Play 'Dastaan-e-Guru Nanak' highlights Guru's life & teachings

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 18

The sixth play staged at the city’s prestigious theatre festival, ‘9th Yuvaa Rang Utsav’, was a tribute to the first guru of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev.

The play Dastaan-e-Guru Nanak was staged at the Saigal Memorial Hall on Sunday. The performance was in Dastangoi, a thirteenth-century Urdu oral storytelling art form. The Persian style of dastan evolved in the sixteenth century. At the centre of Dastangoi is the dastango or storyteller, whose voice is his main artistic tool in orally recreating the dastan or story.

Dastaan-e-Guru Nanak is a musical dastan about the life, journey and teachings of Baba Nanak, the spiritual guide, traveller and philosopher. The performance looked at the idea of ‘oneness’ that Baba Nanak proposes with his verses. During the play, the dastango created an intimate milieu of divinity and soulful togetherness.

The audience was spellbound as the auditorium gradually turned into a meditative collective with the narration of episodes from the life of Guru Nanak, accompanied by soulful singing. The weaving together of Arabic and Sikh traditions — a thirteenth-century Urdu storytelling art employed to narrate the life tales of the venerated founder of Sikhism — left a lasting impact on the audience.

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