KARACHI: Zeest, the Tehrik-i-Niswan’s play presented in the Arts Council of Pakistan’s Theatre Festival on Thursday is about the water lily that blooms even in the dirtiest of waters, making its surroundings as beautiful as itself.

It is about life and living life to the fullest no matter what the circumstances. Written, directed and choreographed by Sheema Kermani, and supported by Naina, Tabita, Saima, Asiya, Shazia and Sahiba, Zeest has an all-female cast of some of the most talented ladies who once again gave life to defeated and broken and crushed souls, trapped inside the four walls of the congested existences.

While explaining a bit about the play, Sheema Kermani informed the audience that when she started Tehrik-i-Niswan in 1978, the play was first presented by her original group which comprised of comprising Badar Khalil, Zehra Shahid Hussain, Rubina Qureshi, Yasmin Ismail, Sarwat Sultana, and the rest. It was a total free and voluntary group interested in sending out feminist messages in a story-telling format through theatre.

“The concept is the same though I have updated it for this special performance for the Pakistan Theatre Festival,” Ms Kermani explained.

The story opens with the sounds of blowing winds, of water in various forms, including ocean waves and rain. The characters of ‘wind’ swirls in a dance in sync with ‘nature’ and ‘life’. There are birds chirping. Flowers bloom. The heart sings. Isn’t life worth celebrating?

Life is happy. It collects the prettiest of flowers and rides on the wind looking for women as beautiful as the flowers she has picked for them. But where are the women? Life cannot find them easily. Life is informed by the wind that they are afraid so that they don’t come out. They hide under the roof, behind the four walls that they have compromised with the powerful men. These men know how to use them as they keep them hidden in the name of tradition. Time passes but the traditions remain. Hence the women remain hidden.

But life is looking for them. Life wants to touch them. But when it sees them it realises that these women don’t celebrate life. They only mourn their existence and pray not to be born as a girl in this world where they are trampled upon. Where they do back-breaking hard work, where they put up a happy face to hide the ugliness in their lives and are like puppets in the hands of men.

The tragedy here is that when life beckons these women, they turn their back to it because you are too disillusioned to believe in living happily. They can no longer see the radiance of life. None of them are willing to accept the gift of fresh, fragrant flowers that life offers them. Some don’t even consider themselves worthy of such beautiful gifts. They don’t hope, they don’t dream. They live in a materialistic world where nothing is genuine and straight from the heart.

But in this same life there is also something such as resistance. There is resistance in the form of feminism. Resistance that runs after life and refuses to give up. It is the spirit of resistance that finally gives some hope to the broken souls until they too can dream and be grateful to have been born as females.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2023