ISLAMABAD, March 15: Ajoka, and its director Madeeha Gauhar, known for espousing serious and political theatre in Pakistan, staged Shahid Nadeem’s play Bullha at the Islamabad Club auditorium late Tuesday night.

The three-hour play, woven around the life of Bulleh Shah (1680-1758), was a tribute to the Punjabi mystic poet whose works are enjoying tremendous popularity these days.

Ms Jo Bakowski, director of the British Council, introducing the play observed that Bulleh Shah’s message of love for humanity was very much needed in ‘this troubled world’.

A consortium of British universities, led by the British Alumni Association, had sponsored the play to raise funds for girls’ education in the earthquake-affected areas.

It represented Bulleh Shah’s profound struggle in search of divine wisdom which led him to prove the futility of conflicts caused by the vested clergy and rich classes.

What the playwright conveyed through Bulleh Shah’s poetry in the present context was that the power of religion lay in the generous gifts of beauty, benevolence charity, forbearance, grace, mercy, service, tolerance which God Almighty had bestowed on mankind.—JI