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Veiled yet so revealing!

ROMESH CHANDER

“Burqavaganza”, mounted by the Lahore-based Ajoka, handled well the serious, and sensitive, issue of burqa.



Hidden truth A scene from the play.

Ajoka, the Lahore-based theatre group is well known in Delhi. It was therefore not surprising that Kamani was jam packed for its presentation of “Burqavaganza” at the ongoing Bharat Rang Mahotsav. It is a light play about a serious issue and “while their faces are covered all the time, the characters expose it all”, said the director in his comment.

The play opens with a young couple looking for a rendezvous. They are interrupted and pestered by people. The play follows the story of the young lovers, the progress of their romance, the wedding agreement and the birth of the first child. Constantly the couple is interrupted and harassed by the police, who are looking for the terrorist leader Bin Batin, and the Burqa Brigade. The veiled police and the Burqa Brigade keep fighting because of their conflicting agendas. An unveiling ceremony follows where the Minister for Burqa Affairs makes a passionate speech about the significance of burqa and everyone celebrates with song and dance. The charismatic scholar Hijab Hashmi tells her devotees to keep their eyes open for the traitors in burqa. Bin Batin carries on his bloody fight against the helmet-covered enemy. The action is accompanied by telecast of “Burqavision” programmes which include a soap, a documentary on “Burqa Through Ages”, news, sports, a fashion show and breaking news.

While all kinds and shapes of burqas create images and situations reminding the audience of the political and social situation in the country, two TV maulanas sitting on the edges of the stage, respond to the questions from their viewers on interpretation and application of religious teachings. The statements of the maulanas are in fact extracts from “Bahishti Zevar”, a book given to the daughters at the time of their marriage.

As the lights come on the stage a musical extravaganza written by the director Shahid Nadeem strikes up and a huge cut out of a black burqa comes on the stage with a video screen in the middle. On the two edges we see two large images of burqa-clad women and two mullas sitting in front of the panels.

All characters in the play except the mullas wear burqas or masks of different kinds. They usually appear in pairs and act like mannequins. The action soon moves to a park, the love birds sit next to each other, they talk on mobiles and sing a love song and others join them and the police disrupt the scene. The scene changes to a religious programme on TV. We then shift on to a police station and see an identity parade of the accused wearing a burqa who starts singing and is joined by the policemen.

The scene then shifts to an unveiling ceremony and the audience is treated to a Pathan Khattak dance and martial songs. It is an interesting sequence well presented leading to a debate in verse from a nursery rhyme and so it goes on with different scenes of a burqa bazaar. A TV programme shows the parts of the body that can be shown and not shown. Yet another sequence “Burqa Through Ages” underlines different periods and satirically shows real and fake images of burqa of those periods.
A beautiful end

Another interesting sequence is that of a mushaira that has a strip tease dance and a Bollywood dance thrown in and so it goes on scene after scene commenting upon different situations, events, personalities like Bush, Musharraf and Benazir and the curtain comes down with the song “The World is A Burqavaganza”. The cast takes off their masks and the panels showing burqa-clad women change into beautiful faces of women, children and flowers. A beautiful end to a beautiful presentation.