Monday, June 8, 2009

Darkness at Noon ...

The Great Artist Habib Tanvir is no more

He was an institution!

Habib Tanvir -- for us Habib Saheb, is no more. He was a great theatre director, one of the most popular Hindi playwrights, poet and actor. In 1959 he founded a theatre company, "Naya Theatre". He was awarded many awards like Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Padma Shri, Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, and the Padma Bhushan, Fringe Firsts Award at Edinburgh International Drama Festival in 1982.


Habib Ahmed Khan 'Tanvir' was born on September 1, 1923 in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, to Hafiz Ahmed Khan, who hailed from Peshawar. After long illness he passed away on 8th of June 2009 at Bhopal.

Team REACH (Virāsat) pays condolence at the death of veteran Hindi theatre & film personality Habib Tanvir, a Great Artist who did great works for this country. Since the beginning of Virāsat he had been a beacon of light - an inexhaustible source of inspiration for REACH. At our request he brought his productions to the Theatrefest, participated in the Urdu Poetry Festival in Virāsat at Dehradun (Uttarakhand). REACH feels blessed to have had his love and affection. He was a father figure for REACH - part of the family - part of our consciousness, in a way, part of our being. No words are enough to convey the sense of loss that we and millions of his admirers feel at this sad moment. "Light has gone out" - --a national treasure, a humanist and a true genious who charted a new destiny for theatre, and a pioneer who brought folk to the international arena - an artist to the core! We stand in silence with Nageen and Anna - his daughters. A "drowsy numbness pains my sense" when we go down our long memory lane. He is no more. But can he ever die? No.. Never..He will always remain alive - pipe in hand, with his guttural voice and disarming, mischievious smile. 


Here are some treasured golden moments shared with him during
Virāsat 
(Dehradun, Uttarakhand) that we will always cherish.....