“I pray to the gods, I do some of the rituals.” Said a friend of mine, who since the country started slanting to the right, has not been able to wholeheartedly identify with her faith. Building aunties when they meet her in the lift, keep asking for her full name. And based on the answer, assume the community she belongs to and thereby her political affiliation, which they mostly get wrong anyway. Today the assumption is that the two identities go hand in hand . What it means to be liberal and religious today is something she’s still trying to navigate.
While the mainstream movies have seen a rise in propaganda films, with no real depth or nuance, the OTT space seems to be providing some relief with movies such as Laapata Ladies & Maharaj, which show that culture and tradition can co-exist with unconventional ways of thinking.
Those in the live performing arts also have a take. In the last couple of years there’s been a resurgence in plays that are tapping into mythology. Each one is attempting to decipher more than what’s present in the text. Some are retellings, some view the myths with a more aware, informed and sensitive lens. Faezeh Jalali’s Shikhandi for instance, delves deeper into the character from the Mahabharata, but the focus is less on Shikhandi’s role in the battle and more so on the gender identity of this character that was born a woman, raised as a man, and who eventually underwent a sex change.
Anoushka Zaveris’ Glitch in The Myth, takes a look at Sita’s story. Her childhood, her ambition, her need for adventure. The protagonist we meet is a curious, excited, loveable one. And the story we embark on is completely different, one that includes a strong sisterhood of women including Keikei, Surpankaha and Mandodari. The narrative not only makes Sita a very relatable character, but also sheds light on something that I think is extremely crucial to have in tales we choose to tell to the future generations – a glimpse of strong female friendships.
Myth really is something that has been passed down for generations, be it through books or aural storytelling. It only makes sense for us to examine if there’s any space for us, the people we are today, in the stories we grew up with.
Atif Ally Dagman, through his Miah Boy Diaries shares a similar reflection. A boy who ends up unemployed during the pandemic starts exploring what his religion means to him. He picks up Urdu, reads the Quran, and tries to understand for himself how the stigma he’s faced growing up has made him perceive his own ‘Muslimness’. He attempts to find pieces of himself that still make sense within the texts that have always remained in the periphery .
On the other hand, Mohammed Lehry’s The Muslim Mythology presents the audience with multiple scenarios, and post each scene, he urges the spectators to guess which of the stories they see are actual happenings and which are in fact, a myth.
Whether liberality and religious identity can coexist is not the question here. The country we live in has housed multiple ideologies and tolerance is something we had begun progressing towards. What is perhaps the larger look out is the decrease in this very tolerance prompting so many artists to embark on this sort of exploration. Does this type of art ever reach the audience it’s aimed at? I’m not very sure. But the next time my building aunty asks for my ‘full name’ I’m going to invite her to watch a play.
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