Daag O Hijaab: Passionate, poetic and musical

Zee Theatre’s latest teleplay, Daag O Hijaab, is a “beautiful tragic love story”, says actor Shahbaz Khan, who plays the titular character.

Based on the life of poet Daagh Dehlvi and his encounter with courtesan Munni Bai, which results in a struggle against power for love, the play is “all sorts of intense”, says the actor.

Khan talks about how his love for arts, culture, and poetry led him to say yes to the play. “I love poetry, be it Urdu, Hindi, or English,” says Khan. That’s also the reason he’s drawn to anything that is even slightly poetic, be it his previous roles in Amir Khusro or Ramayana. The actor says he loved the language of the play.

Coming from a musical background, he was all the more delighted to work in a musical play. Khan smiles, “I come from a lineage of musicians, with my father and forefathers being musical in every sense of the word.” With the traditional score of the teleplay, and its music, Khan believes, it makes for a “fabulous watch”.

And with all his love for the arts, Khan says it was fairly easy for him to get into character. “If I had to play an underworld don, that’d be difficult. But I am a creative person, a romantic, and I had to play a creative person.”

The actor says he had a wonderful experience on the sets of the play, all the more so, since it was his first time working in a “recorded” play. He says, “When you put together a play, you build a rapport with your peers and it becomes more leisure than work.” He mentions he had a stellar cast to work with, and is all praises for Sufi Sayyad, who he says did a fantastic job on the play.

Khan is currently working on a web series, a cricket-based, and a television show.

(Daag O Hijaab is streaming on Zee Theatre.)