Subject: Book Review
Name of the book: Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding time captive
Written by: Amal Allana
Published by: Vintage book
Pages: 672
Price: Rs.1299/-
Worded by: Yogesh Gogwekar
Amal Allana is the author of this book, a theatre practitioner. She was also a chairperson of National School of Drama and also served as head of the Department of Indian Drama theatre in Punjab University. She established Dramatic Art and Design Academy which is popularly known as DADA and also Theatre and Television Associates to encourage the Theatre knowledge to the existing generations and for new generations to come. Now she is the director of the Art Heritage Gallery. She has been honoured by Homi Bhabha Fellowship and by the Sangeet Academic Award. As a disciple of Ebrahim Alkazi, she is carrying her theatre education in the same direction which had been done by her father. As a writer of this book, she offers us glimpses of the emotional life of a talented personality.
Ebrahim Alkazi was born on 18th October 1925 in Pune in the wealthy Saudi Arabian Muslim family which had migrated to India and settled down in Pune. His mother was Kuwaiti. He was one of the nine siblings. By doing hard work, Hamid Alkazi, father of Ebrahim Alkazi, developed his export business in India and raised his family in Pune by providing them the Western Education along with the education of Arabic language and Quran. He forced them to follow values of etiquette and social conservatism. He completed his school education in St. Vincent’s High school in Pune. During his school days, he started getting a comprehensive education and with the help of school’s principal Father Rifkin, he started receiving books to read from the school library. Due to the business requirement, Hamid Alkazi shifted to Mumbai. In Mumbai, Alkazi joined St. Xavier’s college for his graduation. During his college days, he had great exposure to a wide range of books. Because of English Education, Alkazi got an opportunity to learn Indian literature, music and prevailing arts of the colonial period. In St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai, he took his first strides in theatre which became passion and he started losing interest in the export business which was set up by his father.
The situation in Mumbai (that time Bombay) was a little bit different than in Pune. It allowed Alkazi to work on his passion. In one particular social gathering, he met Sultan Padamsee who was popularly known as Bobby among his friends. Sultan Padamsee was an anglicized Khoja Muslim and his family was well-off having high respect in the social upper class society of Bombay. Bobby was also a theatre lover and had an English Theatre Company. He asked Alkazi to join his group. In this group, Alkazi met and fell in love with the sister of Bobby, Roshen Padamsee who was costume designer of English Theatre Company. Later on, he married her. Bobby committed suicide (Reasons for his suicide not mentioned in the book) and responsibilities of theatre which were developed by Bobby fallen on Ebrahim Alkazi. Thus the future journey of theatre started for Ebrahim Alkazi.
Amal Allana, writer of this book, mentioned that her father Ebrahim Alkazi was not an Indian by parentage but still he had chosen to stay back in the country where he was born i.e. India. She further stated that his sense of belonging to India only intensified over the years. His parents shifted to Karachi, Pakistan after the partition but Alkazi decided to stay in India and to develop India’s art and culture through theatre. According to his daughter, there was no question of Hindu and Muslim in his family. She said that he named her as Uma and he never objected when Roshen Alkazi (Mother of writer) was wearing a Bindi on her forehead. She wrote that we grew up in a society, a family where there were no religious differences. Her Father had friends from Catholics, Parsees, Muslims, Jews and Hindus religions and no one used to look at any one from a religious point of view. She says in her book,” We have to understand that as Indians we come from a rich past and the richness comes from it being syncretic”. She has also mentioned that Alkazi used to call himself a Maharashtrian Arab. Through his work in theatre one can easily make out Alkazi’s love for India and its culture. That is the reason to understand the life of Ebrahim Alkazi; one has to look behind the religion.
