Khalid Mohamed interviews Danish Husain on his such a long journey from a banker to an artful storyteller in the form of Qissebaazi, film and web series actor.  

Danish Husain, acclaimed storyteller, theatre director, and film and web series actor, speaks with Khalid Mohamed about his journey from banker to performer, his revival of Urdu storytelling through Qissebaazi, and his presence in Indian cinema. Known for roles in Mee Raqsam, Bombay Begums, Delhi Crime Season 2, and Ankhon Dekhi, Husain reflects on his influences, his refusal of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and his belief in empowering narratives. With his Hoshruba Repertory and performances across stage and screen, he continues to preserve and innovate the art of storytelling for a contemporary audience.

Every one of us has a story and this multi-tasker’s is one-of-a-kind. I was curious to thread the dastan of the captivating narrator on stage, and the film and web series actor— Danish Husain (born Murtaza Danish Husaini).

Locating information on Danish Husain was a tough task. All I could glean was already common knowledge, except that his ancestry was rooted in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh. He is married to Naghma Abidi, a psychologist and academic.     

Now a familiar face in our drawing rooms with his score of 23 films and 10 web series, so far, he carries an old-world grace about him, and yet blends pragmatically into the Bombay film industry’s often self-absorbed and hyper-commercial ways.  

Amid hectic rehearsals for his play Habibnama a tribute to Habib Tanvir, and Qissa Urdu ki Aakhri Kitab Ka a satirical take on Ibne Insha’s classical book at Prithvi theatre (August 23 and 24), followed by a storytelling gig Qissebaazi at Rangshila Theatre (August 30), Danish Husain snatched an hour or so for an interexchange with me. Excerpts:  

On the scant information on his backstory and personal life.

That’s surprising. I thought in a world when digital surveillance is invasive, I am completely mapped. I do belong to a generation where there is a distinction between the private and public. The private is not there for ostentatious display or public consumption. It is like this enigmatic door with a ‘Private’ signboard displayed on it when you walk into a hotel or a theatre -- a space you’re curious about, yet you respect its sanctity.

I come from a family of academics, litterateurs, scholars. Gossip was shunned, raising one’s voice was rude, and conversations were peppered with Urdu and Persian couplets or Hindi-Bhojpuri idioms. The customary admonition from our mother for dereliction of duty on our part would be a Muhammad Iqbal couplet: Wai Nakaami! Mataa-e-Kaarwaan jaata raha/

Kaarwaan ke dil se ehsaas-e-ziyaan jaata raha (How disappointing! The caravan’s wealth kept getting pilfered/ But worse, so did its sense of loss too). This translation is more of a transcreation. My attempt is to leave you with the essence of the moment.

My mother Prof. Syeda Bilqis Fatema Husaini is a President of India Awardee Persian scholar though retired and lives in Delhi now. My father Syed Wasiul Hasan, an agro-economist was a socialist-unionist kind of a man, far more accessible in his plebeian ways.

One of his jabs to us I remember is when we’d ask him for money, and he’d break into a parody of a Nauha, a dirge poem in Urdu: Hamne bhi suna hai aur tum sach kehte ho bhai/Meri aulaad qasaai, meri aulaad qasaai (I have heard this too and you are right brother/ My child’s a butcher, my child’s a butcher). He passed away in 2010 after a prolonged illness. I spent much of my 30s in hospitals with his dialysis routine.  

I am a regular person with a family from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. Though by the time I was born, my parents had moved to Delhi. So, I grew up very much in Delhi. My sister Andaleeb Zahera Husaini who is my constant counsel, is a nurse practitioner and lives in the U.S. now. Among many things I am blessed with in this family is a daughter, Zahra Husaini, who is a fabulous singer-musician.  

After finishing my master’s in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, I joined a bank and simultaneously enrolled in an MBA program at the Faculty of Management Studies at the Delhi University. For five and a half years I worked in various banks but then ennui set in. Over the next couple of years my disenchantment kept increasing, and I decided to do theatre part-time to infuse some spice in my bland work-life. This led me to Barry John, and I began my theatre earnestly in 1998. Over the next three years my double life continued till I resigned from the bank in 2002 to pursue a career in theatre and acting.  

