A voyage of self-discovery

Karachi
There comes a juncture in the lives of most of us when we realise that we are not exactly the people our elders intended us to be. We ultimately discover our own voice and embrace our personal identity in the face of societal and familial pressures.
This is precisely what Pakistani-American actress Fawzia Mirza brought home to the audience at Napa’s (National Academy of Performing Arts) international theatre festival on Wednesday evening, when through an astutely executed one-person show, she narrated the process of her growing up with a flawless hour-and-a-half monologue with the values inculcated by her parents and society.
Profusely punctuated with humour and witticisms, Mirza takes us all back to the juncture when she is brought up as a young Pakistani Muslim child in an alien culture of small-time Canada and maturing into an actress in the heart of noisy, chaotic Chicago.
In her ear-piercing American English (something she can’t help and has to be forgiven for that), she narrates her experiences when coming into conflict with the values instilled by her mother whose psyche is governed by the values back home while Fawzia’s are shaped by those of her parents’ adopted motherland. She narrates her journey of self-discovery and strength that carries her all the way from childhood to maturity as a Pakistani Muslim.
The play was frequently interspersed with musical numbers from the Bollywood movie, Aradhana (1970), starring Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna, because all along, Mirza describes her admiration for Sharmila Tagore. She also mentions other actresses like Madhubala and Maduri but according to her none is as beautiful as Sharmila.
Then Fawzia takes a trip into the past and describes the way her mom used to worry about her weight issues in a Desi style.
However, in the broader context, the theme really is not Fawzia’s admiration for Tagore but is actually an account of the way she was brought up by the mother who also was from an assumingly modern background but with the passage of time and the onset of mellow years, turned rather conservative. It is a story of parent-children latent conflicts.
All said and done, it was an adroitly executed one-person play. In fact it was the one-person aspect that made the performance all the more admirable. — By Anil Datta