THEATRE
Play for our times
I FIRST saw Asghar Wajahat's Partition play "Jisse Lahore Nahin Dekhya" ("Unborn in Lahore", its sensitive English translation by Dhiraj Singh, was published in The Little Magazine in September-October 2000) in Mussoorie nearly a decade ago.
It was Habib Tanvir's stunning production. The play opened to a haveli of grey, washed out sets. A Muslim family has moved in, having been allotted the house after its Hindu owners fled to India. While exploring the huge haveli, one of the children comes screaming, "There is someone here". The eternal fear of the outsider.
But Ratan ki Ma is no ghost: she just hasn't joined the general exodus to India, that's all. She has chosen to remain here, waiting for her son to come back. She knows in her heart that Ratan, who had gone in search of a Hindu driver, is never going to return. But she will not go; she'll not leave her beloved Lahore. "Jisse Lahore nahin dekhya, woh janmiya nahin," she declares with a sigh. And Sikandar Mirza, the "mojahir" from Lucknow who has come to Pakistan leaving behind his Chikankari business, and whose family has, after months in the camps, been allotted this haveli by the Custodian, realises that he has a problem on his hands.
Seeing the play performed again this year at Mumbai's Prithvi Theatre, by Dinesh Thakur's group Ank in their annual festival, I am struck both by its timelessness, and our ability to forget history. I am reminded of Saadat Hasan Manto'_s tremendous Partition story, "Toba Tek Singh". The lunatics in the asylums have to be sent off, Muslims to Pakistan, Hindus to Hindustan — separated, shared out like so much property — and the lunatics, of course, would like to know what, if you please, is this Pakistan? And if it is not India, then what is India? Finally one lunatic climbs to the top of a tree, and refuses to come down. He will go neither to India, nor to Pakistan: he just wants to sit in his tree.
And that is what this old Punjabi Hindu woman says, too — she just wants to sit in her corner of Lahore. The next question is: who will talk to the outsider? But the women's ways of chatting and making peace win over their resentment of the old lady. New relationships are formed, and slowly, they realise that it is possible to live in the same house not just as friends, but also as one family.
In Lahore, on the banks of the Rabi, something new and strange is happening, even as the typical businesses of daily life go on, the "custodians" go about their indifferent, rent-seeking ways, and the local pehalwan roams the streets with his chamcha, looking for something to do. At the local chai stand, the friendly poet from Ambala and his mojahir friend, the poetry-loving tangawalla, come for hot morning chai after they have explored the town at night. Every exile searches for his or her own hometown in the streets and by lanes of Lahore. If the Lucknavi women look for familiar vegetables and a taste of glorious paan, the tangawalla looks for his beloved shaam-chidiya. In the Mirzas' mohalla, the old Punjabi Hindu woman adopts the Muslim family as her own, giving them the run of her house, helping them to settle in. In turn, she is adopted as the mohalla's Dadima. If she has lost one family, she has found many more.
And so time passes. When Deepavali comes, the families gladly celebrate the festival with lights and light-heartedness, puja and sweets. But the presence of the "outsider" is still unbearable to the local goons. Violence upon peace-loving individuals has never been difficult, and the inevitable is set in motion.
Nevertheless, there are still those who remain sane and unafraid. "So what?" is the tolerant response of the Maulvi. When Ratan ki Ma tries to leave town at dawn one day, to spare her Muslim family from the threats they are living under, the poet and the tangawalla stop her. You will shame us if you leave, says the poet: you will shame this entire town. Ratan ki Ma has become the conscience of Lahore.
And so it is, finally, that Ratan ki Ma dies peacefully in her beloved Lahore. But what is to be done for her funeral? There are no more Hindus left in town to cremate her according to Hindu rites. The Maulvi says, gently, that she must be given the dignity of being cremated in the Hindu way. And so it is that the Muslim men carry her bier, chanting Ram-naam, to the banks of the Rabi, where Sikandar Mirza lights the pyre.
This play by Asghar Wajahat, acclaimed playwright and Professor of Hindi at Jamia Millia Islamia, is not an easy work. It reminds us of the tremendous power of performance art. I still remember the thrilling poetry that imbues the Habib Tanvir production. Snatches of song that ebb and flow between scenes, throw tense, angry questions at the audience: "Tu agar mera na banta to na ban, apna to ban".
In Thakur's production, although it sadly lacks live music, brief recordings of Nida Fazli's lyrics set to music by Kuldip Singh punctuate the scene changes with poignant imagery. Preeta Mathur plays Ratan ki Ma, while director Dinesh Thakur plays the poet Nasir Fazli. Projections of telling Partition images are flashed onto the screen — the trains, the bodies, the anguished faces — and there is much to be absorbed.
Amidst the shouts and slogans, and the howls of the greedy killers, we also see more recent images, from the Gujarat riots — the face of a murderous killer holding up a sword, and the face of a victim pleading for mercy. These are not easy images to sit through. They are disturbing, and the tears that prick at our eyes are those not only of compassion, but also of a collective, silent guilt.
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