TheBismillah Khan Awards for music, dance, theatre and puppetry were given away to young and promising artistes by Sangeet Natak Akademi chairman Leela Samson on March 7.
A majority of the awards in theatre were bagged by women. Dakshina Sharma, Pakiia Bem, Anita Shabdeesh were honoured for their acting skills. The only male winner in the acting category was Danish Iqbal.

Awards for direction were also conferred on women directors — Thaninliema Chanu from Manipur and Meeta Mishra. Rajesh Kaleerkath Venugopal was honoured for lighting in theatre.
Mohammad Farooqui and Murtaz Danish Iqbal were honoured for Dastangoi, a folk narrative form of Uttar Pradesh. Farooqui, who discovered the style with his uncle, claims that this form of narration was popular between the 16th and 18th centuries. The last known “dastango” or story teller was Meher Ali who died in 1928. They found an audio clip in 1920 and that is the only indication they had about the narrative style. The credit for the rejuvenation of Dastangoi goes to Farooqui, who along with Danish, has made the narrative form a vital part of the contemporary theatre. Most of the narrative is from the Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, which consists of thousands of stories about the adventures of Amir Hamza and his childhood friend Amir Ayyar.
According to Farooqui, Dastan-e-Amir Hamza had only one volume but over the years with multiple improvisations and additions, around 44 volumes floated. There are more than 50,000 characters in the book. Amir has 500 children and 500 grandchildren. Thus, the thousands of characters make this a never ending tale.
The performance comprised anecdotes from Tilism-e-Hoshruba, the tale full of magic and mystery. Tilism is a magical realm that enchants the senses. Here the fight is between Amir Ayyar, a bosom pal of the hero Amir Hamza, and Mehtaab the magician who is the chief of the Sahirs. The two dastangos sit on their knees wearing white angarkhas and white topis. Beginning with a salutation to the saki, or the server of wine, the two actors began narrating the tale where Amir Ayyar enters the tilism with his group of Ayyars.
The other performance was by Anita Shabdeesh who presented a solo on her husband Shandeesh’s poem Chiri Di Umber Wali Udaan. While keeping the poetry alive, Anita imbued the script with drama. The content of the script depicts a woman’s cry against the injustice meted out to the female sex. The visual image is one of a woman poking her head out of a spider’s web.
Speaking directly to the audience, Shabdeesh talks about her unborn child who screams and tells her to not kill it. In shades of Oriana Fallici’s Letters To An Unborn Child, Shabdeesh spoke to the child about the troubled times in which she would be the born. Except for a few lapses, when she went over the top slightly, Shabdeesh gave an absorbing performance.
In the last performance, Pakiza Begum of Assam played the eponymous role in Menaka, an excerpt of the play based on Home Borgohain’s novel Matsyagadha.
Menaka belongs to a fishing community of untouchables. She is married to a good-for-nothing man and has four children.
Pakiza is a talented actress. She has worked with Baharuddin’s Seagull Theatre. She has established a cultural organisation called BA with NSD’s Anup Hazarika.
In the play, her childhood is well expressed as she plays and sings with her beloved father. She is distraught when he dies of cholera during an epidemic. Menaka is modelled on a real life character who lived in Upper Assam’s Lakhimpur district. She revolts against after an upper-class youth gets her sister-in-law pregnant and refuses to marry her. Menaka fights for justice and wins.
The entire performance was very artistically mounted providing the flavour of the fishing village.