Essay: On scripting and performing dastans
In one of his multi-volume studies on Dastangoi (an epic or dastan in itself), Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, the scholar nonpareil whose writings inspired me to revive Dastangoi, mentions how Ahmed Husain Qamar, one of the great dastangos of 19th century Lucknow, prepared these oral stories for printing. Qamar would dictate several stories at once, with no less than nine different scribes simultaneously furiously writing down different episodes and stories from the saga of Amir Hamza and his descendants, without faltering or…