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March 14, 2004
Review: Family values
WHAT is so fascinating about Bano Qudsia’s Lagan Apni Apni, a full-length play revolving around the idiosyncrasies of certain characters in a family set up, is its subtleness and extraordinary detailed probing into the psyche and ideologies of all individual protagonists. As the title of the play suggests, each character is preoccupied with some ambition and mania, and can go to any extent to achieve it. Bano Qudsia has delineated the conflict of an individual’s desires and dreams within a society or in a group of people that has its own compulsions and preferences.
Bano Qudsia is a master playwright in her own right. She has produced gems in Urdu fiction and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to rate her one of the best in terms of Urdu prose writing. With a serious dearth of first-rate fiction available in Urdu today, there are even fewer playwrights and novelists who can live up to the standards of contemporary global fiction, whose themes and subject matter are briskly changing and becoming more advanced with growing times.
Though the play under review falls short of the expectations one has of a veteran writer such as Bano Qudsia, the writer persists with her undying obsession with the sanctity of the family system and opposition to modernity. There seems to be a constant monotony in her technique of writing and style of the craft. The characters in the play, all very distinguished and distinct in their personalities and beliefs, are shown struggling in a conflicting milieu, where they are eager to pursue their ambitions, and yet they are bound in relationships that impede them from breaking the barriers of the family.
Maulvi Abdul Samad’s family is a typical middle-class clan, which slowly and gradually disintegrates as the strong patriarchal bond loosens up due to changing times and shifts in the interests of the family members. Samad’s wife, a character that appears to be impious and ‘worldly’ as opposed to the conventionalist and orthodox Samad, comes up as the most tragic character in the play, whose end is somewhat closer to the tragedy of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth or Eugene O’Neill’s Mary. While Samad, whose character is portrayed as a selfish and stubborn patriarch, witnesses the breakdown of the familial norms and traditions in front of his eyes, while he refuses to mend his demeanour and attitudes.
The other protagonists too suffer from the similar discord between the old and the new. For instance, Dr Abdullah, the elder son of Maulvi Abdul Samad and a doctor by profession, detests the hypocrisy of his father, and at the same time lacks courage to challenge the basis of his existence. As a man devoted to serve his patients, Dr Abdullah is a symbol of humanitarian and modern ideas, whose principles seem to be at variance with the fake family ideals.
The other children of Maulvi Abdul Samad too are sufferers in their own way, as they happen to be instrumental in the disintegration of their family, and coincidentally the victims of the change that they bring upon themselves. The character of Lubna is particularly interesting as it reflects the mindset of the author, and whose sensibilities are closer to what the author attempts to philosophize. She is a short story writer in the play who ultimately enters the cinema, a profession that is much despised and hated by the Maulvi Abdul Samad family.
The other characters too have an important and essential role to play in Lagan Apni Apni. Each character narrates a different story, a peculiar passion, and yet its story is linked to the collective saga of the society. Bano Qudsia, as obvious from her cravings in her earlier works, glosses over the dilemma of the modern Pakistani society that is rapidly moving towards the disintegration of the old family system due to economic pressures. The writer mourns this transformation in her latest creation, yet she also expresses her repulsion against specious middle-class standards that according to her are breathing their last. From this viewpoint, the play can be termed as a tragedy; a pathetic dirge on the death of centuries-old conventions. There seems to be no way out from the inevitable disaster that is bound to shake the pillars of orthodoxy.
Bano Qudsia has maintained a certain level of balance and impartiality in her latest venture, which was very important otherwise the play would have become quite partial in favour of the proponents and supporters of the sanctity of the family. The play deals with various major and minor themes in an objective manner, however, the subjective elements are not marginalized either. Lagan Apni Apni is a powerful depiction of the extraordinariness of ordinary and mundane affairs.
Lagan Apni Apni
By Bano Qudsia
Sang-e-Meel Publications, 25 Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Lahore
Tel: 042-7220100
Email: smp@sang-e-meel.com
ISBN 969-35-1533-1
248pp. Rs225
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