I didn’t think too much of the financial consequences of chucking up a plush job. My family supported my decision except my father, but I weathered that storm too. The first few years I earned money by giving part-time lectures at odd places like management and fashion schools in and around Delhi. But by 2008 my break was complete, and I had fully plunged into the world of theatre and cinema. All I can say is I managed decently enough to not borrow money from anyone except my family.  

On whether storytelling – in the form of Qissebaazi -- can retain the purity of Urdu, the conditions being what they are today.

Language is a constantly flowing, ever evolving, perennial river. Anyone’s claim to be a purist is absurd. No language has ever had a fixed form at any point of time. Even if one manages to get most of the language correct for a given era as pure, the context changes, words acquire newer meanings. The same text may read differently to two sets of audiences separated over time.

We face the same challenge today while performing an Urdu text published in the 19th century to an audience in the 21st century. Dastangoi, the lost art of Urdu storytelling, was a thriving form in the 18th and the 19th centuries in North India, especially in centres like Delhi, Rampur, Bhopal, Lucknow, and Faizabad. The milieu around it made it into a living tradition, receiving royal patronage too.

The popularity peaked around the late 19th century to such an extent that it propelled Munshi Naval Kishore of the Naval Kishore Press in Lucknow to print these stories. Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, the long cycle was printed over a period of 34 years from 1883 to 1917 by a collective authorship of six writers and eventually spanned 46 volumes. But by 1928, the last great known dastango, Mir Baqir Ali, died and the art form went into oblivion.

By the time we arrived on the scene in 2005 the memory of Dastangoi had to be resurrected from scratch. This compelled us to go beyond words to supplement our performances without diluting the text. We found these measures in physical gestures, body postures, tonality and voice modulation. At times, we even needed to get into asides that gloss or illustrate the meaning. Over the years I’ve found this to be an effective technique. Yet the search to keep one’s audience hooked to a performance is never-ending. I am constantly thinking of new ways to break the template, the mould, the accepted practice to keep my audience away from their cell phones.

On the audience profile his Hoshruba Repertory is trying to reach out to.

We do not have much of a choice in determining the demographics of the audience we are performing to. To sustain theatrical performances, we invariably have to get into ticketed performances at fancy auditoriums in big cities or seek patronage from wealthy people and institutions. This automatically restricts our audience to the upper-class rich urban elites. To reach beyond this space, we need state or institutional patronage. However, such a move would require a radical transformation on our part too, to understand the culture and milieu in our villages, and adapt ourselves accordingly-- something that Habib Tanvir Saheb managed so successfully during his lifetime.

On his refusal to accept the Sangeet Kala Akademi Award in 2015.

Well, I received the award in 2012 and returned it during the ‘Award-Wapsi’ protest in 2015. It was a collective, uncoordinated, voluntary response of various writers, poets, and artists against the increasing censorship and clamping of freedom of speech.

Ideally if I may say so, the state should not be moral policing, censoring or dictating our choices to us. But this argument may seem naive now because in the 10 years since the protest, technology has advanced so rapidly that it has hacked our choices. In a democracy, every aspect of our lives cannot be placed under a microscope, a reality that is crumbling even in western countries.

On the move to acting in feature films and web series.

The first film I did was a British television one, Losing Gemma for ITV in 2005. The real journey began four or five years later with Peepli Live when I came to Mumbai to help with casting and production work. During its making Kiran Rao and Aamir Khan auditioned me for a cameo for Dhobhi Ghat, and soon Rajat Kapoor gave me a cameo in Ankhon Dekhi. Before I realised it, I was already acting in three films. If I had to sustain both my theatre and me then I needed to do more screen work and thus shifted to Mumbai. I guess I landed at a time when OTT was opening and in the initial days, platforms were willing to give chances to non-stars too in primary roles. Soon I found myself doing both regular screen work and theatre in Mumbai. 

