Mahmood Farooqui brings Karna alive with a powerful Dastangoi performance

As every performing artiste is aspiring to make their productions visual spectacles, some are managing to retain the core essence of the form, while it is getting lost in others. This performance celebrates the true essence of storytelling without any jazz.

Dastan-e-Karna, a thought provoking performance

Storyteller, writer, and Dastangoi revivalist Mahmood Farooqui returns to the stage with a powerful new performance: Dastan-e-Karn. Known for breathing life into forgotten oral traditions, Mahmood now turns his gaze to one of the Mahabharata’s most complex figures.

In this latest presentation, Mahmood retells the story of Karna — the outsider, the fallen hero, the man bound by fate and yet striving for justice. “I’ve always been fascinated by Karna. There’s a subaltern quality to him. He was unjustly outcast, yet deeply aspirational — always reaching for dignity and justice.” The performance is part of Farooqui’s larger mission: to reframe myth and history through the intimate, minimalist power of Dastangoi.

Dastan-e-Karna is crafted from various retellings — drawing from Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, and Persian versions of the Mahabharata. Mahmood also gathered oral narratives from scholars and storytellers across the subcontinent. “Every version of the Mahabharata is different, and that’s the beauty of an oral tradition — each narrator chooses what to highlight.”

Rather than attempting to tell the entire epic, Mahmood distills the emotional essence of Karna’s journey. “It’s about inequality, about humility, about treating everyone as equal regardless of caste or status,” he says. These themes — along with Karna’s painful isolation and steadfast sense of duty — feel sharply resonant today.

Having revived this nearly extinct form in 2005, Farooqui has spent the past two decades performing stories across genres — from Saadat Hasan Manto to Tagore to painter S.H. Raza. Dastangoi, which reached its peak in 19th-century Lucknow and Delhi, is unique among Indian storytelling traditions for using no music, props, or embellishments. “Just the performer and their voice, it is theatre at its purest,” Mahmood explains.

The performance, stripped of spectacle, places the weight of the story squarely on the spoken word. And yet, Mahmood Farooqui’s deep reverence, literary insight, and quietly commanding presence turn it into an experience that lingers. “In the end, these are stories that help us ask who we are — and who we want to be, he reflects.

Tickets at ₹499. June 22, 7 pm. At Trillion Ballroom, The Park.

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