JOIN USHaving the theme of ‘Archive’ this year, the annual fest of Miranda House’s History department ‘Tarikh’ comprised some unique events such as ‘Dastangoi’- the lost art of Urdu storytelling and ‘Amazing Race’, involving a set of six-stage tasks.
‘Dastangoi’ was performed by two students of Mahmood Farooqui, who revived the art of storytelling that thrived in medieval era, but had died out with time. The stories from Hamzanama told by Nadeem Shah and Manu Sikander took the audience past many ages. ‘Dastangoi’ saw a fully packed auditorium with students from other departments as well. Dressed in traditional white, the duo narrated the life and adventures of Amir Hamza, supposedly an uncle of Prophet Mohammed without any kind of music or prop.
“A student of our department had once attended ‘Dastangoi’. She came and told me that even if it is an academic fest, we should have a cultural flavour also. Well-known historian and Delhi University professor Shahid Amin was also among our panelists. He has digitised 242 gramophone records and one of them is a 192- based audio clip of legendry ‘Dastango’ Bakar Ali. So that is how we though it would be appropriate to organise one,” said Arundhati Sridhar, president, History Society, Miranda House.
Eight teams took part in ‘Amazing Race’, a fun-filled six-stage event involving finding something within the college premises such as a particular plant and getting a picture with it.
“Tarikh’ this year tackled the theme of the archive and its place in history. To explore this extremely complex theme, we expanded the fest to two days from the one-day event unlike previous years. The festival focused on different and changing notions of archive and history,” She said.
Paper presentation and panel discussion on the subject of ‘Different archives, different histories’ encouraged students to explore different sources of history. Students presented papers on topics such as tribals, kalighat paintings and the Indian sari.
Arundhati and Aashika Chakrabati’s presentation on Indian sari aimed at how this outfit can be used as a source of history as the style of draping has evovled through the ages. The presentation focused on mainly three types of saris and draping, Dravidian, Western and Northern. They talked about how the style of draping sari was occupation oriented. For instance, the way fisherwomen wear their sari helps them while working on the seashore.
Talking about the importance of departmental fests, Aishwariya Sah, vice-president, History Society, Miranda House said, “In our college fest, we cannot focus on one particular subject. On the contrary, in a departmental fest, we are free to organise events that are interesting as well as useful for our studies.”