Islam in Performance: Contemporary Plays from South Asia

362 Pages·2017·1.506 MB·English

by  Ashis Sengupta (editor)

Islam in Performance
Ashis Sengupta is Professor of English at the University of North
Bengal, India. He has published numerous essays on South Asian drama
and theater, modern American drama, and African American literature
in reputed journals. His edited volume, Mapping South Asia through
Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), has been hailed as
the first cross-national study of theater in the region.
ii
Islam in Performance
Contemporary Plays from South Asia
At the Sound of Marching Feet
Life of Araj
The Djinns of Eidgah
The Far-reaching Night
We Shall Resist
Watch the Show and Move on
Edited by
ASHIS SENGUPTA
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint previously known as Methuen Drama
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www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
This collection first published 2017 and the following plays are published for the first
time in the English language in this volume.
At the Sound of Marching Feet / Payer Awaj Pawa Jai © Syed Shamsul Haq 2017
Life of Araj / Araj Charitamrita © Masum Reza; trans. Bina Biswas, Sayantan Gupta 2017
The Far-reaching Night / Bahut Dur Tak Raat Hogi © Zahida Zaidi; trans. Ameena Kazi
Ansari 2017
We Shall Resist / Hum Rokaen Gae © Anwer Jafri; trans. Sheema Kermani
Watch the Show and Move on / Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban © Shahid Nadeem;
trans. Shuby Abidi
The following play has been reproduced by kind permission of Oberon Books Ltd.
The Djinns of Eidgah © Abhishek Majumdar 2013
First published by Methuen Drama in this volume in 2017
Introduction copyright © Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2017
The authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted
by Bloomsbury or the author.
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for
performance etc. should be made before rehearsals begin to Permissions
Manager, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP,
UK, [email protected]. No performance may be given
unless a licence has been obtained.
No rights in incidental music or songs contained in the work are hereby granted
and performance rights for any performance/presentation whatsoever must be
obtained from the respective copyright owners.
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-5071-9
PB: 978-1-4742-5070-2
EPDF: 978-1-4742-5072-6
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Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
we sit on a fence,
on another they;
we shoot at them,
at us they do;
like aiming stones
at a pole, sitting in
a balcony sipping tea.
we remain us
they, they –
with no knowledge
of the self or other,
like weapons of the same
stock, parroting each other,
in a crossfire.
a Child pops its head
in between, from
a heap of bodies,
a body of anonymity –
but claimed as
trophies by both sides –
and asks the livid living:
“where do I belong?”
Silence shoots all.
A.S.
Note on the Volume
The plays collected in this volume are works of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, places, events, and incidents appearing in them are either the
products of the playwrights’ imagination or are used in a fictitious manner.
The anthology does not intend to outrage the faith/religious beliefs of any
community or to cause any kind of damage or loss to any person/party.
The publisher, the volume editor, playwrights, and translators do not
assume any responsibility to anyone or to any party for any unintended
hurt or damage or loss in this regard.
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Performing Islam in South Asia 1
Ashis Sengupta
Plays from Bangladesh 43
At the Sound of Marching Feet / Payer Awaj Pawa Jai 45
Syed Shamsul Haq (Translated by the author)
Life of Araj / Araj Charitamrita 105
Masum Reza (Translated by Bina Biswas and Sayantan Gupta)
Plays from India 163
The Djinns of Eidgah 165
Abhishek Majumdar
The Far-reaching Night / Bahut Dur Tak Raat Hogi 247
Zahida Zaidi (Translated by Ameena Kazi Ansari)
Plays from Pakistan 289
We Shall Resist / Hum Rokaen Gae 291
Anwer Jafri (Translated by Sheema Kermani)
Watch the Show and Move on / Dekh Tamasha Chalta Ban 319
Shahid Nadeem (Translated by Shuby Abidi)
Notes on Contributors 347
Acknowledgments
I sit at my desk on a slow Sunday morning, savoring the flavors of
