India, Oct. 19 -- The play is the thing and it reaches the heart when a granddaughter enacts Ek Lamha Zindagi- A Love Story 1938-1979 as she plays Razia Sajjad Zaheer, life partner of freedom fighter and a communist revolutionary, with finesse. The curtain rises on Razia recalling the wedding pictures that were sent from the girl's home to the boy's home to take forward the matchmaking. Perhaps this happened only in the more progressive families. This writer is reminded of her mother born in the then orthodox Rawalpindi, who got married to her England-returned bureaucrat father in British service some 17 years senior to her, would often regret what could have been "There was a proposal from an unmarried major in the British army, far younger than your father, but they asked for my photo. My father felt so insulted that he rejected the proposal saying that he would never exhibit his daughter." Coming back from my mother to the grandmother of Juhi Babbar. The photograph curated for Razia Zaheer match had not just her but the entire family including her brothers giving tough looks, her parents and she was seated in the centre with a tea table set before her. The table held a silver tea set, along with two cups sitting gracefully on saucers were two spoons. Zahira was required to play the act of pouring tea into them. So she did and the photo was approved and the Lady Sahiba, married to the first Indian Chief Justice of the Oudh Chief Court in Lucknow and called for Hindu-Muslim unity. It was the Lady Sahib, mother of Sajjad Zaheer, who ruled the roost. The wedding was arranged and then a train journey in which the newly-wed travelled together. He laid out her bedding on the upper berth and asked her to sleep well for she must be so tired. However, the first question the Lady Sahiba put forward to her daughter-in-law was that did her son touch her in the coupe of the train. The mother was irked by her son coming from Oxford only to become 'retched' communist, a poet and a writer. Gently, the Zaheer couple bonded in love and the story of their togetherness was to last forever as he went in and out of jail working for the Communist Party of India in India and Pakistan and when the great demand of Partition happened, he was working in Pakistan. The independent India Government, even in the liberal Nehru era, cancelled his citizenship. The place for this communist activist and writer was the jail in Pakistan where even one the greatest poets of Urdu, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, languished for years penning poems poetry from behind the bars: 'Tum aaye hon a shab-e-intezar guzri hai...." It took years of struggle for Zahira, who with her husband's exile was thrown out of home into an outhouse with her three daughters for not being able to steer her husband away from his passion of an equal order. It was in these conditions that Zahira continued her studies and writings as encouraged in the early years by her life mate and went on to become a lecturer in a Lucknow college. Juhi, daughter of the famous theatre legend Nadira and actor Raj Babbar, in her 90-minute solo performance held the large audience spellbound in the monologue of this unique play which brings back the times love, struggle and togetherness. It was round standing applause for the actor at the lit-fest for warming the cold night Kasauli of her grandparents' love, sacrifice and determination. Mid October witnessed a grand art show by Amal Allana dedicating a grand show to her father Ebraham Alkazi in his centenary year at theTriveni Kala Sangam in Delhi with a grand show of art exhibition titled 'A Rising Tide': Women Artists from the Alkazi collection, curated by Nancy Adjania with over 200 works by women artists. Seeing the invite, it was back to the 70s, the growing years in journalism when I started writing on literature and art mostly as interviews. Those were times when Alkazi shone as a star and was referred to as ' The Father of Indian Theatre' creating a new language of theatre by combining the eastern traditions. In his years as the head of the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi he made immense contribution and had trained actors and directors of great calibre and to name just a few: Manohar Singh, Nadira Babbar, Naseeruddin Shah, MK Raina, Om Puri, Surekha Sekri, Kumar Verma and of course our very own Neelam Maan Singh who chose to make Chandigarh her home and put Punjabi plays on the world map. It was in the mid 70's that Alkazi was visiting our city to take the viva of the students of the Department of Indian Theatre, Panjab University. I was sitting in the Indian Express office then located in the Industrial Area banging on my typewriter when the telephone rang. Poet Kumar Vikal, in his usual role of guide and mentor: "Rush to the theatre department, Alkazi is here with the students to examine their work. He may be gone in an hour. He has not given a single interview after leaving the NSD. You could be the first." So I drove on my moped all the way to the PU. The rumour was that he did not meet the rest. But I was lucky and he asked me to come to the guest house where he was staying for breakfast and he would talk to me. Of course, I did not get into the controversies on NSD but he talked extensively on theatre and art and drove back to the office a winner. The years in Delhi I often visited him at the Art Heritage and also made a fond acquaintance with Allana through Manohar Singh. The memorial exhibition could not be missed and there I was looking at the works of women artists who rose indeed as a tide in the 70's. Today, their pioneering work is an integral part of visual history. Here is a chance for city artists and art lovers to be faced with great works which Alkazi and his partner Roshan had collected with a keen eye. One can be face to face with works of Gogi Sarojpal, Arpita Singh, Kanchan Chandar, Nalini Malini, Rekha Rodwittiya and many others. Allana rightly comments that he was very encouraging to women artists for in it he saw the history of art in making....