Wings In Chains - Qaid-e-Hayat

Author: Surendra Verma
Translator(s): Shama Futehally
Publisher: National School of Drama
Year: 0
Language: English
Pages: 73
ISBN/UPC (if available): N/A

Description

This play is based on the life of the poet Mirza Ghalib, but it is not a historical documentation. It is an attempt to under-stand, through the medium of Ghalib’s experience, the complex tensions which would be faced by any contemporary artist whose creativity goes against established norms: tensions in relation to his colleagues, to society, to the family and to himself.

The play is not, of course, a historical document and many of its characters are fictional. Nonetheless it locates itself squarely within the broad facts of Ghalib’s life. As the author has explained, it uses the Ghalib narrative to explore the multiple tensions which define the contemporary artist. Tormented, complex, ironical, subtle, joyous, detached and intimate at the same time, Ghalib is contemporary as only the greatest of artists can be.