| Adapted & Directed by Mahmood Farooqui Produced by Anusha Rizwi Dastangos - Mahmood Farooqui & Darain Shahidi |
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| This adaptation of Vijay Dan Detha's own adaptation of a Rajasthani folktale is one of modern Dastangoi's greatest hits. It is hardly a surprise because the folk story upon which it is built has the Dastanic story within story format and in fact, one of its segments has been adapted by Girish Karnad as a play and by Thomas Mann and Intizar Husain as modern stories. Detha always tweaked received folktales in order to condemn feudalism, patriarchy, upper castes and the rich so the story has acquired modern feminist tones. Farooqui drew upon an English translation of the Dastan while preparing his original Urdu text and brought in copious amounts of 18th century Urdu poetry, including an original Shiv Bhajan to nativize the Dastan. A story within a story within a story, Chouboli is a funny, bitter and lyrical take on Indian life With its barbs at patriarchy, masculinity and thwarted ambitions Chauboli is Team Dastangoi's sadabahaar hit. In 2012 Farooqui had the singular experience of presenting Dastan-e Chauboli in front of Christie Merrill, Detha's American translator whose text he had used at the University of Michigan where he was a visiting fellow. http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/arts/we-are-all-lesbians and “The Nether Lands of Chouboli’s Dastan,” essay in a volume honouring Jonathan Goldberg (Fordham University Press, 2016, pp) |
Vijay Dan Detha: Popularly known as “the Shakespeare of Rajasthan” affectionately called “Bijji” by the writers and friends, He shifted the shape of the folktales of the colorful desert land dazzling with their wry wit, lyrical beauty and wisdom. Detha made their world come vibrantly alive, mixing irreverence for oppressive systems with a heartfelt compassion for the oppressed. In his own words: “the stories of the desert are like its sands, fine and transparent”. Describing his writings, Amitava Kumar, a writer-journalist very aptly, describes, “Any first-aid kit for those malnourished ones deprived of literature’s genuine gifts will always include the stories of Vijaydan Detha”. Two years later he was nominated for Nobel Prize for Literature, though was not widely read in India. One among the finalists, Detha, after the announcement of the Nobel on 6th October 2011, said, “I have won it the day my name was nominated. It’s satisfying that one who writes in a language that has no Constitutional recognition in his own country, is among the favourites for the Nobel Prize in Literature”. |
