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Ghalib’s back!
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“Ghalib in New Delhi” is a light-hearted commentary on the insanity of our times
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Photo: B. Jothi Ramalingam
The lost poet A scene from the Hindi play “Ghalib in New Delhi”
What would Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib do if he returned to his beloved Delhi today? How would he cope with the chaotic multi-lingual metro and its colourful inhabitants? And, most importantly, what would he think of the Hindi number “Beedi Jalaile”?
The answer to the last one would be a bewildered “Kya behooda shayari hai!”. That and more comes courtesy “Ghalib in New Delhi”, a delightful romp of a play in Hindi performed by Pierrot’s Troupe for the first time in Chennai recently. Written and directed by Dr. M. Sayeed Alam, the play has been performed successfully 220 times all over India, and it isn’t hard to see why.
The basic premise is that Ghalib takes a second janam and returns to Delhi in search of the fame and acclaim that evaded him in his previous birth. There are a few problems though, as his irrepressible young Bihari ‘room partner’ Jai Hind points out to him: he’s way too old (he’s played as a feisty but doddering old man with a long white beard by Alam himself), he only speaks Urdu and he has no idea about the crazy world of public relations.
And so begins the play’s light-hearted commentary on the insanity of our times, peppered with plenty of puns, innuendo and popular culture references. Ghalib can’t teach his own poetry at the university because he doesn’t have a PhD and his landlady (Mrs. Chhada, played effervescently by Niti) only knows him from Naseeruddin Shah’s serial and Jagjit Singh’s song. When he holds a press conference to announce that he’s back, he’s labelled a nut job in print. And when he visits an advertising agency, he’s informed that he’s simply not good-looking enough and that he’ll need Mallika Sherawat to ‘sell’ Ghalib in his ads.
Performed with minimal sets and basic lighting, the play depends on clever writing and the performances of its cast members to keep its audience hooked. The first few scenes, showing Ghalib interacting with a paanwallah, auto rickshaw driver, drunk and crooked police man, tend to get repetitive — he’s shocked by prices, he’s confused by English, he’s pushed around, etc. However, the play really takes off when he’s joined by Jai Hind, a young student with a predilection for raunchy Bollywood songs and babes, who takes Ghalib under his wing.
Jai Hind (or ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ as Ghalib insists on calling him) is a goofy, lovable character played to comic perfection by Harish. He and Alam share a wonderful chemistry on stage, feeding off each other’s creative energy throughout.
The play, which was held at the Music Academy by Mukti India to raise funds for amputees and polio victims, ended on a high note that had the audience laughing non-stop. Ghalib decides that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em; he’s now a shorts-wearing, tennis-playing party animal who’s collaborating with Shobha De on her latest book, “Sex in Ghalib’s poetry” and whose ghazals are being sung in Punjabi by Daler Mehendi on MTV. Wah Ghalib wah!
DIVYA KUMAR
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