Story-telling, a lost art now, was the earliest form of entertainment. An art so powerful the storytellers were believed to possess mystical powers through which they could transport people into an entirely different dimension. Dastangoi is one such Urdu art of story-telling which was at its peak from the late 16th to 19th centuries, spinning tales around the adventures of Amir Hamza with over 50,000 characters and unlike Scheherazade of The Arabian Nights – whose stories lasted a thousand and one nights – Amir Hamza’s were never-ending. The reviver of this bewitching expertise in the present times is Mahmood Farooqui. This Rhodes scholar is author to Beseiged: Voices from Delhi 1857 in which he published a series of his translations of texts representing the views of those besieged in Delhi in 1857, translator of Habib Tanvir: Memoirs, and Co-Director, Peepli Live .
