The film Khusrau Darya Premka (Khusrau, the River of Love), directed by Yousuf Saeed was screened on 24 August at Tarangini amphitheatre.

Khusrau Darya Prem Ka is a modern-day docu-drama where artists try to understand the 14th century poet-composer, Amir Khusrau Dehlavi. The film uses the dramatic dastangoi (traditional storytelling in Urdu) to tell the narrative of Amir Khusrau in the voices of Ankit Chadha (a dastangoi artist preparing a stage presentation on Amir Khusrau) and Rene Singh (a musician preparing a musical rendering of Khusrau’s poetry). Together, as they explore Delhi’s historical monuments or meet children from the basti Nizamuddin playing with Khusrau’s Hindvi poetry, Ankit renders some of Khusrau’s historical works in a typical dastangoi style. This journey comes to an interesting twist when Ankit’s dastangoi persona ‘detaches’ from him and turns into a ‘real’ historical character! Ankit confronts this persona – his alter ego – and engages in a dialogue about what is the relevance of Khusrau’s poetry and heritage in today’s life, what it means to be a Sufi, and so on. The film also uses some renderings of Khusrau’s popular poetry in the voices of traditional qawwals (such as Mohammad Ahmed Warsi and FaridAyazqawwals), as well as in beautiful forms of Urdu-Persian calligraphy by Anis Siddiqui.

Yousuf Saeed is an independent filmmaker and researcher based in New Delhi. He recently wrote and published his new illustrated book Muslim Devotional Art in India (Routledge, 2012), which explores the history of Islamic poster art in India.