Before it became a famous film with a catchy hit number, late theatre doyen Habib Tanvir had desired to adapt the script of "Peepli Live" into a play and even "wished" to act in it, film's co-director and translator of his memoirs in English has revealed in a new book.
"Habib Saheb had read the script of 'Peepli Live' which was then called 'The Falling', and had liked it so much that he wanted to make a play of it," author Mahamood Farooqui says in a translated version of Tanvir's personal account.
Titled 'Habib Tanvir: Memoirs', the English translation of the theatre legend's recollections of his life and times, in Urdu earlier, was released recently here by Penguin Books.
Farooqui who undertook the translation which was entrusted by the man himself, says Tanvir had expressed a desire to play the "role of the cantankerous mother" in the film.
"When we went to shoot the film, he had half-jokingly and half-seriously expressed his wish to play the role of the cantankerous mother, which became such a rage," saya Farooqui, who co-directed the social satire along with wife Anusha Rizvi.
While the Urdu memoir was born out of Tanvir's writings for a Bhopal-based Urdu daily "Nadeem", the English translation could begin after Farooqui earned the confidence of the theatre veteran, whose health had begun to decline.
"Habib saheb thought I could take up the translation work on his Urdu memoirs and I have tried to do my job as faithfully as possible," Farooqui told PTI in an interview.
The book brings to non-Urdu readers and theatre lovers alike the extraordinary accounts of Tanvir's journey from his childhood in the town of Raipur to his training in the Royal theatre academy in England and his dalliance with cinema, among other engaging episodes from his life and times.
The book also reveals how before earning a scholarship to go to Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, he almost "developed an intense dislike" for Shakespeare during his intermediate class education at Morris College in Nagpur.
"Professor Guha taught Shakespeare....He used to explain the text reading from a notebook. It made for very boring lectures... Developed an intense dislike for Shakespeare and for this play (Othello) in particular," Tanvir says in the book.
"Long after my graduation when I seriously studied Shakespeare I found 'Othello' to be the tightest and the most affecting of tragedies," the book further reveals.
