Mahmood Farooqui is an Indian writer, performer and director. He specializes in a type of story-telling known as Dastangoi.[1][2][3][4][5] Farooqui along with his uncle Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, noted Urdu poet and literary critic, revived Dastangoi, the ancient art of Urdu story telling.[6][7][8][9][10] He was awarded the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar in 2010 for it.[11]
His book Besieged: voices from Delhi 1857[12] was awarded the Ramnath Goenka for the best Non-fiction book of the year.[13][14] This book is a translation of mutiny papers providing a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people who found themselves stuck during the revolt of 1857. He was also a researcher for The Last Mughal, a book by William Dalrymple.
In August 2016 he was found guilty of rape by a lower court,[15] but in September 2017 he was acquitted by the Delhi High Court.[16] The High Court judgment was later upheld by the Supreme Court.[17][18]
Farooqui began reinventing Dastangoi, the 16th-century Urdu oral storytelling art form, in 2005. Since then, he has performed thousands of shows across the world. Apart from bringing alive the old epic of Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, he has innovated Dastangoi by using it as a medium to tell modern tales. Some of his adaptations include:
A retelling of Vijaydan Detha's Rajasthani folktale, Chouboli;
An allegorical take on the trial and incarceration of communist activist Dr. Binayak Sen;
A presentation on the life and times of communist ideologue and novelist Saadat Hasan Manto;
An adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classics 'Alice's adventures in Wonderland', and 'Through the Looking Glass';
A collage based on AK Ramanujan's essay, '300 Ramayanas';
His latest work is Dastan-e-Karan Az Mahabharata, a retelling of the life of Karna based on Urdu, Persian, Hindi, and Sanskrit sources.
Farooqui has, over the years, built a team of dastangos trained by him, including Ankit Chadha, Darain Shahidi, Poonam Girdhani and Himanshu Bajpai.
Books
His publications include the award-winning Besieged: Voices from Delhi,1857, Habib Tanvir: Memoirs, a translation of theatre-director Habib Tanvir's memoirs from Urdu with notes and an introduction, Dastangoi,an introduction to the art of datangoi, and A Requiem for Pakistan: The world of Intizar Husain, a personal exploration of the literary and biographical world of Intizar Husain and brief history of modern Urdu Literary Culture.[20]
Farooqui, Mahmood (Autumn–Winter 2011). "Dastangoi: Revival of the Mughal art of storytelling". Context: Journal of the Development and Research Organisation for Nature Arts and Heritage. VIII (2): 31–37. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
Ghalib Lakhnavi & Abdullah Bilgram, trans Musharraf Ali Farooqi (2012). The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Special Abridged Edition. New York: Modern Library. ISBN978-0-8129-7744-8.
