Since the inception humans have learned to use language as they loved to listen to stories. The person who can tell a good story is always popular in gatherings. Now we have multiple ways of reaching out, print media, TV, films, stage, small and large gatherings and social media but in the past, there was a time when for the majority of the population the only way to listen to a story was to gather in front of a good story teller. Such form of verbal narration was practiced from Greece in the West where Homer’s Iliad is an example to India in the East where the stories of Ramayana were perhaps the earliest examples. 

One of the developments of this art form was qisagoi or dastangoi. Thought to have originated in pre-Islamic Arabia or post Arab conquest Persia it came to India and established itself as a pastime for the elites and not-so-elites in Delhi and Lucknow.

Dastangoi as it developed was not about real people although the characters may have been named after them. The stories however were pure fantasies where human often with supernatural powers interacted with magicians, djins and fairies. While the inspiration may have come from One Thousand and One nights in which a poor girl married to a psychopath king has to tell a new story every night to save her life the most popular dastan (tale) in the Indian Subcontinent was Dastan-a-Amir Hamza (The tale of Prince Hamza). When eventually compiled and published this tale spread over 46 volumes!

As other forms of entertainment became popular the art of dastangoi almost died in the 20th century. Then the poet and critic Shamsur Rahman Farooqi and his nephew writer and director Mahmood Farooqi along with their students revived it in India in 2005. Subsequently Mahmood Farooqi and his team has performed all over the wold including in Pakistan. 

Badar Khan Sahib is an actor and script writer. He has been trained by Farooqi Sahib in dastangoi and is now performing in various cities of Pakistan in order to popularise and revive this art in this country. Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to attend the premier performance by Badar Khan at the Lahore Fort.

The setting was impressive and it was pleasant to see that such a large crowd of men and women had turned up to watch the show. As the dastangoi, Badar Khan was dressed in the appropriate attire complete with a kurta with wide sleeves a pyjama and a skill cap. Sitting cross legged on high pillows he started telling the tale after sipping water from a silver goblet (another part of datangoi tradition).

The content of the dastan has now evolved. Badar Sahib did not tell us tales of prince and princes, djins and ferries but narrated a first-person account of the life of famous poet Sahir Ludihanvi. However, the traditional style of dastangoi was maintained in which the narrator uses the versatility of his voice to recreate different situations in the story which in this case was the life of Sahir Ludihanvi.

It was encouraging that story as told besides being entertaining and informative also promoted peace between India and Pakistan who have strong cultural bonds with each other including the shared interest in dastangoi.

I could judge from the murmuring of people around me that they loved the performance and certainly it was an entertaining evening with the dastan delivered by Badar Khan Sahib in a masterly fashion. We look forward too many more dastans by him in the future.