a day after the end of jashnedastangoi a festival of storytelling at prithvi theatre in juhu recently we met mahmood farooqui over coffee at a cafe in versova if the playwright director actor and founder of the group dastangoi collective is a bit tired due to backtoback shows over three days he didnt show it an alert agile conversationalist farooqui never bores you as he falls back on the rich reservoir of scholarship skills that were sharpened at multiple campuses including the prestigious premises of oxford and cambridge talking to him is like getting a guided tour of a minefield of knowledge and information on life world literature and its icons from shakespeare to kalidas ghalib to manto and mir baqar ali did we say mir baqar ali yes farooquis identity as the man who revived the medieval art form of dastangoi which originated in 8th century arabia and reached india in 16th century is intertwined with mir baqar ali delhis last dastango who died in 1928as a history student he was interested in stories and tales but got hooked on dastans or epic tales after eminent scholar and his uncle shamsur rahman farooqui rediscovered tilismehoshruba an epic adventure of persian hero amir hamza in the 1980s farooqui sahab read each volume of dastaneamir hamza which is in 46 volumes each volume contains 1000 pages his commentaries stunned me it also made me think about how the british imperialists ensured that we indians became amnesiac about our own literary treasure troves says farooqui who first adapted and performed a story from hoshruba in 2005 at delhis india international centre it was a grand success and opened many eyes to the hidden gems in our composite cultural and literary heritageencouraged farooqui joined hands with a bunch of likeminded individuals and formed the collective to take dastangoi to the next level he wrote and got his students and companions pen plays on historical personalities using some contemporary contexts and familiar idioms like dastanekarn az mahabharat which also featured at the festival at prithvi using sanskrit shlokas arabic sayings persian and urdu couplets farooqui retells the story of karn warrior of mahabharata using contemporary motifs as he narrates the warriors vallor his angst at being discriminated against by the casteconscious society his exploits at the battlefield and his tragic death the audience know caste has been a bane of indian society since time immemoriala remarkable achievement of farooqui and his group is the space women have got here take poonam girdhari who joined the collective in 2011 she came first as a member of the audience i got drawn to it initially because of the simplicity of the language in dastangoi unlike conventional plays where you depend a lot on props costumes and lights in dastangoi it is one person or two persons keeping the audience riveted she says i will not say that the audience get lost in the stories but they actively participate because they are awake and can relate to