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From Lahore with love
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In New Delhi this past week to present "Bullha", the crew of the Lahore-based theatre group Ajoka tells SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY that this play about love over religion is their "Jehad against the Jehadis".
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AS YOU wait for Sarfraz Ansari to come out of the green room dressed as Bullha, the lead role he acts out in the play by the same name, you inadvertently loiter onto the stage. Though with empty seats, it instantly makes you feel what an actor might be feeling, a blend of perhaps the responsibility of getting into the skin of the character and simultaneously, of fulfilling the audiences' demand for entertainment worth their money and much more. So you pose this question to Sarfraz as soon as he walks in, clad in a brown flowing robe flaunting a thick beard, all ready to perform.
"Actually, it is much more when you come from Pakistan to India, and that too to play the role of famous Sufi mystic poet Bulleh Shah, about whom our shared history leaves nothing hidden," says this middle-aged actor from Lahore. Brought to New Delhi by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations to mount the Ajoka group's production for three days during this past week at the Kamani Auditorium, Sarfraz says, "The performance which can make you close your eyes and feel the moment, is the ultimate performance" and that is what he always attempts to do, be it in the multi-character play "Bullha, one-act drama "Toba Tek Singh" or while directing the play "Niki". Touring various towns of Punjab last November including Amritsar, Patiala, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Chandigarh with this play, Sarfraz, a self-declared "Sufi at heart", recollects, "The feeling was marvellous because you know that you have sent the audience back home with a message, that of peace and brotherhood."
Nodding in agreement, Asim Bukhari, attired as Bulleh Shah's guru Shah Inayat in a long white cloak and a milk white beard to match, avers, "While acting in such a play you pay your tribute to such a great personality. Through `Bullha', our message to the masses is, let the winds of harmony blow in the region". With superb choreography by Uzra Butt, the play travelled to Iran before reaching Delhi. "Though we stuck to the play's original language, Punjabi, the narrator spoke in Persian. At the end of the play, the audience was crying out, Bullha, Bullha," the play's writer Shahid Nadeem says. While composing the play, he says he "played a bit with history" by bringing on stage Bulleh Shah and Banda Singh Bahadur together. But he offers a reason: "History is what our official historians wrote and which can be questioned any day. Although, the official history says both were alive in Punjab during the same period. We showed them meeting each other to present their two divergent world views."
Both Nadeem and Bukhari observe that serious theatre in their country is a rare phenomenon still. "Promoted by the General Zia-ul-Haq regime, there came alive plays in Pakistan just for entertainment. They are very loud comic sagas, a perfect tool not to make people think," Nadeem says, adding though, "But the situation is improving. When General Pervez Musharraf said we should declare Jehad against Jehadis, we at Ajoka say this is our way of declaring it."
The play's director Madeeha Gauhar agrees: "Be it in India or Pakistan, fundamentalist forces urgently need to be silenced. After all, why should the majority suffer for the myopic attitude of a minority"?
A question indeed to ponder over. The beginning has long begun but far away is the common goal, if at all there is any.
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