Dastan Alice Ki

Director Mahmood Farooqui presents a unique take on popular novel, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

- Alpana Chowdhury

This afternoon, at the ongoing Prithvi Festival in Juhu, Mumbai, there will be a show of Dastan Alice Ki. If the title sounds curious, it is a happy coincidence because the show, written and directed by Mahmood Farooqui, is based on Alice's Adventures In Wonderland which imparted a delightful dimension to the word 'curious' with its young protagonist tumbling from one curious incident to another and her famously exclaiming "Curiouser and curiouser!", good English forgotten.

Farooqui, who is a historian, writer, director and actor, revived the ancient Persian, oral art of story-telling, Dastangoi, in India in 2005, after it had virtually died out in 1928. Over the years, he has put up many dastans with wide-ranging subjects, including Dastan-E-Mahabharat and Dastan-E-Ramji Ki. His venues have been wide-ranging as well. From the steps of the Jama Masjid where he regaled children from Spastics Society of India, to schools, colleges, plush auditoriums and festival sites—he has taken this centuries' old form of entertainment to many cities, within and outside India.

At Prithvi Theatre today, his adaptation of Lewis Carroll's popular children's book will be narrated in Hindi and Urdu by dastangos Poonam Girdhani and Nusrat Ansari before a houseful of children.