'Dastan' cut short: Storyteller Ankit drowns in Pune lake

LUCKNOW: India’ modern, and probably youngest, ‘dastango’ Ankit Chadha drowned in a lake in Pune on Thursday. As news about his tragic death reached Lucknow on Friday, many hearts sank with him. Not just because it was a young life lost at only 30, but also because Ankit’s untimely death was a severe blow to the art of ‘dastangoi’.

Although he hailed from Delhi, Ankit had a deep connect with Lucknow. His first outstation performance was at the Bhartendu Natya Akademi in November 2010. The same year, he had started dastangoi, holding many performances with Lucknow’s first modern dastango, Himanshu Bajpai.

It was in 2010 that Ankit and Himanshu met in a Delhi metro coach and bonded over instinctively over Shauq Lakhnawi’s Masnai — Zeher-e-Ishq. In the years that followed, while Himanshu started to learn the performing art from Ankit, who was trained by Mahmood Farooqui, the duo started to revive Dastangoi in Lucknow.

Shows after shows followed, from ‘Dastan-e-Awaragi’ to ‘Dastan-e-Taqsim e Hind’ and ‘Tilism-e-Hoshruba’ to several others, and Lucknow had its floodgates opened for more such ‘dastangoi’ and ‘qissagoi’ performances.

Ankit was to perform in Pune on May 12. In Lucknow, his last performance was ‘Dastan Khan-e-khana ki’ at the Kabir festival on January 27.

‘Ankit used to say: Dastangoi is my beloved, I cannot betray it’

Lamenting the immense loss, Himanshu said, “Even if all the second generation dastangos in India currently work all their lives on the art form, they will not be able to get the stature for themselves that Ankit built in just a few years with his talent and commitment. I was not eligible to sit beside him and perform, he was amuch taller artiste than any of us, but it was only his respect towards our bond that he not just inspired me to learn the form, but also taught it to me.”

Himanshu added, “He would get upset when people would come up to him and congratulate him for performing much better than me. He left his job in digital marketing to solely commit to dastangoi and when other offers came his way, he would say, Ye mehbooba hai, issey bewafai nahi kar sakta (Dastangoi is my beloved, I cannot betray it). Such commitment is not there in anyone else in our generation. We last spoke on May 5 when he said we have to go a long way in taking the art form further, but it has been an unbelievable, unacceptable end.”

In his own words to TOI in 2016, Ankit had said that it’s his urge to give a new colour to the old art form that he enjoys most as an artist. “Lucknow audiences, while displaying ownership towards the Indian version of the Hamza story, have also embraced our modern adaptations on Kabir, Khusrau and Majaaz. This feedback that comprehensibility when offered with the old world charm is a double delight, has been extremely encouraging,” he had said.