PROBASHI- A Cultural News Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 | Page 28

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Interview with Moloyashree Hashmi
performance at the Boat Club. They
would often show us the tape and
even play it for us. In many places
workers themselves had done the
play on the basis of the recording.
Even till last year, I met a much
older person who had remembered
seeing the play.
Machine has been performed all
over the country and translated in
all languages across the Indian sub
continent.
Tell us something about Safdar, the
person.

Komita (left) and Sudhanva (right) perform the play Yeh Hum Kyun Sahen. Komita
(secretary of JANAM) and Sudhanva have been a moving force behind JANAM.

delegates were about to get up, six
persons (five men and one woman)
dressed in black t-shirts and jeans
ran in and formed the machine. The
delegates were taken by surprise.
The machine started moving with
sounds. Soon silence descended.
The delegates sat down. We began
the play. For thirteen and a half
minutes there was pin drop silence
in the audience. Seven thousand
pairs of eyes and ears were looking
and listening to the power of art
and theatre. The conditions and
aspirations of the working class and
the beauty of their creation and
struggle came together in the play.
It was hard to say where art ended
and politics began. It was a political
theatre at its best.

workers
to
a
stupendous
reception. I have never had such
an inspiring experience in my life. I
wondered whether the audience
sitting near India Gate could
actually see, as we would have
actually looked as little dolls. In the
years to come whenever we
performed in other towns and
moffussil areas we would meet
somebody who had recorded the

Safdar’s family from his mother’s
and father’s side were educated and
had progressive beliefs. Safdar’s
grandfather
studied
in
Shantiniketan and was an art
teacher in a school. Later he had a
furniture shop in Kashmiri gate.
However the furniture business
never did well. Safdar’s father
Haneef Hashmi and his uncles were
active in the Communist Party of
India in the late forties and lived in
Delhi. Safdar was born in Delhi. In
Aligarh, Safdar’s father was

The play ended with the singing of
the wokers’ Internationale. For
some seconds (to the actors it
seemed like a century), there was
total silence. (Maybe the play did
not work!). And then there was
thunderous clapping, the audience
stood up and cheered.
The next day we performed at the
Boat Club in front of about 1,60,000

Street theatre has always been popular with the masses, seen here people at
different levels find their own space to watch the JANAM play Samrath Ko Nanih
Dish Gosain in Mussourie.
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