RAWALPINDI, Oct 26: “Life is as complicated as we make it,” goes a dialogue in the play Foothold to highlight the predicament of its central character who tries to find solace in one thing or another, rejecting the simple pleasures of everyday life.

A performed reading of Foothold, a play by renowned Pakistani English poet Taufiq Rafat, was staged by novice artists at the National College of Arts (NCA) Rawalpindi campus late Saturday evening for mostly young audience that swamped the hall.

Rafat in one of his poems said: “Words have a posthumous tone”, a statement which certainly rang true in his play Foothold when the NCA staged the play on the occasion of the death anniversary of the poet and playwright.

The scene of the play was set at a railway station where the friends and family of protagonist, Saleem, keep on taunting and pricking him over his oscillating nature. The young man is in constant quest of truth for which he keep on brooding over his being and hurting the feelings and sentiments of others attached to him.

The mother, friends and beloved of the central character get irritated over the futility of his quest for a singular destination of ‘truth’ and kept on taunting him for ignoring his close relations. The serious message is conveyed in an ironical tone with frequent humorous dialogues serving as comic relief in the play.

Towards the end of the play, Salim himself realises the vainness of all his efforts for the search of truth, avoiding the realities of life when in a soliloquy he says, ‘for every one there is a time to break down’. The solo play that has witnessed only one performance by the Alpha Players Lahore in 1969 shifts between verse and prose as its language is charged with poetic allusions.

Taufiq Rafat is the first leading poet of Pakistan to free the English language from its colonial character by giving it a native hue and local habitation. While Rafat is lauded as a poet, his contributions to prose writing and drama are more discreet.