Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Live
KHAAS BAAT ABOUT AAM!
Mango lovers had a ball at the Mango Feast organised at Bewajah studio in Gomti Nagar on Sunday. Not only did the guests enjoy a variety of mangoes such as safeda, dussehri, kishmish and langda but were also treated to dastango Himanshu Bajpai’s captivating ‘dastan’ on the king of fruits.
Celebrating the relationship between Lucknow and mango through dastangoi, an Urdu oral storytelling art form popularised during the rule of Mughal emperor Akbar, Bajpai recounted the story behind the majestic fruit and enthralled the audience with mango folktales and shayari. Cloaked within these tales were witty quips and political satire.
According to the dastan, those who are the most fortunate are given the opportunity to be born in India. This, says the dastan, is for no other reason other than that one can find here mangoes aplenty. The stories of Josh Malihabadi, Nirala and Ghalib Akbar Allahabadi were also narrated as a part of the dastan.
Talking about the origins of the mango dastan, Himanshu said, “It was developed for the mango festival four years ago. This dastan started off as ‘kissagoi’ performance (a more informal and shorter version of dastangoi) and a lot of research went into turning it into a full-fledged dastan. I studied a lot of literature on the topic, visited ‘mango capital’ Malihabad and talked to the mango-growers there, gathering all their folklore for my dastan.
The second dastan was narrated especially for children and was based on Surenya Iyer’s story. It was told in this dastan that Surya deity gifted the mango to those who were troubled by the heat of Lucknow. The arrival of mango in the world and its importance was narrated to the children in ‘dastanvi andaz’. According to Bajpai, these tales are an attempt to take children closer to the Indian tradition of storytelling.
Bajpai said, “The ‘mehfil’ of the mango feast has been a part of our tehzeeb, so the celebration of this feast reminds me of this old tehzeeb of Lucknow.” The dastan has been spoken in Dubai, Calcutta, Bombay as well as Delhi. Urdu critics Anis Ashfaq, Theatre personality Sandhya Rastogi, Vijay Banerjee and political analyst Surendra Rajput were some of the distinguished guests present at the event.