Naseeruddin Shah breathes life into Ismat Chughtai’s words at Tagore Theatre

What is the true measure of stardom? Chandigarh’s Tagore Theatre comes alive, people queue up till the gate and a standing ovation, not after… but as soon as the living legend Naseeruddin Shah steps on the stage…That’s pretty much answers it!

Tuesday evening was a treat for theatre lovers as not just Naseer but Ratna Pathak Shah and Heeba Shah too took to the stage for the play, Ismat Apa Ke Naam, presented by Rani Breast Cancer Trust.

Dressed in a black kurta, Naseer looked sharp as he took to the stage to introduce the play, a tribute to the famed writer Ismat Chughtai. In a few minutes, he succinctly put her writing to context!

While Lihaaf (The Quilt) became one of most significant voices in Urdu literature in the twentieth century, all that Chughtai wrote before and after it, lived in the shadow of it. “The court cases in Lahore on Ismat Chughtai and Saadat Hasan Manto were just a way to silence the voices that challenged the male hegemony." Has much has changed today? Not much indeed!

The play was opened by Heeba, who took us straight to the Delhi of Chughtai’s times – the train, the haveli and the platform. The story, Chui Mui (Touch Me Not), presented two women, who were about to give birth, but lived entirely different lives. If all the care and pampering for Bhabhijaan in her carrying days failed to get the family their heir; the peasant woman delivered a baby right at their feet while travelling on the train. Juxtaposing the stark differences of the privileged and not-so-privileged women and their respective roles, the play made a comment of the societal hierarchy. Heeba’s clear diction, agile body movement gave vision to the writer’s words!

Next, Ratna brought spunk and sass on stage by bringing the story of Mughal Bachcha alive. In a white and deep wine sharara, she brought enough ada and nakhra, as did the story of Gori Bee and Kale Mian. The story, which is also titled Ghoonghat, is not just the story of Gori Bee and Kale Miyan, of a man and wife, of desire and control but also a telling remark on the changing society and its hierarchal order. Funny, touchy and tad bit sad, it made one chuckle, multiple times over.

Then on stage was the legend himself — Naseer saab, with the story Gharwali. Mirzaji, losing his heart and ghar to kaamwali Lajjo. It had it all — spunk, sincerity, love, lust and longing. Was Ismat Chughtai’s writing ‘obscene’? Naseer had asked just before the play, challenging the viewers to answer it. The play turned out to be anything and everything but ‘obscene’. Lajjo’s innocence, her khilandari (playful) ways, Mirzaji’s reputation to Mithua’s brave overtures, it was a sincere tale of heart, and hearth.

Commendable how the Shah family could invoke an era, make a comment on the state of affairs simply by narration. Naseer lived the emotions — jealousy, innocence, lust and tenderness — in those brief moments.

If Heeba teased the wealth of Ismat, Ratna gave it wings and Naseer’s act left the audience spellbound. The audience became one with the story, and the subject. Not just the words, even his silence mid-sentence, conveyed a thousand myriad emotions.

Seeing him in the show was a gentle grounding that when he tells an actor, several years his junior to develop an acting muscle, he comes from a good place!

Taking the Tagore stage after 1972, he expressed his desire to be back soon, and each one present in the hall, and others who couldn’t make it to the packed show, amplifying that voice thousand times over!

On a sombre note

The Tuesday evening struck a sombre note as Bittu Safeena Sandhu took to stage to thank the packed hall for joining in her ‘grief’. The fundraiser for Rani Breast Cancer Trust that brought best of theatre that the country has to offer had Gurdas Maan in the front row along with city glitterati. Set up in the memory of her sister Rani, Bittu Sandhu thanked her brother and bhabhi – Gurdas and Manjeet Maan for being her constant support, along with the team of doctors and the trust. As she remembered her son, Dr Karan, snatched untimely by fate, tears welled up across the hall.