KPC stages play on 18th-century Kashmiri poetess Arnimal

Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Apr 10:  Bringing alive the heart-rending life Arnimal, the 18th century Kashmiri poetess, a  Kashmiri play by the same name was staged by Kashmir Performers Collective, at the Abhinav Theatre here today.
Performed in collaboration with the Sangeet Natak Akademy, New Delhi, the dramatic presentation based on the life of Arnimal, a late 18th-century women poetess, was like a leaf from history for the audience comprising mainly of Kashmiri Pandit families.
Arnimal, born in Palhalan village of Baramulla during the heydays of Afghan rule in the Valley, was married to one Munshi Bhawani Das Kachroo, a Persian poet, scholar in the court of Kashmir’s Afghan governor Jumma Khan.
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After being spurned by her husband who was drawn to the colorful world of courtesans’ dance and music, the talented and sensitive Arnimal gives vent to her feelings through simple but powerful poetry full of love, separation, dejection, and longing.
Today’s musical presentation woven around the life of Arnimal, told by two narrators was interspersed with a lyrical rendering of her poetry marked with a color of deep anguish and the simplicity of folk songs.
Staged in the backdrop of Virji Sumbli’s artistic set that representing a village water point, had the rustic yet salubrious feel of the rural landscape, the play was marked by a slow rhythm which informed all aspects like the delivery of dialogues, actor’s movements, the heart-rending sedate tunes of the Arnimal’s poems, even the measured pace of narrators’ intermittent story-line fillers.
Today’s play for the authenticity of characters’ costumes, headdresses, ornaments, props like mortar-pestle, charkha, pots, etc, succeeded in recreating Kashmir’s rural ambiance on stage.
Sanam Ziya as Arnimal, was able to portray the suffering, pathos and pain of Arnimal and how it appears a new avatar in her poetry. Ulfat Haroon as VessRani, Meenakshi Bhan as the dancer, Showkat Magrey as Bhawani Dass, Shahzad Shabir, and Shafiya Maqbool as narrators, all gave good performances. Bilal Raj’s music and the soulful voice of playback singer Shahi Mumtaz was the mainstay of the today’s musical play.
Syed Mohammad Altaf Bukhari, Minister for Education, Finance and Labour & Employment was chief guest of the function which was attended by a houseful audience.