This is not a story of death. It is a story of life. The luminous life
of Safdar Hashmi, extraordinary in all its ordinariness. On New Year's
Day in 1989, Jana Natya Manch - Janam - the theatre group Safdar was a
part of, and which he led, was attacked while performing a street play
on the outskirts of Delhi. He was only thirty-four when he died from
injuries sustained during this senseless attack. Beginning with a record
of the attack that killed him, this vivid memoir illuminates the life of
Safdar Hashmi - artist, comrade, poet, writer, actor, activist, and a
man everyone loved. But this is not a book about one man or one tragic
incident. Halla Bol shows us, close up, how one man's death and life are
intertwined with the stories of many people. For a generation that grew
up without knowing Safdar Hashmi, Halla Bol renders his passion, humour
and humanism into an intimate portrait. It also gives an understanding
of resistance, and the strength to put it into practice. It shows the
profound link between ideology and real-life struggle. The ideas that
Safdar and his colleagues grappled with during a period of tumult and
change in India are harbingers of the society we are today. Halla Bol,
the play Janam was performing in Jhandapur at the time of the attack, is
included in English translation as an appendix to the book.
