Reviving the old folklore storytelling

Lahore: Stories around the globe have already been told, but not from every aspect. The same stands for the Punjab folklore and other fantasy treasures of the sub-continent, which keep coming up with new vigour, and without losing their basic content.

The storytellers of today, or modern writers, are creating fresh ways to tell the old, ageless tales.

“Until twenty-five years ago, folk tales were listened to and read with great interest,” says Hussain Abbas of Iqbal Town.

“In the same way, we used to find avid readers around us, who would read out stories for a little gathering but nowadays this art is disappearing.”

The dying art of story-telling was recently resurrected by the Lahore Walled City Authority to reacquaint the new generation of traditional stories of Punjab, and their excellent storytelling.

“Several Heer-Go (reciters of Heer poetry) used to gather at Hazoori Bagh in front of the Badshahi Mosque,” says Kamran Lashari, the LWCA chairman.

“They would captivate an audience with their lovely recitation and narrative of Waris Shah’s epic poem ‘Heer Ranjha’. People used to travel great distances to this location to listen to the melodic performance.”

The tradition persisted until the mid-1990s, when the storytellers disappeared, maybe because they began presenting their talent at various fairs.

The LWCA took it upon itself to recreate historic Lahore traditions and culture. 22 Heer Waris Shah reciters from Sheikhupura, Kasur, Shahdara, and Lahore have been tracked down and returned. Every Sunday between Asr and Maghrib, a weekly Heergoi (or Heer recitation) celebration is held at Hazoori Bagh. The ambience of the Hazoori Bagh, located between the Lahore Fort and Badshahi Masjid, as well as Ranjit Singh’s Samadhi and Roshnai Darwaza, produces a wonderful mood. It’s a fascinating experience to sit in the garden in the evening and listen to poetry.

Many of the Heer reciters that assemble here are the same people who used to sit in the Hazoori Bagh Heergoi gatherings two or three decades ago.

”One of them is now passing on the art to his son so that his next generation is also associated with this art,” Mr Lashari says, adding that the promotion of this art is unquestionably related to the preservation and promotion of Punjabi traditions, culture, and language. In addition to Heer Waris Shah’s reciters, the LWCA has hired Javed, a tireless storyteller.

He tells the story of how he got the job as a guide in the LWCA.

”I simply went to DG Kamran Lashari and begged him, “I’m a guide, give me a job here,” he said.

Mr Lashari asked him what he would do now, that restoration work is underway. He responded, ”Hire me, sir, and I’ll explain to tourists about the walled city,” to which he (Mr Lashari( chuckled and hired me, and I’ve been working here for the past eight years.”

As a tour guide, Javed has met several celebrities over the past 30 years. He claimed that once, the British High Commissioner, Thomas, approached him and inquired if he was Javed. “I said yes, so he told me that 18 years ago his parents had come here and I had given them a tour. He pulled out a picture from his mobile in which my children, who were young at that time, were standing with their parents. That is how time flies”.

Perseveration of the culture of storytelling has many facets.

Another attempt is being done by Dr Osama Siddique, who, along with Musharaf Ali Farooqi, is attempting to raise from the dead the fantasy treasure trove of the Indo-Pak subcontinent by reinvigorating the fiction of Tilsum-i-Hoshruba following scientific lines.

The epic tale Tilism-e-Hoshruba is based on the adventures of Emir Hamza, the famous Persian warrior who is the subject of Hamza Nama, as well as his children and grandchildren.

Despite living in a technological age, these tales of ghosts, witches, and charming princes have stood the test of time.

Farooqi believes that fantasy is a part of every soul and cannot be separated from it. He praised those minds, that envisaged the unimaginable and culminated in scientific discoveries. He claims that the account of Urrhan Khatola inspired the Wright brothers to experiment with aeroplanes in 1912. However, the subcontinental people had a run-in with the fictitious flying thing a millennia ago.

Dastaan writing and dasatangoi are proud Indo-Pak Subcontinent inventions that were once the region’s largest export to the rest of the globe.

The Hoshruba initiative will publish the historic story in 24 volumes on non-commercial lines. They have employed individuals for the historic preservation project and invited the public to join the waiting list. Buyers and a few select investors are the primary backers of this great fiction’s resurrection.

Tilsam-i-Hoshruba is all about social context and cultural values, and we must protect them.

That is not the end of the story.

Mahmoodul Hasan is another writer and author of two novels that honours Lahore’s storytellers. His work ‘Lahore Shehr-e-Pur Kamal’ concentrates on three of Lahore’s greatest short tale writers: Krishn Chandar, Kanaihya Lal Kapoor, and Rajinder Singh Bedi.

Hassan Miraj is another such writer, and his book, ‘Rail Ki Seeti’, relates the experiences of rail passengers he met in his working life. He observes a location and then embarks on an imaginary trip to imagine how that location may have been 50 or 100 years ago.

Miraj said that any city may have undergone change as a result of religion or other factors, with constitutional changes in major cities serving as the catalyst. He saw that our smaller cities were likewise becoming a cultural wasteland.

Our lives are filled with stories, both told and untold. Fantastic tales, on the other hand, only come to those who can imagine and retell them.