On the lack of creative satisfaction on being typecast in ensemble performances as elderly, salt-and-pepper character – sometimes suave, sometimes not.  

Like it or not when it comes to casting, we’re a risk-averse industry. Often, I feel casting directors and filmmakers don’t push the envelope. Balraj Sahni is one of the most obvious examples. In his autobiography, Habib Tanvir mentions that he was one of the finest comedic actors he had seen on stage but unfortunately the Hindi cinema industry did not cast him in any such role. It is our loss that we could never witness Balraj Sahni in his comedic elements.  

I have struggled not to be typecast. When my performances in Mee Raqsam and Yeh Ballet were noticed, suddenly there were quite a few offers to play a loving and supporting father. I had to turn them down. One of the reasons for my meagre filmography is that I often refuse roles, either because of poor budgets or stereotypical roles. I have consciously done roles that push me out of my comfort zone and force me to think on my feet.

As far as creative satisfaction is considered, once I have committed myself it’s my job to breathe fire and life in the characters I am playing. I enjoy acting irrespective of whether it is a small role or a big role. Once a character in a story, I commit to performing it with conviction, irrespective of the role’s fate on the edit table.

On his films and web series performances which have made a purposeful statement of any sort.

I am normally not pleased with my performances. I view them harshly and mostly cringe watching them, taking notes on what I must do better or differently next time. Still, I was relieved when I saw Ankhon Dekhi, Taj Mahal 1989, Mee Raqsam, Bombay Begums, Delhi Crime Season 2, Khwaabon Ka Jhamela, Lucca’s World, and the recent Crime Beat on Zee5.

On actors, literary personalities, artists, activists and intellectuals who have been a major influence.

Are you sure you want to know? There are so, so many of them. But I will restrict them to a few. Mir Anees and Mirza Ghalib for their sheer brilliance as poets. Saul Bellow and Ismat Chughtai for their uncanny ability to peep into the human psyche and portray that perfectly in their characters.

Munshi Premchand and Dr. Rahi Masoom Raza for presenting the human condition as it is without smudging their literary mirrors with their biases. Edward Said for turning the colonial tropes on their heads and showing us that intellect can operate along with compassion, empathy and kindness. Saadat Hasan Manto and Sahir Ludhianvi for their fearlessness, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz for his grace and poetic sensitivity.  

On the difference between acting before a camera and a ‘live’ audience in theatre.

The major difference is in implementation and orientation. The groundwork of understanding the character and its world is similar. To better acting before a camera, you must understand shot division, editing and continuity – which means understanding from whose perspective the story is being told yet inhabiting the centricity of your character.

Stage acting necessarily means understanding the physicality of your space and gauging your audience. You amplify and adjust your performance accordingly without losing the essence of it.  

On pleasant and unpleasant incidents while integrating with the Bombay film industry?

I must admit I have had a rather smooth integration in the Mumbai film industry. My stage work was already known to many. I have faced two unpleasant incidents when producers held up my payments. One I had to wrest out of the producer which I did eventually, and the second I am still fighting the battle. Hopefully, it should come through.   

On maintaining one’s tehzeeb and adab in a social media world where they are fast disappearing. 

I am finally arriving at a viewpoint that there is great wisdom in, “Don’t do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” One’s presence must not be a source of threat or discomfort to others. The real test is that even at our worst, one must hold on to dignity and grace. I am not overtly worried about the meme culture or the social media fad. These are transient phases.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza has truly become a litmus test for humanity. It underlines the fact that the foundational elements on which our human nature rests are love, compassion, and justice – and whatever the age be, our fitrat will make us converge towards these values if we want humaneness to survive long-term.

Anything to add? 

I just hope a couple of web series and films I have done lately, including one for which I joined hands with a production house, will come out soon. One is on Kargil for Netflix, and there’s Mahesh Narayanan’s Malayalam film with Mammootty, Mohan Lal and Fahadh Faasil.  Work engenders work. One aspect of leading a meaningful existence is the ability to tell our own stories. May we empower everyone, the weakest links among us, to tell their stories.