It is intriguing how friendships forged per chance become the world’s windows into outstanding personalities. Mahmood Farooqui’s recent translations of Habib Tanvir’s Memoirs is one such case where Farooqui - reviver of Dastangoi (an art form of Urdu storytelling) and director - opens up a multi-hued world that he aptly refers to, “a mouth-watering peek into life in the second quarter of the twentieth-century India”.

Habib Tanvir and Shashi Kapoor at the opening of the Cornerbook Store at Prithvi Theatre. File Photo