SONS OF BABUR ( English -- *ing TOM ALTER & others May 8, 2011

Maitri Arts & Culture Society & Pierrot’s Troupe
Present
Salman Khurshid’s SONS OF BABUR (English)
May 8 (Sun) 2011 7:30 PM, SHRI RAM CENTRE, New Delhi
Direction: Tom Alter: Duration —2 hrs

Salman Khurshid (b 1953) read for B.A. (Hons) English at St Stephen’s College, Delhi University and Law at St Edmund Hall, Oxford . He then taught law at Trinity College, Oxford. A renowned legal thinker, a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and one of the finest educationists, he is known for a deep interest in several fields of human endeavour. He was Deputy Minister of Commerce and Minister of State for External Affairs (1991-6). Presently,he is the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Corporate Affairs and the Minority Affairs in the Government of India.
Tom Alter (b 1951), needing no introduction, stands head and shoulders above over others when it comes to his essays in Hindi, Urdu and English theatre & cinema He also has a deep interest in art, literature and sports. Tom’s first love, of course, remains theatre and he has starred in landmark productions like Tughlaq, Waiting for Godot, Maulana Azad, Ghalib, Larins Saheb, K.L. Saigal, City of Djinns, God Says Cheers, Raja Nahar Singh, Ghalib Ke Khat, The Wall, Black With Equals, Babur Ki Aulad (Hindustani) Arms and the Man and many more

Original, incisive and topical – this is what Pierrot’s plays are characterized for. So this time around the troupe opens Salman Khurshid’s ‘SONS OF BABUR’; virtually a revisit to the era and aura of the Mughols. In addition, Salman Khurshid, in his theatre debut, has superimposed ‘a search for India’, on that identity issue of ‘sons of Babur’.
The playwright’s intellectual search takes him back in time to the Mughal era. The central character of the play is of course Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, languishing in exile in far away Rangoon.

In the present times, he has an ardent admirer in Rudranshu Sengupta the protagonist, a university student of history. Rudranshu is so obsessed with the life of the last Mughal that he has a virtual supernatural to experience that transports him to meet Bahadur Shah in person. From then on the play swings between fantasy and reality, past and present, logic and emotion, fact and fiction. Rudranshu is taken on a guided tour by Bahadur Shah through various milestone events of the Mughal era. They effortlessly slide into the world of Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb, all seen directing the course of medieval India or Hindustan.
As the play progresses, one cannot but in turn be enamoured by the benevolence of the Mughals, feel disgust at their ambition, become fearful of their cruelty and also admire their ability to unite diverse populations into an entity called Hindustan.

With this is emphasized the understanding that India is a collage of cultures and nothing remains alien here, including foreigners who make this land their home; after all home is where the heart is.

Official Website: http://pierrotstheatre.com