As mentioned above Alkazi took over the responsibility of the English Theatre Company which was established by his friend Sultan Padamsee. In 1947, while working for theatre, Alkazi decided to go to London to understand radical modernization in the art and also in the literature. For this purpose, he asked for financial help from his father to pursue first painting and then theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. After seeing his talent in theater, English Drama League and British Broadcasting Corporation had offered him career opportunities to work with them but Ebrahim Alkazi rejected this offer as he decided to come back to India and worked for theatre in India. In Mumbai, he rejoined the English Theatre Company and achieved a great name in the theater. He worked there till 1954. At the time of working there, he realised that just working for English theatre, he could not develop the Indian Arts and Culture. Therefore, he decided to learn Sanskrit and Hindi and also took much interest in theatre performances of Marathi and Gujarati languages. While working in an English Theatre Company, Alkazi developed the idea of open theatre.
In 1960, he was asked to come to Delhi to take over the chairmanship of Sangeet Natak Academe and provide help to do the setup of the National School of Drama. This was a great challenge for him. He accepted this job even after knowing that Delhi is not a settled down place for him as he was an outsider for Hindi theatre in Delhi. But this was a turning point in his life. In 1962, after looking at the talent of Ebrahim Alkazi, the Great Social Reformer and Promoter of Indian Handicrafts, Handloom and theatre, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, selected him as the director of National School of Drama. He remained there till 1977 and became its longest serving director. In NSD, Alkazi developed a pedagogic approach to the theatre and also designed courses in such a way that every student would not focus only on stage acting training and directions but would get all opportunities to learn every aspect of stage-craft.
After his joining in NSD in 1962 as a director of NSD, he brought a lot of changes and developed the spaces for performances within the NSD. He built up a studio theatre and Open Air Meghdoot Theatre around NSD. As a director of NSD, he magnificently revolutionized not only English theatre but also Hindi theatre through his vision. He directed several plays of well-known playwrights like Dharamveer Bharati, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Mohan Rakesh, Girish Karnad etc. He also started directing the Sanskrit classics Kalidas and Shudraka and even old western classic plays of Shakespeare, Moliere etc. It is being said that his talent had been noticed when he directed Hindi drama Andha Yug in the right setting. This drama was based on the Mahabharata war written by Dharamveer Bharati. He also directed the drama Tughlaq in Hindi (Origin in Kannada written by Girish Karnad) and Ashad Ka Ek Din written by Mohan Rakesh. These dramas became so popular for best direction, nicely set design, use of proper costumes and lighting and above all beauty of choreography. He used to read the drama carefully and also used to make changes as per requirements. This habit of Alkazi brought modernization of Indian theatre. He taught the Western and Asian drama and direction with a painstaking degree of perfection. He used to teach his students the style of singing and dancing, recommending books, movies, paintings and music to understand the drama in a better way and to make them all-rounder on the stage.
Ebrahim Alkazi was a disciplined and strict person. He used to ask his students to be ready at 6 am to do drama practice in the open air to improve their voices. He never used to spare them even during the winter. He always used to tell his students that he wanted to hear their softest whisper. He used to say that his greatest strength as a theatre director was his intellectual humility which he derived from continuous learning and getting knowledge of different things. If I am not mistaken, his son Faisal who was educationist and theatre director once said that Alkazi had been striving for perfection as long as he could remember and there had been a professional stamp to everything he had done. He further said that he always taught us to do our work without cutting corners. At the time of developing the theatre, Alkazi did not receive any institutional support but still he did it under all circumstances and created theatre in his drawing room in arena style. He also created the studio theatre in Rabindranath Bhawan which consists of two walls.
Alkazi was having an opinion about using the mask in theatrical performances. It is being said that Masks are a very important tool for actors to represent the characters in theatrical performances. Writer and Professor of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University, Paul S. Wingrert, says, “Masks have been used almost universally to represent characters in theatrical performances. He further said that theatrical performances are a visual literature of a transient, momentary kind. It is most impressive because it can be seen as a reality; it expends itself by its very revelation. The mask participates as a more enduring element, since its form is physical.” Alkazi has beautifully explained about the usage of masks at the time of theatrical performances. He says, “Wearing the mask gives the actor a strange but reassuring sense of anonymity. Since his face is covered, he loses his identity, becomes suddenly a being other than himself, and permits himself to indulge in all sorts of capers, contortions, and uninhibited movements which he would be too self-conscious to do in his own guise. Concealed behind his mask, he feels he can observe without being observed, and this gives him the courage to perform with the greatest freedom before an audience”.
