Asghar Wajahat’s classic ‘Jis Lahore Ni Vekheya…’ leaves audience spellbound

A story set in 1947, written and staged first in 1989 and celebrating its 400th show in 2024, manages to remain as relevant as its imperative plot. It’s a story that stands as an example of literature holding the fast fading flame of humanity.

Asghar Wajahat’s classic, “Jis Lahore Ni Vekheya…O Jameya E Nai”, based on a popular Punjabi saying, is not a play for the faint-hearted, as was proven when brilliant actors belonging to Ank Theatre, Mumbai, presented back-to-back shows of the play at Hindu College, getting teary-eyed applause from their audience today.

The play was staged to mark the centenary year celebrations of Hindu College, one of the oldest institutions of education in Amritsar and a hotbed of Indian nationalist movement during the freedom struggle. The play was staged by Ank Theatre artistes led by Preeta Mathur Thakur, in collaboration with the Hindu college Alumni Association and the FICCI FLO Amritsar.

The immersive story of an old woman, that the audience knew as “Rattan Ki Maa”, who refuses to leave her home to cross the newly drawn lines, during the mass migration in the aftermath of the Partition from the both sides.

The play is the most critically acclaimed, popular and widely staged production of the Ank Theatre Group, which was founded by eminent theatre person, late Dinesh Thakur. He ensured that the play was showcased for future generations to witness the pain and atrocities that the Partition of India inflicted on its citizens in 1947.

“The play was part of special Dinesh Thakur Memorial shows. We had been already planning to stage it in Amritsar,” said Preeta while addressing the audience. “It’s indeed a wonderful feeling to perform in this city which witnessed and went through the trauma of the Partition while suffering the pangs of separation of their loved ones. It’s not just a play, but an important piece of history that tells us about our past. Unfortunately many had to live through the pain of that past throughout their lifetime.”

The play is based on Asghar Wajahat’s epic human saga of the Partition, wherein a Hindu elderly woman stays back at her haveli in Lahore, refusing to migrate. She is encountered by haveli’s new residents, the Mirzas, who migrated from Lucknow to Lahore. After initial tug-of-war between the former resident and new residents of the haveli to assert their rights over it, the Mirzas warm up to the old woman as she wins them over with her affection and love. But the local Muslim goons turn this harmless, choice-based co-existence into a matter of conflict. While a protest ensues, the old woman dies and the family is advised by a maulvi to perform funeral rites of the woman as per Hindu rituals. Triggered by this ‘act’ of provocation, a mob of local goons, led by their leader, kills the maulvi, giving us a climax that is ironic and shocking, just like the subject the play deals with.

Receiving thunderous applause from the audience at the end of both the shows, actors of the play said performing in Amritsar was a personal victory of sort as the holy city was known as a twin city of Lahore.

“We are very close to Lahore and it feels like we are here for a reason,” said Meena Vaibhav, who played the character of Hameeda Begum.