my Darjeeling cuppa, and of Bengal’s autumn. A plethora of emails,
marked “unread,” demand immediate replies. The first I click open is
from a former student who thanks me lavishly for what I would call a
little something that I did for him years ago. I begin to wonder, reading
his lines for a second time, about the strange alleys of the human mind
that can suddenly choke with memories at the slightest “provocation.”
A book that his student gifted him the other day made him remember
me somehow. I reply with a “thanks—so nice of you.” His was an
acknowledgment, a compliment; mine—an appreciation, reciprocation.
This sets me wondering if an acknowledgment, when put to words from
a state of pure feeling, may ever lose its fullness and sound formulaic.
The idle musings around the email soon turn into a reminder of sorts, of
the “Acknowledgments” that I have long been meaning to write for this
volume! Words often fail us; yet, in words alone, can I ever give credit to
those people who have made this work possible. I sign out of email and
start typing over a virtual space—lines that I imagine my benefactors (and
others) will read one day in print.
The mixed feeling of accomplishment (“Ah, I can finish the book
finally!”) and dissatisfaction (“Um, it could have been better”), as I begin
to draft these lines, is taken over by an overwhelming sense of gratitude
to all whose book it basically is. First, I would thank the playwrights
who trusted me with their manuscripts (I also silently remember those
whose works I have read with great admiration, but cannot, unfortu-
nately, include here due to space, and who, I hope, will forgive me on this
count). Many thanks to the late Syed Shamsul Haq, Anwer Jafri, Abhishek
Majumdar, Shahid Nadeem, Masum Reza, and the late Zahida Zaidi. I
wish Professor Zaidi had lived to see her play in translation.
The translators have done a commendable job, indeed. While they
have tried hard to maintain lexical fidelity to the original, they have been
no less creative in making the play texts eminently readable in another
language, as well as performable across cultures. Thanks so much—
Shuby Abidi, Ameena Kazi Ansari, Bina Biswas, Sayantan Gupta, and
Sheema Kermani. I thank all of you also for your unwaivering cooper-
ation during the multiple stages of editing.
Special thanks are due to Oberon Books for permission to reprint The
Djinns of Eidgah, as well as to Zoya Zaidi, for permission to publish the
translation of Bahut Dur Tak Raat Hogi.
Honestly, I was not sure—even after I had spent a whole year on the
Acknowledgments ix
project—about its feasibility. Collecting some of the play texts for the
volume—and finding eminent translators, of course—seemed an insur-
mountable task then. Friends, who had extended unforgettable help at the
time by putting me in touch with the right people, need special mention
here. A big “thank you” to Syed Jamil Ahmed, Fakrul Alam, Syed
Humayoun, Ramendu Majumdar, Anisur Rahman, and Sumana.
Many thanks to the anonymous readers of my book proposal for their
significant suggestions for improvement. I also deeply appreciate Ayesha
Jalal’s invaluable comments on my draft Introduction. Thank you, Janelle
Reinelt, for your very kind encouragement at the formative stage of the
project. I appreciate the great care, Anna Brewer, which you took all along
to see this volume through. Pinaki, I can never forget your continuous
effort to help me find more time for this project.
Thanks are also due to Ajoka Theatre Pakistan and MELOW–India
for the opportunities to discuss some of my ideas at their conferences, in
2015 and 2016, respectively. I am also thankful to the University of North
Bengal for awarding me a modest research grant for the project.
And, without your significant support and boundless love, Mitra and
Pipli, I could not have been here.
As regards my Introduction to this volume, I would like to note that
Sections I and IV partly draw on my Introduction to Mapping South Asia
through Contemporary Theatre: Essays on the Theatres of India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and that
Section II borrows a couple of lines from my article, “Of Race/Religion,
Nation and Violence,” Comparative American Studies 8.3 (2010).
Lastly, my sincere apologies if there are any inadvertent factual errors,
oversights, or omissions of any kind in the book. My publisher and I look
forward to the earliest opportunity for correction.