Mahmood Farooqui is an award-winning writer and an award-winning Dastan performer. Farooqui along with his uncle, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi noted Urdu poet and literary critic, revived Dastangoi, the ancient art of Urdu storytelling. Maybe it`s true that no art form dies completely.
So was the case with Dastangoi.
Writer and director, Mahmood Farooqi pumped back life into the fading art form.
Farooqui began reinventing Dastangoi, in 2005. Since then, he has performed thousands of shows across the world. Apart from bringing alive the old epic of Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, he has innovated Dastangoi by using it as a medium to tell modern tales. His latest work is Dastan-e-Karan Az Mahabharata, a retelling of the life of the great Karna based on Urdu, Persian, Hindi, and Sanskrit sources.
In 2007, Mahmood Farooqui was awarded a grant from the India Foundation for the Arts under the Extending Arts Practice section. The grant enabled him to organise a Dastangoi festival in Bombay and to publish the first Dastangoi book.