He further says about using Mask in theatre performances,” The whole body must be built round the face, the arms, the fingers, the legs, the shoulders, the haunches, the tilt of the head, the gait and finally the speech. In every single detail, the actor’s body must learn to conform with the mask it wears. The transformation must be complete-as it can never be in the case of a performance without a mask. To create such a character, then, the actor must come to know his mask in its infinitesimal detail. He must leave with it, regard it as his alter ego, and recreate himself in terms of it. As our Production has shown, this is more difficult than it sounds…It will indeed be the sad moment when, on the last night, each actor bids farewell to the face which he has for so many months come to accept as his own”.
As mentioned in the book, Ebrahim Alkazi always wanted to educate the audiences through theatre. At the inauguration function of the National School of Drama in 1956, Vice President Dr. Radhakrishnan said, “Drama creates the conscience of the age. We cannot make people good by Acts of Parliament. Nor is it possible by constitution provisions to remove deep-seated social prejudices. We influence social behavior by creating public opinion. I have known many playwrights and actors who have worked hard at the task of raising standards of behavior in our country”. Vice President, further concluded, “I hope your deliberation will arouse the public interest in the theatre movement and the art of drama, and thereby result in improvement of our standards. Alkazi was very much impressed with the speech of Dr. Radhakrishnan. He thought that the Vice President was talking to him directly. This speech has given him an opportunity to listen to others, comprehend their thoughts and then plan his responses accordingly. Through this speech, he also realised that the fundamental task of theatre was to assume its social responsibility and he rightly concluded that Society needs builder–not only of bridges and buildings, but of ideas and institutions.
Therefore, he started concentrating on creating the actors of future generations. In one of the speeches he said that it was the duty of educated people like him to teach the future generation how to read and write and how to behave. Similarly, he wanted them to take initiative to learn music, painting and other arts especially folk dramas. According to him, historical and literary research will not help to understand our ancient heritage unless we test the ancient plays by playing them exactly in the way they used to be played in the past. He observed this in Western countries where ancient Greek dramas were played in ancient style. Therefore, he wanted to play Sanskrit dramas in the same way. In this matter, he said that modern production of Sanskrit Plays made him uneasy and raised great doubts in his mind. He further said that he had witnessed a play written in classical style, according to obviously rigid and highly formalized conventions, performed by actors who resort to pseudo-realistic style of acting in setting achieving a certain shabby naturalism. However appreciative Sanskrit students may be of the play as spoken by performers, the incongruity of the entire production is aesthetically excruciating!
Ebrahim Alkazi resigned from NSD and left in 1977. At the time of giving an interview to Kuldeep Kumar, Alkazi said that an atmosphere had come into the institution that was not at all conducive to creative work. It was an atmosphere of politics, pettiness, and atmosphere that no longer had any faith in the basic principles or requirements of the institution. A kind of demoralization had set in. I felt that if I continued to be there, I would become involved in politics and I did not want that to happen. I do not think any artist would like to get involved in the shabby politics of this kind. After all, an artiste is a person who has to go out in the world and prove himself by the quality of his work. That is it. His politics is the quality of his performances, not pulling strings, not manipulating, not the trips abroad, not the contacts with higher up, not to participate in festivals and so on. After leaving the NSD, he was less engaged in theatre and became a tireless promoter of visual arts. He established Art Heritage Gallery in New Delhi and Mumbai and became the first promoters of modern art of M F Husain. He also established the Alkazi Collection of Photography at Sepia International Gallery in New York City. This was one of the largest collections of photographs
This book is not hiding any personal life of Ebrahim Alkazi. It has mentioned about his married life with his wife Roshen Alkazi, daughter Amal and son Faisal. It also mentioned how he was drawn to Uma Anand, the first wife of Chetan Anand. After taking the divorce from Chetan Anand, she was keen to go with Ebrahim Alkazi but Alkazi held it back. While writing about her parents Allam, she has used an anthropological approach about her parents. She proudly said that only her father was one of the main architects in freeing Indian art from colonial mimicry. She also mentioned that her mother's role was equally important in the artistic journey of Alkazi. Allam Allana said that her mother was fully aware of costume requirements for the dramas which were going to be directed by Alkazi and designing the costumes exactly the way Alkazi wanted. To bring this biography faithful and truthful, the writer has taken proper care. She writes, “My parents… were artistes…. They believed in leading lives that were truthful, and that did not necessarily abide by societal norms and niceties. This was part of the way they asserted their freedom―to live according to their own sense of truth. It was what made them strong and courageous and worth writing about.”
