A different Azad
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Largely a monologue, Maulana Azad not only recreates the nation’s history, but also brings out the leader’s angst about Partition
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Photo: Murali Kumar K.
INTENSE PLAY The audience seemed very unprepared for an intense play like Maulana Azad
Tom Alter’s “Maulana Azad” raises the challenge for the audience almost immediately. The reason is that the play, on the life of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, makes intellectual demands on you and therefore takes time to connect to the audience.
Tom Alter as Maulana Azad brings in a certain curiosity. Watching him speak chaste Urdu and dole out Ghalib’s couplets is rather enticing.
Right at the beginning of the play, Alter struggled with his role. Not because of a lack of preparation but because of an audience that was probably unprepared for play .
Alter’s performance was interrupted thrice: he had to request the photographers to stop using the flash, warn the distracted audience moving in and out and engaging themselves in a conversation. the general banter and the moving in and moving out of the auditorium. For nearly three hours, in probably what is the only attempt to tell the story of the national leader on stage, Alter recreates history with a new dimension.
The political conflict between the two Muslim leaders Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Azad is deliberated on with great detail. His dispute with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, for having supported Nehru to the post of Congress President, or his dialogues with Gandhiji, whom he later blamed as responsible for the Partition of India. .
Alter moves from internal to external monologues quite easily.
Though largely a monologue, the unseen voice is of Humayun Kabir (Sayeed Aalam), who is helping with the draft of Azad’s memoirs of the freedom struggle. One sees at close proximity the turmoil within Azad who struggles to stop Partition. The play is engaging for it takes you on Azad’s journey revealing the many layers of Indian polity. Azad has only acerbic words for Patel and Jinnah.
Yet, Indian politics is not the only thing that you get to see and hear about in the play. The play, with its intense political analysis, appeals to the intellect, while the dohas and the shaayaris to the emotions. The play successfully mixes the two different mediums.. For a generation that has only seen images of Azad during Independence day celebrations on television, Alter fleshes him out as a man with passion, patriotism and a high level of commitment to the country.
In terms of lights and sound, the play suffered – this probably was due to the lack of facilities made available at Yavanika.
DEEPTHY SHEKHAR
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Chennai and Tamil Nadu
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