Karn to Manto: A new dastangoi festival sweeps the arc of Indian bestsellers

MUMBAI The playbill of Mahmood Farooqui’s new dastangoi festival at Prithvi Theatre reads like a dastan-e-Hindustan. Farooqui says, “I have grown up memorising the tables, the Quran, poems, and Sanskrit shlokas.” “‘Raag Darbari’ bears reading again and again,” says Farooqui, also co-director of ‘Peepli Live’. Wherever you turn, you find ‘Raag Darbari’ has been there before you.” The origin story The history of dastangoi usually takes up a few volumes, but Farooqui sums it up in a few words: “Dastangoi came to Urdu in the 18th century and achieved great prominence in the 19th century, when this oral storytelling tradition was converted into print. “Urdu storytellers, unlike the Persian and Arabic tellers before them, had the advantage of being deeply familiar with other Indic stories, such as Betaal Pachisi, the Panchatantra, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana.” So, several strands from Betaal Pachisi, yogic practices, Nath practices, Siddha practices get Ganga-Jamuna-ed into the ‘Dastan-e-Amir Hamza’. He used to say, ‘Main chalta-phirta Bambai hoon.’” This multi-pronged method also serves to combine all of Farooqui’s serious pursuits into a single weave.