The feisty lady who introduced Naseeruddin Shah to literature....

Naseeruddin Shah

Naseeruddin Shah has always something interesting to say about his illustrious life. No wonder, in his memoir 'And Then One Day', the actor talks at length about "a feisty lady in the English department" of Aligarh Muslim University who introduced him to Oliver Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer', Eugene Ionesco's 'The Lesson' and 'The Chairs', Edward Albee's 'Zoo Story', Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot', Anton Chekhov's 'A Proposal' and many other Continental plays. According to Shah, the 'feisty lady teacher' also directed the performance of these plays and in a chapter suitably titled, "The Aligarh University Absurdists", Shah fondly remembers this lady for her "perceptiveness and intellectual capacity" who "proved to be a benefactor in many ways". "She introduced me to literature I might not otherwise have read," writes Shah.

This feisty lady was Zahida Zaidi (1930-2011) who has written numerous plays and has many collections of poetry in Urdu and English. She also wrote 'Inqilab Ka Ek Din', one of the few campus novels in Urdu. She also translated a number of Continental plays in Urdu.

Written in 1984, Zahida Zaidi's Urdu play 'Doosra Kamra' (The Other Room) was performed recently at Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Ambedkar University, Delhi and Shimla's historic Gaiety Theatre.

True to Naseeruddin Shah's description, 'Doosra Kamra' is an absurdist play which breaks away from the popular tradition of realism and romance. The plot of the play puts at the centre a working middle class couple, Suraj and Sonia (played by two young actors Shahrukh and Pratibha),who remain confined to their two-room house in an urban set up. The entire action of the play takes place inside one room of the house, with some visitors, most importantly their friend Shabana (played by Arsh) dropping in the house at some awkward moments.