KARACHI, March 17: It is always an encouraging sign when book lovers, a majority of whom have a reasonable understanding of Urdu literature, listen to a dramatised reading session with rapt attention of a short story penned by as eminent a writer as Nayyar Masud.

Well, it happened on Saturday evening when Zambeel Dramatic Readings presented one of Masud’s critically acclaimed stories ‘Ta’aus Chaman Ki Myna’ (The Myna from Peacock Garden) at T2F.

Before dissecting the performance, let’s admit in the beginning that the rendition of the tale was worthwhile primarily because it managed to capture the ‘mood’ of the time period in which ‘Ta’aus Chaman Ki Myna’ is set. This means it was a successful attempt because Nayyar Masud’s stories, above all, embody the ambience that was typical of the 19th century Oudh region.

As introduced by writer Asif Farrukhi before the start of the reading, Nayyar Masud very rarely mentions the name of the city where his stories are based, but it is almost a given that they are about the city of Lucknow. The writer resides in Lucknow. He does not show the city as a symbol of decadent, crumbling tradition. For him whatever it was, it’s there in his tales.

‘Ta’aus Chaman Ki Myna’ pivots on the character of Kaale Khan whose wife passed away when his daughter Falak Ara was 11 months old. His daughter time and again implores him to get her a pahari myna. Given his financially challenged condition, he keeps diverting her attention. It is when, with the help of Darogha Nabi Bakhsh, he gets a job in the royal garden (Ta’aus Chaman) that the story takes a meaningful turn.

Kaale Khan is asked to look after a big cage (qafas) in which no less than 40 mynas will be kept and presented to the badshah or taajdaar. This proves an irresistible temptation as he entertains the notion of stealing one of the mynas for his daughter. The badshah has a name for every bird and one of them is Falak Ara. One day seeing the situation favourable he steals that myna and brings it to his daughter. Naturally the daughter gets overjoyed.As fate would have it, when the badshah revisits the cage he immediately spots that one of the birds is missing. Kaale Khan somehow manages to put the bird back in the cage. In the mean time Mir Dawood is busy teaching the birds to talk. When the badshah one more time returns to the garden to see what the birds have learnt, all the birds say what they’re taught to say (praising the badshah) except the one that Kaale Khan took. She instead chirps, “Falak Ara shahzadi hai, doodh jalebi khati hai… Kaale Khan ki gori gori baiti hai” (Falak Ara is princess, she eats doodh jalebi and is the fair daughter of Kaale Khan). Hearing this, Kaale Khan collapses.

Obviously the truth comes out and the story gets convoluted as despite the badshah’s lenient attitude to Kaale Khan (who gets moved by the story of his daughter) things get messy owing to other characters’ involvement, including the vizir-i-aa’la and British officers, and Kaale Khan gets arrested. It doesn’t take him long to get out of jail but the reason he is freed is that the badshah’s government has been toppled and the British have taken over the entire Oudh region.

Two of the most important characters, who do not take centrestage, are the badshah Vajid Ali Shah and a photographer Ahmed Ali Khan who later builds a small army to fight the British. The between-the-lines elements of Ta’aus Chaman Ki Myna are as important as the read-out parts. Vajid Ali Shah is not what he’s cracked up to be by later historians.

The four performers (Saife Hasan, Ehteshamuddin, Mahvash Faruqi and Asma Mundrawala who also directed the presentation) were impressive to a reasonable extent, especially Asma Mundrawala who had the lesser number of lines but spoke them with great facility – not a jot more, not a jot less.

Ehteshamuddin had the lion’s share of the lines and one can understand why: he is an experienced theatre person. However, there were moments when he sounded a bit too whispery or a tad flatter than required.

The character of the narrator, Kaale Khan, was divided between performers. If only one actor had done that, it might have sounded more uniform.

The occasional fumbling of lines by Mahvash Faruqi is pardonable because it is no mean feat to pull off a Nayyar Masud story in the very first attempt. Also, because the overall impact of the rendition was quite powerful.