This biography of Ebrahim Alkazi has to be read by theatre enthusiasts. It is true that dramas directed by Alkazi became very much popular but reasons behind this popularity are best direction, nicely set design, use of proper costumes and lighting and above all beauty of chronology. At the end, I am quoting Alkazi's words from his speech which had been delivered by him on his farewell of NSD. He said and I am quoting him, “Acting, one affirms, is an art; the actor is an artist in the theatre. He is both creator and interpreter of another’s creation. The actor’s instrument is his body; in this he is at once the creator and the things created. These assumptions partially determine the type and quality of the actor’s training. But in this connection another factor can be ignored –namely, a society’s conception of the nature and function of the theatre”.
This book shows the devotion of Ebrahim Alkazi towards theatre and the world of arts along with the creativity of a galaxy of artists and actors. During his tenure in NSD, numbers of actors and directors developed under his guidance. They are Vijaya Mehta, Shyam Benegal, Om Puri, Sudha Shivpuri, Naseeruddin Shah, Uttara Bavkar, Suhas Joshi, Jyoti Subhash, Jaydev and Rohini Hattangaddi, Pankaj Kapoor, B V Karanth, Neelam Mansingh, Manohar Sing, Vijay Kashyap, Kusum Haider, Alyque Padamsee, Girish Karnad and many more. Similarly Artists like M F Husain, F N Souza, Akbar Padamsee, Nissim Ezekiel and Gerson Da Cunha got an opportunity to build a dynamic new culture of India.
Please do not miss to read this wonderful book which is the biography of such a person who has changed the language of Modern Indian Theatre and Arts.
Thank You
Yogesh Gogwekar
10/07/2024
Ebrahim Alkazi was born on 18th October 1925 in Pune in the wealthy Saudi Arabian Muslim family which had migrated to India and settled down in Pune. His mother was Kuwaiti. He was one of the nine siblings. By doing hard work, Hamid Alkazi, father of Ebrahim Alkazi, developed his export business in India and raised his family in Pune by providing them the Western Education along with the education of Arabic language and Quran. He forced them to follow values of etiquette and social conservatism. He completed his school education in St. Vincent’s High school in Pune. During his school days, he started getting a comprehensive education and with the help of school’s principal Father Rifkin, he started receiving books to read from the school library. Due to the business requirement, Hamid Alkazi shifted to Mumbai. In Mumbai, Alkazi joined St. Xavier’s college for his graduation. During his college days, he had great exposure to a wide range of books. Because of English Education, Alkazi got an opportunity to learn Indian literature, music and prevailing arts of the colonial period. In St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai, he took his first strides in theatre which became passion and he started losing interest in the export business which was set up by his father.
The situation in Mumbai (that time Bombay) was a little bit different than in Pune. It allowed Alkazi to work on his passion. In one particular social gathering, he met Sultan Padamsee who was popularly known as Bobby among his friends. Sultan Padamsee was an anglicized Khoja Muslim and his family was well-off having high respect in the social upper class society of Bombay. Bobby was also a theatre lover and had an English Theatre Company. He asked Alkazi to join his group. In this group, Alkazi met and fell in love with the sister of Bobby, Roshen Padamsee who was costume designer of English Theatre Company. Later on, he married her. Bobby committed suicide (Reasons for his suicide not mentioned in the book) and responsibilities of theatre which were developed by Bobby fallen on Ebrahim Alkazi. Thus the future journey of theatre started for Ebrahim Alkazi.
