The blessed month of November brought with it the highly anticipated Karachi Theatre Festival - the first of its kind to have been witnessed by this city.
Lights, Props, Drama!
The blessed month of November brought with it the highly anticipated Karachi Theatre Festival - the first of its kind to have been witnessed by this city. As the event unfurled over the 20-day period, it was gladly saved from the disappointment of an empty auditorium or an uneager audience. Theatre lovers and curious first-timers [the latter including this writer] queued up long before the curtain was due to rise, leaving no seats vacant. Of course it helped that there was no price on a ticket that would usually be talking big numbers where famous and renowned stars are involved.
Jinnay Lahore Nahi Vekhya was scheduled to be the second-last play of the festival and I, believing it to be the climax leading up to a sound finale, decided to make it my first choice. Apparently hundreds of others thought so, too, and the demand for this particular show rose so high that the management was forced to reopen its gates for a stunning second performance.
Sheema Kirmani led the audience through a riveting story set during the era of Partition in the heart of ‘Lor’. She adopted the role of an elderly Hindu woman who was left behind on the Pakistani side of the border, living a life of isolation in a house much too big for her. In came migrants from Lucknow, a family of four who were allotted the same house as compensation for the one they left behind in their hometown.
The play followed their story, as the two parties tried to make sense of the changes surrounding them. The lone lady refused to move out of the only place she had ever called home, while the refugees desperately tried to establish their right over the mansion - considering they had suffered immense pain to be a part of Pakistan and deserved to be comfortable in their new life.
Gangsters, mullahs and poets all jumped in to highlight their views on exercising Hindu tolerance or, in the case of the gunday, abolishing the entire concept of acceptance and peace.
Among the themes of homeliness and brotherhood, the production aimed to highlight the sensitive issue of extending tolerance towards minorities. The topic is as controversial as it was then, and the opposition was portrayed by uneducated street gangsters, who claimed their intolerance was a direct commandment of the religion they did not religiously follow.
The beauty of the union between refugees and the old lady cannot be overstated, for a bit of acceptance was all that was needed to open many other doors to friendship and happiness. However, it cannot go unnoticed that in its keenness to promote tolerance and the bond of brotherhood, the script seemed to neglect the foundations of the Two-Nation Theory. When the daughter of the refugee asked her mother the reason for the partition of the sub-continent, her mother failed to come up with an answer to this very important question.
‘Hum saath saath reh to saktay thay, is ki kiya zaroorat thi?’ The entire ordeal of the Partition and its crucialty to Muslims is treated very lightly in the play. It is sidelined as an event that could’ve been avoided, had no real basis and was but an unnecessary hassle. After all, it had only brought on an exchange of housing from one city to another. ‘Unhon ne hamaray ghar per qabza kia, humnay unkay ghar per. Bas yahi huwa.’
The Karachi Theatre Festival aimed to provide a platform for the new talent with the old, as was evident with the excellent production of Jinnay Lahore Nahi Vekhya. There is no doubt that it attracted an enormous youthful audience towards an industry that deserves recognition for its breathtaking art. This enthusiastic newbie is definitely keeping an eye out for the next theatrical performance.
