the understanding of the genre easier. She shared, “Qawwal Janab Nurul Hassan and Qawwal Janab Arshad Hussain Chisty from lucknow will be joining me for the show. They will sing the poetry of Bedum sahib and for the first time ever there will a dance on that qawwali which I will be doing. We have created a beautiful composition. One of the couplets will be ‘Jo tu mujhe bolta hai woh main nahi hun, tu hai tu.’ This is basically an answer to God. We keep looking for God everywhere but what we are and what we speak is all his work not ours. This is the dance of surrender.”
Amidst the dance of surrender there will also be a complete eight-minute dance which will take place while sitting down, she informed, “My purpose is to be able to emote through the poetry. Sometimes the dance doesn’t need to be intense and complicated — the simplicity of it touches the heart.”
Chaturvedi has also used Amir Khusro’s poetry in the performance. “At some point of time even Bedum Shah’s poetry was influenced by Khusro. So I have put in the influence of Khusro on Bedum sahib,” she elaborated.
The set for the performance is extensive, while the costumes have been kept as simple as possible. Chaturvedi believes that with today improved stage lighting techniques help to make the show appealing. “In earlier times, lamps were used for the shows. Today we have so much more than lamps, so why not use it to the fullest. It is not like we are performing in a dargah, we are performing on stage. So the effectiveness of the dance needs to be highlighted through appropriate lighting,” she concluded.