Amal Allana, writer of this book, mentioned that her father Ebrahim Alkazi was not an Indian by parentage but still he had chosen to stay back in the country where he was born i.e. India. She further stated that his sense of belonging to India only intensified over the years. His parents shifted to Karachi, Pakistan after the partition but Alkazi decided to stay in India and to develop India’s art and culture through theatre. According to his daughter, there was no question of Hindu and Muslim in his family. She said that he named her as Uma and he never objected when Roshen Alkazi (Mother of writer) was wearing a Bindi on her forehead. She wrote that we grew up in a society, a family where there were no religious differences. Her Father had friends from Catholics, Parsees, Muslims, Jews and Hindus religions and no one used to look at any one from a religious point of view. She says in her book,” We have to understand that as Indians we come from a rich past and the richness comes from it being syncretic”. She has also mentioned that Alkazi used to call himself a Maharashtrian Arab. Through his work in theatre one can easily make out Alkazi’s love for India and its culture. That is the reason to understand the life of Ebrahim Alkazi; one has to look behind the religion.
As mentioned above Alkazi took over the responsibility of the English Theatre Company which was established by his friend Sultan Padamsee. In 1947, while working for theatre, Alkazi decided to go to London to understand radical modernization in the art and also in the literature. For this purpose, he asked for financial help from his father to pursue first painting and then theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. After seeing his talent in theater, English Drama League and British Broadcasting Corporation had offered him career opportunities to work with them but Ebrahim Alkazi rejected this offer as he decided to come back to India and worked for theatre in India. In Mumbai, he rejoined the English Theatre Company and achieved a great name in the theater. He worked there till 1954. At the time of working there, he realised that just working for English theatre, he could not develop the Indian Arts and Culture. Therefore, he decided to learn Sanskrit and Hindi and also took much interest in theatre performances of Marathi and Gujarati languages. While working in an English Theatre Company, Alkazi developed the idea of open theatre.
In 1960, he was asked to come to Delhi to take over the chairmanship of Sangeet Natak Academe and provide help to do the setup of the National School of Drama. This was a great challenge for him. He accepted this job even after knowing that Delhi is not a settled down place for him as he was an outsider for Hindi theatre in Delhi. But this was a turning point in his life. In 1962, after looking at the talent of Ebrahim Alkazi, the Great Social Reformer and Promoter of Indian Handicrafts, Handloom and theatre, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, selected him as the director of National School of Drama. He remained there till 1977 and became its longest serving director. In NSD, Alkazi developed a pedagogic approach to the theatre and also designed courses in such a way that every student would not focus only on stage acting training and directions but would get all opportunities to learn every aspect of stage-craft.
After his joining in NSD in 1962 as a director of NSD, he brought a lot of changes and developed the spaces for performances within the NSD. He built up a studio theatre and Open Air Meghdoot Theatre around NSD. As a director of NSD, he magnificently revolutionized not only English theatre but also Hindi theatre through his vision. He directed several plays of well-known playwrights like Dharamveer Bharati, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Mohan Rakesh, Girish Karnad etc. He also started directing the Sanskrit classics Kalidas and Shudraka and even old western classic plays of Shakespeare, Moliere etc. It is being said that his talent had been noticed when he directed Hindi drama Andha Yug in the right setting. This drama was based on the Mahabharata war written by Dharamveer Bharati. He also directed the drama Tughlaq in Hindi (Origin in Kannada written by Girish Karnad) and Ashad Ka Ek Din written by Mohan Rakesh. These dramas became so popular for best direction, nicely set design, use of proper costumes and lighting and above all beauty of choreography. He used to read the drama carefully and also used to make changes as per requirements. This habit of Alkazi brought modernization of Indian theatre. He taught the Western and Asian drama and direction with a painstaking degree of perfection. He used to teach his students the style of singing and dancing, recommending books, movies, paintings and music to understand the drama in a better way and to make them all-rounder on the stage.
