Firozsha Baag on stage

Inspired by novelist Rohinton Mistry’s Tales from Firozsha Baag and using humor to highlight the universal but poignant issues most migrants face all over the world, Prayas, a popular India-New Zealand theater group will stage Khoj (The Search) at The Auckland Performing Arts Centre, from August 27-30, 2009, notes the website www.prayas. co.nz It is about Jamshed, a young Parsi boy from India who travels to New Zealand in the mid 1990s, leaving behind a grumpy father and a pining mother who live in the hope that their son would make it big in the new land. Life in Auckland turns out to be different and Jamshed is haunted by the promise that he made to his mother.

Touched by the story of a Parsi migrant in Canada trying to come to terms with the difference in culture and lifestyle, writer-director Amit Ohdedar with co-writers Sananda Chatterjee and Poorna Prakash took the story further. While the group did much of the writing, they went out to the community for ideas and a couple of public meetings they organized in Auckland, drew shared migration stories, some funny and others not so funny, that have found a place in Khoj.

(center): Rohinton Mistry; (above): Director and cast of Khoj

Khoj, that explores a migrant’s emotional and acutely physical journey of adjustment from Bombay to Sandrin­gham, Auckland, is considered a tribute to Mistry as well as an insight into the culture of the large and active Parsi community in Auckland. Zoroastrians who migrated to India from Iran probably underwent the same challenges that some encounter today in New Zealand. The play boldly challenges those who consider themselves ‘migrants’ even after a long stay and other New Zealanders regarding preconceived ideas about people and cultures.

Promising to give every migrant a touch of his or her own real life experience through a series of comic and dramatic roll out of scenes, one of the lines in Khoj notes, "New Zealand has embraced us with open arms, given us our home. But it is a pity that that we still feel we are outsiders.”

A unique feature complementing the play is the dance sequence by Sharmista Chakraborty and her troupe of trained Bharat Natyam and contemporary dancers that runs parallel to the drama, the details were related by Prayas spokesperson Sudeepta Vyas.