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KARACHI: There are a few reasons why the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) on Monday evening chose Intizar Husain’s Khwabon Ke Musafir as its first play of the International Theatre and Music Festival organised by the academy. Definitely, one of them is to pay tribute to the eminent writer who passed away on Feb 2 this year. But it is also apt because the play explores themes that might never end up being redundant in the context of the socio-cultural nomenclature of Pakistani society.

Khwabon Ke Musafir (on a dream journey), directed by Zia Mohyeddin, is about a family which has migrated to Pakistan from India. It has the old married pair Miyan Jaan (Saad Zameer Fareedi) and Buji (Asiya Alam) at the centre of the story. They have a daughter named Kishwer (Maria Saad).

As is often the case with Pakistani families, Buji worries about getting Kishwer married off. Miyan Jaan’s widowed sister Bari Bua (Zarqa Naz) has a son, Shahid (Taha Khan), whose education expenses are borne by Miyan Jaan. Buji sees a potential son-in-law in Shahid. Kishwer is interested in another of Miyan Jaan’s nephews, Iffo (Adnan Anis), who lives with them. Iffo (a laidback, unemployed young man in the habit of building castles in the air) also likes her. Midway into the play, Shahid tells the family that he is moving to Karachi for he is now employed, at which point the story takes an important turn.

While viewing the play one needs to understand that it was penned almost half a century ago. What’s remarkable about the script is its study of the human condition. On surface, it appears to home in on the social issues that the subcontinent’s Muslim families are often found entangled in, but actually it covers quite a few subjects in an astute manner.

For example, on the one hand Shahid is seen as an ‘atheist’ and the character of Master Sahib (Zakaullah Khan) too is a man of ‘science’, and on the other hand Miyan Jaan doesn’t believe in scientific developments. Interestingly, the topic doesn’t overshadow the issue of Kishwer’s marriage and the two young men in her life, one of whom (Shahid) her mother is fond of.

Then there is the all important question of the changes that migration brings into a social set-up. For instance, referring to a man Miyan Jaan says ‘unn ka shijra hijrat mein gumm ho gaya tha’ (his family tree was lost in migration).

And yet, what stands out as the most striking feature of the play (in this day and age) is the language that Intizar Husain makes his characters speak. It is the kind of Urdu which bristles with idiomatic expressions and sonorous colloquialism, especially when women speak. It was such an auditory delight listening to phrases like ‘daegein khanaknein lageen’.

One must praise the third-year students of the academy for acting their heart out and saying their lines the way they’re supposed to be said. It was evident on Monday evening that the seasoned theatre person Zia Mohyeddin as director of the play must’ve been a hard task master because of which the actors, especially the three protagonists (Saad Zameer, Asiya Alam and Zarqa Naz) seldom put a foot wrong. One thought had Taha Khan worked a little harder on his part (who spews the names of literary giants Ezra Pound, Sartre, etc frequently with pronunciation issues), the overall effort would have been more enjoyable. He looked a tad underwhelmed.

Before the start of the play, Napa’s Zain Ahmed told the audience that the Indian theatre group which was supposed to perform on March 23 couldn’t get visas due to which their show was cancelled.

Originally published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2016