Ebrahim Alkazi was a disciplined and strict person. He used to ask his students to be ready at 6 am to do drama practice in the open air to improve their voices. He never used to spare them even during the winter. He always used to tell his students that he wanted to hear their softest whisper. He used to say that his greatest strength as a theatre director was his intellectual humility which he derived from continuous learning and getting knowledge of different things. If I am not mistaken, his son Faisal who was educationist and theatre director once said that Alkazi had been striving for perfection as long as he could remember and there had been a professional stamp to everything he had done. He further said that he always taught us to do our work without cutting corners. At the time of developing the theatre, Alkazi did not receive any institutional support but still he did it under all circumstances and created theatre in his drawing room in arena style. He also created the studio theatre in Rabindranath Bhawan which consists of two walls.
Alkazi was having an opinion about using the mask in theatrical performances. It is being said that Masks are a very important tool for actors to represent the characters in theatrical performances. Writer and Professor of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University, Paul S. Wingrert, says, “Masks have been used almost universally to represent characters in theatrical performances. He further said that theatrical performances are a visual literature of a transient, momentary kind. It is most impressive because it can be seen as a reality; it expends itself by its very revelation. The mask participates as a more enduring element, since its form is physical.” Alkazi has beautifully explained about the usage of masks at the time of theatrical performances. He says, “Wearing the mask gives the actor a strange but reassuring sense of anonymity. Since his face is covered, he loses his identity, becomes suddenly a being other than himself, and permits himself to indulge in all sorts of capers, contortions, and uninhibited movements which he would be too self-conscious to do in his own guise. Concealed behind his mask, he feels he can observe without being observed, and this gives him the courage to perform with the greatest freedom before an audience”.
He further says about using Mask in theatre performances,” The whole body must be built round the face, the arms, the fingers, the legs, the shoulders, the haunches, the tilt of the head, the gait and finally the speech. In every single detail, the actor’s body must learn to conform with the mask it wears. The transformation must be complete-as it can never be in the case of a performance without a mask. To create such a character, then, the actor must come to know his mask in its infinitesimal detail. He must leave with it, regard it as his alter ego, and recreate himself in terms of it. As our Production has shown, this is more difficult than it sounds…It will indeed be the sad moment when, on the last night, each actor bids farewell to the face which he has for so many months come to accept as his own”.
As mentioned in the book, Ebrahim Alkazi always wanted to educate the audiences through theatre. At the inauguration function of the National School of Drama in 1956, Vice President Dr. Radhakrishnan said, “Drama creates the conscience of the age. We cannot make people good by Acts of Parliament. Nor is it possible by constitution provisions to remove deep-seated social prejudices. We influence social behavior by creating public opinion. I have known many playwrights and actors who have worked hard at the task of raising standards of behavior in our country”. Vice President, further concluded, “I hope your deliberation will arouse the public interest in the theatre movement and the art of drama, and thereby result in improvement of our standards. Alkazi was very much impressed with the speech of Dr. Radhakrishnan. He thought that the Vice President was talking to him directly. This speech has given him an opportunity to listen to others, comprehend their thoughts and then plan his responses accordingly. Through this speech, he also realised that the fundamental task of theatre was to assume its social responsibility and he rightly concluded that Society needs builder–not only of bridges and buildings, but of ideas and institutions.
Therefore, he started concentrating on creating the actors of future generations. In one of the speeches he said that it was the duty of educated people like him to teach the future generation how to read and write and how to behave. Similarly, he wanted them to take initiative to learn music, painting and other arts especially folk dramas. According to him, historical and literary research will not help to understand our ancient heritage unless we test the ancient plays by playing them exactly in the way they used to be played in the past. He observed this in Western countries where ancient Greek dramas were played in ancient style. Therefore, he wanted to play Sanskrit dramas in the same way. In this matter, he said that modern production of Sanskrit Plays made him uneasy and raised great doubts in his mind. He further said that he had witnessed a play written in classical style, according to obviously rigid and highly formalized conventions, performed by actors who resort to pseudo-realistic style of acting in setting achieving a certain shabby naturalism. However appreciative Sanskrit students may be of the play as spoken by performers, the incongruity of the entire production is aesthetically excruciating!
