The Park’s THE OTHER FESTIVAL
- 2003
Music.
Dance. Drama. Art. You.
December
1-7, 2003, 7pm
Chinmaya
Heritage Centre, Harrington Road, Chennai
.
Monday,
Dec 1, 2003
ZOHRA SEGAL
(New Delhi), Poetry
Zohra! Zohra! Zohra!
by Ranjith Bhaskar
Photos: Lalitha Venkat
December 2, 2003
How
dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust
unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
- Alfred
Lord Tennyson, Ulysses |
 |
She
has seen over 90 years of changing seasons, changing society, changing
art forms. She has seen people change. She has lived almost a century of
history. Time has been her longest serving friend, and sure to outlive
her.
Time is a dancer.
It weaves itself around us, sharing our thoughts, feeling our emotions.
Time is a con artist. It betrays you in the end. Some amongst us, though,
are saucy enough to woo time itself and lead it on a song and dance of
their own, and soon enough, time forgets the passage of time. And these
people seem to live on, forever.
Zohra Segal
is infinity. Her eyes have the sort of vibrancy usually associated with
electricity, firecrackers and lightning. The quick turn of her head, a
deft hand gesture, a clear voice seem to tell you she’s only pretending
to be old. The two young, attractive women, who sat by her side as interpreters,
posed a contrast with their smooth, taut skin and sharp features. But age,
as the saying goes, is nothing but a needless number.
Zohra opened
‘The Park’s The Other Festival’ with a 50-minute recital of Urdu poetry
penned by the likes of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ali Sardar Jafri, Javed Akhtar,
Kaifi Azmi, Majaaz, Maktoum and Hafeez Jalandhari. The Other Festival,
an annual event (December 1st - 7th) that brings to Chennai artistes from
all over the world, showcases the talents of dancers, dramatists, and musicians,
in a well organised 7-evening run. The staging area this year is the Chinmaya
Heritage Centre, down Harrington Road in Chetput.
The recital
being in Urdu, Zohra was assisted by Tishani and Priyamvada, who read out
the English translations before the Urdu originals. I don’t understand
Urdu (I barely get by in Hindi); but Zohra, with high-quality mime, made
understanding and resultant appreciation easier. I wonder how Zohra, at
91, manages to recall entire poems when it took me a few hours to remember
the two lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses with which I started this piece.
The selection
for the recital was varied though there seemed a lean towards topics of
change and amity. There was Majaaz’s ‘Ek Nanni Munni Si Pujaran’, about
a little child who accompanies her mother to the temple, but whose mind
is preoccupied with the doll’s house back home. ‘He Was A Unique Man’ is
Javed Akhtar’s tribute to Kaifi Azmi, the poet and lyricist who died recently.
Azmi himself was represented through his poem ‘Apprehension’. Ali Sardar
Jafri’s ‘Who Is The Enemy?’ written after the Indo-Pak war of ’65, pleads
with the people on both sides to put an end to hostility, because after
all, there isn’t that much difference between the two countries. Zohra
originally recited Maktoum’s ‘Long Live India’ at the anniversary of the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre and this poem was sourced from the archives for
the purpose.
Zohra’s agelessness
was perhaps best reflected through Hafeez Jalandhari’s ‘The Song of Spring’,
in which the poet mulls over the passing of time. This poem of 4 verses
talks about romance, mischievousness of childhood and youth; the last verse
is about the final stages of an artist’s life, when his art becomes his
intoxication, his only love. The refrain at the end of each verse says,
“I’m still young!” Very apt, considering our dear Ms. Segal’s utter disregard
for the passing of years.
After the poem
recital, Zohra repeated a speech that she gave at the Red Fort in Delhi
for the 50th anniversary of India’s independence. She infused the speech
with vigour, energy, sadness, and patriotic fervour. She completed her
performance with two excerpts from one of her plays. ‘The Rice Boy’ was
about a grandmother’s adult advice to her granddaughter and ‘The Nightmare’
was about a man’s wife who went missing during a swim. The evening ended
with a question-and-answer session where Zohra patiently answered a few,
mostly, inane questions.
Zohra’s performance
was a lesson in ‘gestural’ mime and verbal delivery to both actors and
aficionados. Zohra’s emotive range has to be seen to be believed. Her voice
is strong and clear and she can still modulate in low key at 91! Her facial
expressions too were highly indicative of the mood of the line or verse.
Mime, through loose, wrinkled skin, is not easy; facial muscles lose their
servility and most definitely do not obey your impulses. This didn’t seem
to bother her at all. She was still mistress of her expressions, wasn’t
she?!! She went from happy to sad to angry to resigned to winsome to naughty
to…and then, whenever she smiled her famous smile, the audience beamed
along. They loved her. They were all fans of this wonderful, lovable woman.
Priyamvada and Tishani should also be appreciated for their fine reading
of the translations as this removed the problem of understanding.
The audience
turnout was decent and all behaved well, except for the few loud ‘wah-wahs’.
Only one mobile telephone rang during the entire evening! A fabulous entertainer,
a captive audience; in all, a great start to the Festival.
Ye olde
woman, how doth thou sing?
Thy heart
be weak, thy eyes -- so tired.
Whilst thee
rite thy rime,
I runneth,
killing tyme.
Note:
I deliberately have not covered Zohra’s biography. A straight reason: it’s
so vast; I cannot do justice by cramping it here.
Ranjith Bhaskar lives and works in
Chennai and can be reached at ranjithbhaskar@yahoo.co.uk |
|
|
