Jahan mein aisa kaun hai, Ke jis ko gham mila naheen!
So go the opening lines of an Asha Bhosle number from the 1961 movie, ‘Hum Dono’.
Though the haunting melody of Asha’s mellifluous voice may be casually brushed aside as a mere film song, the profundity of these lines is something none could run away from. It is a profound reality.
Even the most prosperous, the most contented have had their moments of sorrow, humiliation, grief and other such negatives that often break a person for the rest of his or her life.
There’s none who couldn’t have gone through a rough patch at some juncture or the other in life. Thought processes are involuntary and try as you may, you just cannot shut them out of your mind.
Often the mishaps, the misfortunes, especially the abuse and maltreatment by ‘disciplinarian’, tyrant fathers during childhood, cling to a person till his dying day, making life a bitter experience.
These profoundly affect the personality development, physical development, and development in all other forms.
But then, we are faced with another vexing question: will the past be allowed to make every moment of our existence a living hell? Shouldn’t we rather let the dead past bury its dead, as the poet Henry Longfellow said, and make life worth living, in all its glory, in all its beauty? None can undo the past. That is a hard bitter eternal reality. Fretting gets one nowhere.
This, exactly, is the theme of the Urdu play, ‘Soch’ (Thoughts), staged at the Karachi Arts Council on Thursday evening.
Bazila Mustafa, a student of art movements in England, currently on sabbatical leave at home, directed the play, and introduced many innovations. According to the Arts Council President, Ahmed Shah, it took her 40 days to prepare the young people for the play. Seeing the play we’d certainly have to agree that the 40-day labour bore fruit. It was a well produced venture with the young people exhibiting lots of promise.
All the characters were clad in black trousers and black T-shirts. Their physical endurance and acrobatic skills were well tested by the innovations. The young performers were made to go on all fours with others climbing their backs to form pyramid-like shapes.
They narrate tales of husband-wife friction, their parents’ quarrels and bickering while they were children, incidents of rape, women having to resort to the flesh trade for keeping theirs and their family members’ bodies and souls together, the father of a newly-born baby girl refusing to accept the child because of his misogynist tendencies, and all other sorrows imaginable.
In fact there is a rape scene which is explicit enough even without the two people having to disrobe. It has been very judiciously managed so that all charges of vulgarity and lewdness have been avoided. Then there comes a stage when the characters realise that just harping back on the past is just an exercise in destructive futility.
The play abruptly takes a turn for optimism and the dénouement comes when they all realise this wholesome reality and happiness pervades the air.
All the characters, even though just pupils of theatre, did a very professional job.
However, there were things which needed to be dispensed with. For instance, one of the characters, in a fit of anger, shouts an oft-uttered four-letter profanity. It didn’t have to be all that close to everyday reality.
All said and done, ‘Soch’ was a whiff of real entertainment for the otherwise entertainment-starved citizenry of Karachi.