From the stage to the page

Before it became a famous film with a catchy hit number, late theatre doyen Habib Tanvir had desired to adapt the script of Peepli Live into a play and even ‘wished’ to act in it, film's co-director and translator of his memoirs in English has revealed in a new book.

‘Habib Saheb had read the script of Peepli Live which was then called The Falling, and had liked it so much that he wanted to make a play of it,’ author Mahamood Farooqui says in a translated version of Tanvir's personal account.

Titled Habib Tanvir: Memoirs, the English translation of the theatre legend's recollections of his life and times, in Urdu earlier, was released recently here by Penguin Books. Farooqui who undertook the translation which was entrusted by the man himself, says Tanvir had expressed a desire to play the ‘role of the cantankerous mother’ in the film.

‘When we went to shoot the film, he had half-jokingly and half-seriously expressed his wish to play the role of the cantankerous mother, which became such a rage,’ saya Farooqui, who co-directed the social satire along with wife Anusha Rizvi.

While the Urdu memoir was born out of Tanvir's writings for a Bhopal-based Urdu daily Nadeem, the English translation could begin after Farooqui earned the confidence of the theatre veteran, whose health had begun to decline.

‘Habib saheb thought I could take up the translation work on his Urdu memoirs and I have tried to do my job as faithfully as possible,’ Farooqui told  in an interview.

The book brings to non-Urdu readers and theatre lovers alike the extraordinary accounts of Tanvir's journey from his childhood in the town of Raipur to his training in the Royal theatre academy in England and his dalliance with cinema, among other engaging episodes from his life and times.
The book also reveals how before earning a scholarship to go to Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, he almost ‘developed an intense dislike’ for Shakespeare during his intermediate class education at Morris College in Nagpur.

‘Professor Guha taught Shakespeare....he used to explain the text reading from a notebook. It made for very boring lectures... developed an intense dislike for Shakespeare and for this play (Othello) in particular,’ Tanvir says in the book.

‘Long after my graduation when I seriously studied Shakespeare I found Othello to be the tightest and the most affecting of tragedies,’ the book further reveals.

Daughter and fellow member of Tanvir's iconic 'Naya Theatre', Nageen Tanvir, who was present at the function and even sang folk songs along with the old Theatre members to mark the book's release took a trip down memory lane to her father-daughter and guru-shishya days.

‘My father understood the culture of Chhattisgarh and its voice. Today, the media has influenced it a lot and no one sings in original tune..... I really feel nostalgic for the 70s and the 80s,’ says Nageen Tanvir.

‘He also unlearned a lot of things he had learnt during his London days and attempted to understand the folk culture and music of Chhattisgarh and bring it to the wider audience from small towns to big cities,’ she adds.

The writer, however, describing his lighter side calls Tanvir was also ‘quite a ladies' man’ and ‘his collection of caps was the envy of many’.

His escapades in the early Bombay film industry also makes for a fascinating and lively read, which Farooqui had previously also adapted into a Dastangoi play.

‘His experiences in the early black-and-white and silent and early talkies era also make for us to sit and take notice about the cinematic heritage that we have lost.

The book's author says despite being proficient in both English and Urdu, translating Tanvir's Urdu offered up a few challenges. The 330-odd page ‘theatrical account’ is supplemented with rich archival black and white photographs, including a 90s era rare photograph which shows Tanvir sitting in his room in Ber Serai, in south Delhi.