Roundabout | They speak as their lips are free and their tongues are their own

She was just a nine-year-old girl living with her parents in government accommodation in Delhi’s Sujan Singh Park post ‘partition’. She was growing up in a country severed by partition. She quietly watched her elders pine for their loved ones who were now on the ‘other side’. The neighbourhood was a mixed one of old residents and newcomers from west Punjab. She had avoided questions about her caste but one day she was caught when new friends wanted to know her name. When her new friends discovered that she was a Muslim, they boycotted her and said they would not play with her. However, a few days later a Sikh neighbour came calling on them with his daughter and said, “Sati will play with you.” Thus complete ostracism was avoided. Her father suggested that she write a story on the incident. So she did her first piece of writing, a story titled, “You Have to Learn to Make Friends” for the children’s section of “Shankar’s Weekly”. The story reached out to the broken hearts of people who had never imagined they would witness this tragic and brutal divide.

Hameed recalls the response of the reader in autobiography “A Drop in the Ocean”, published by Speaking Tiger. Speaking at the launch of the book at the Khushwant Singh LitFest (KSLF) recently, she narrated how the book reached out to heal souls torn to pieces in the brutal divide of 1947. As it happened, a young Argentinian artist from Buenos Aires, Brigette Frankfurther, read the book and was greatly moved. She painted scenes from the story, bound it in a little book, and sent it as a gift to young Hameed. In 1951, this book won the Jawaharlal Nehru Prize in the International Writing Contest of Shankar’s Weekly and created a mini storm. It was translated into several languages and published in many countries, including the UNESCO Courier. Her most cherished gift, of course, was a letter of appreciation from a celebrated neighbour of Sujan Singh Park, Khushwant Singh of “The Train to Pakistan” fame and the life-long camaraderie that followed. Hameeda’s journey as a writer had begun and this little Muslim girl had made her country, India, proud of her. Of course, Hameeda grew up to be much more than just a writer. She remained a women’s rights activist throughout her life besides being an educationist, member of the Planning Commission and the National Commission for Women, and an inspiration to so many younger women. Her’s is a story worth reading, relishing and remembering.

Vicky Ahuja brings ‘Sardarji’ alive in a one-actor play

All lit fests have their share of performing arts and rightly too, for all words and no play make for dull festivity. But the piece de-resistance at the KSLF was the one-actor enactment of the classic story by the great writer-filmmaker, late Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, titled “Sardarji” which broke the fallacy of communalism; in which a Sikh, uprooted from west Punjab, gives up his life to save a Muslim neighbour from Uttar Pradesh who realises his own prejudice. For all his life, he had done nothing but make fun this long-haired tribe of Punjabis who waved swords and cried out ‘Sat Sri Akal’ and went a little crazy as the clock chimed at 12 noon.

This production came from Jashn-e-Qalam, a Mumbai-based collective of professional actors, who celebrate Hindustani literature with its classic short stories with solo performances, in which the multiple roles are done by voice and bodies without dependance on sets, props and costumes, thus, creating valuable space on stage for literature. Well-known film and stage actor Vicky Ahuja enacted this gem of a short story like never before to select audiences in two shows and the second generation of those who suffered in the great divide broke into cathartic tears. Actor KC Shankar, co-founder of the group and storyteller, who presented “Sardarji”, made sure that there was audience interaction in the second show and so many poured their hearts out. Ahuja, of course, excelled in living the story through his heart, soul, voice and body as the seniors in the audience looked back with tears in their eyes. One hopes to see more of Jashn-e-Qalam in our parts that aimless song and dance and more so at literary celebrations.

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