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July 28, 2005
A trail-blazer
In a rapidly changing world, few people are lucky to be remembered for their contribution to society, particularly to the performing arts. Zafar Samdani writes about a remarkable person who worked all her life for the arts and women’s issues
Afew weeks ago, Farrukh Nigar Aziz attended a public event. It was a tribute to her sister Roshan Ara Bokhari, one of the original choreographers of Pakistan, arranged by the National Council of the Arts. She had been unwell and arrived on a wheelchair.Farrukh Nigar Aziz was around eighty and breathed her last within days of that appearance. In a rapidly changing world, few people are lucky to be remembered for their contribution to society, particularly to the performing arts. But those who had the opportunity to work with her or be exposed to her in some way, will never forget that she was an untiring soul when it came to women’s rights.
In fact, she was a trail-blazer as she established the Women’s Action Forum (WAF). She was a dynamic woman of great intellectual substance as a producer, director and actress of stage plays.
Daughter of a distinguished literary figure of pre-independence period, Khan Bahadur Abdul Aziz Falak Paima, she rose above her inheritance in arts. Falak Paima followed the form of light illuminating writings and was the sole practitioner of the format.
Her three sisters are national personalities in their own right. Mehr Nigar Masroor was a playwright and wrote brilliant stories for children; Hafeez Akhtar was a novelist and actress and Roshan was a choreographer while their brother Rashid Aziz, better known as Rassho, was an internationally acclaimed bridge player.
As a member of this exceptionally talented and progressive family, Farrukh Nigar Aziz had to make her mark. Without taking anything away from others, she made a great impact on arts, women’s issues, family planning campaigns and numerous other aspects of life, which won her international recognition.
Though not exactly a political activist because of her varied pursuits and commitments, she was nevertheless alive to women’s causes and established WAF during the repressive regime of General Zia ul Haq, which came up with numerous laws and measures undermining the very existence of women in Pakistani society.
Farrukh began her career in the United Nations in the early fifties, after being selected in an all Pakistan competition for a vacancy at the UN’s information wing. She joined the UN along with another Pakistani, whom she later married. That marriage did not last long and she returned to Pakistan with her children to start a new life as a public servant at the National Council for Integration, an organization established during Ayub Khan’s regime by late Altaf Gauhar and Hamid Jalal.
She spent some years in London as a member of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation that gave her insight into the importance of family planning for the progress of humanity in general and Pakistan in particular. She maintained an interest in this issue throughout her life.
She was closely associated with the Pakistan based Friends of the Middle East, which was actually a forum supporting the freedom movement of the Palestinians.
Theatre, however, remained the constant, prime focus and interest of her life. Playwright, Dr Enwar Sajjad recalls that as director of the council, she held a seminar on drama in the sixties “that remains the most organized and creative discussion on drama in Pakistan; it was a milestone event that remains unmatched in quality and importance more than four decades after it was held.”
Dr Sajjad also worked with her as a young drama actor when she staged A Passage to India by Forster.
He also acted in some other plays under her direction. One of them was penned by Mehr Nigar Masroor titled Uljhan and was a translation of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. He recalls her as a brilliant director with a gift for imaginative interpretation of scripts. “She was undeniably the best director of stage plays in Pakistan,” he says, with a measure of conviction.
Coming from someone like Dr Sajjad, who himself is a major literary personality and one of the most experienced stage writer and actor, this is an honest recognition of her status and contribution towards the development of stage drama in Pakistan. But he is not alone in expressing such an opinion. Kamal Ahmed Rizvi, another recognized name in theatre holds her in similar esteem.
Rizvi was always in contact with her but their association apparently became closer after she gave him an anthology of seventeen European plays that included Strindberg’s Seagull.
He was asked to translate the play which was later published by Farrukh and late Syed Sibte Hasan, a leading light of the leftist movement and founding editor of weekly Lail-o-Nihar. With that began an association that flourished with the many stage plays and survived till the end of her life.
Farrukh herself acted in a production of the translated version of Charlie’s Aunt directed by Rizvi; rendering the character of Asghari Khala.
Rizvi recalls her as a woman who performed many great and some indeed miraculous feats but, preferred to maintain a low profile. Unlike many others, she never sought publicity for herself but wanted the promotion of whichever cause she was pursuing at that moment.
Farrukh Nigar Aziz’s real achievement was stepping forward at a time when women, even educated females, mostly lived a dormant life and were reluctant to leave the comforts and protection of the family
Mainly it was theatre and she worked for its promotion, excellence in standards and the highest literary levels for scripts. She wanted indigenous scripts and when they were not available, she looked for adaptations.
A Punjab University graduate from the Kinnard College when she was selected for the UN, Farrukh Nigar obtained a Master’s Degree in English literature on her return to Pakistan.
The degree made her a resourceful and knowledgeable bilingual expert for theatre as it added the study of quality English literature to her solid base in the Urdu language. The removal of the language barrier enabled her to direct and act both in Urdu and English plays, though most of her theatre work comprised of English language plays.
There is no count, neither record of the plays she produced and directed but they run into scores of scripts and most of them are of established literary merit. Some of the titles include Heartbreak House, Hedda Gabler, Seagull, Respectable Prostitute, some one-act plays by Bertolt Bretcht and numerous other plays, that were new even for many literature students.
She used whichever stage was available: Government and Kinnard colleges, APWA auditorium and the Lahore Arts Council.
The commitment to theatre brought her close to the late poet, scholar, dramatist and leftist intellectual, Professor Safdar Mir and established a friendship that continued till his death. Holding him in tremendous respect and arranged a festival in his honour a few years back.
Age and ill health began to take their toll on her in the last five years and she started losing the energy that had distinguished her as a leader and trend setter in many fields. But respect for her contributions remained in serious drama circles and women’s liberation groups.
Her real achievement was stepping forward at a time when women, even educated females, mostly lived a dormant life and were reluctant to leave the comforts and protection of the family.
Stage plays, for instance, had hardly any females willing to participate in dramatic performances, even when they were held in women’s institutions. Farrukh did not only fill this and many other gaps herself, her presence inspired many young women to emulate her example.
Naeem Tahir, Chief Executive and Director General of Pakistan National Council of the Arts, sums up her achievements: “Farrukh was a remarkable and a giant of a woman. She was a woman with a difference.”
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