Ebrahim Alkazi resigned from NSD and left in 1977. At the time of giving an interview to Kuldeep Kumar, Alkazi said that an atmosphere had come into the institution that was not at all conducive to creative work. It was an atmosphere of politics, pettiness, and atmosphere that no longer had any faith in the basic principles or requirements of the institution. A kind of demoralization had set in. I felt that if I continued to be there, I would become involved in politics and I did not want that to happen. I do not think any artist would like to get involved in the shabby politics of this kind. After all, an artiste is a person who has to go out in the world and prove himself by the quality of his work. That is it. His politics is the quality of his performances, not pulling strings, not manipulating, not the trips abroad, not the contacts with higher up, not to participate in festivals and so on. After leaving the NSD, he was less engaged in theatre and became a tireless promoter of visual arts. He established Art Heritage Gallery in New Delhi and Mumbai and became the first promoters of modern art of M F Husain. He also established the Alkazi Collection of Photography at Sepia International Gallery in New York City. This was one of the largest collections of photographs
This book is not hiding any personal life of Ebrahim Alkazi. It has mentioned about his married life with his wife Roshen Alkazi, daughter Amal and son Faisal. It also mentioned how he was drawn to Uma Anand, the first wife of Chetan Anand. After taking the divorce from Chetan Anand, she was keen to go with Ebrahim Alkazi but Alkazi held it back. While writing about her parents Allam, she has used an anthropological approach about her parents. She proudly said that only her father was one of the main architects in freeing Indian art from colonial mimicry. She also mentioned that her mother's role was equally important in the artistic journey of Alkazi. Allam Allana said that her mother was fully aware of costume requirements for the dramas which were going to be directed by Alkazi and designing the costumes exactly the way Alkazi wanted. To bring this biography faithful and truthful, the writer has taken proper care. She writes, “My parents… were artistes…. They believed in leading lives that were truthful, and that did not necessarily abide by societal norms and niceties. This was part of the way they asserted their freedom―to live according to their own sense of truth. It was what made them strong and courageous and worth writing about.”
This biography of Ebrahim Alkazi has to be read by theatre enthusiasts. It is true that dramas directed by Alkazi became very much popular but reasons behind this popularity are best direction, nicely set design, use of proper costumes and lighting and above all beauty of chronology. At the end, I am quoting Alkazi's words from his speech which had been delivered by him on his farewell of NSD. He said and I am quoting him, “Acting, one affirms, is an art; the actor is an artist in the theatre. He is both creator and interpreter of another’s creation. The actor’s instrument is his body; in this he is at once the creator and the things created. These assumptions partially determine the type and quality of the actor’s training. But in this connection another factor can be ignored –namely, a society’s conception of the nature and function of the theatre”.
This book shows the devotion of Ebrahim Alkazi towards theatre and the world of arts along with the creativity of a galaxy of artists and actors. During his tenure in NSD, numbers of actors and directors developed under his guidance. They are Vijaya Mehta, Shyam Benegal, Om Puri, Sudha Shivpuri, Naseeruddin Shah, Uttara Bavkar, Suhas Joshi, Jyoti Subhash, Jaydev and Rohini Hattangaddi, Pankaj Kapoor, B V Karanth, Neelam Mansingh, Manohar Sing, Vijay Kashyap, Kusum Haider, Alyque Padamsee, Girish Karnad and many more. Similarly Artists like M F Husain, F N Souza, Akbar Padamsee, Nissim Ezekiel and Gerson Da Cunha got an opportunity to build a dynamic new culture of India.
Please do not miss to read this wonderful book which is the biography of such a person who has changed the language of Modern Indian Theatre and Arts.
Thank You
Yogesh Gogwekar
10/07/2024
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