The "Puppet King" goes down memory lane
And he did do that through his puppet plays, such as Agasha, Rakhas and A brave farmer. The play with maximum impact was Agasha. The storyline: Drawing a parallel between unwanted weeds and the Pakistani oppressors, the play shows how the farmer pulls out the weeds that ruin his crop and throws them away just like the Pakistani rulers need to be weeded out before they destroy the ethos of the country.
The greatest accolade for Monwar was the audience's spontaneous laughter in the camps, particularly in Kalyanpur. Young and old alike joined in mirth fuelled by the satire. Monwar, as he admits, was moved to tears at the response. "I was so emotional because I saw their laughter and joie de vivre had returned. I realised that it was almost as important to laugh as to have food," says the versatile artiste. One old man in the refugee camp said it was the first time that he had laughed after a month.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Another feather in his cap was when Lear Levin, an American documentary filmmaker, visited the country and made a film of these puppets. Later, Tareque Masud added many shots to those taken by the foreigner and called his film Muktir Gaan.
Coming back to the present, Monwar says puppetry is a very good medium for satire. Though Bangladeshi politicians are not accustomed to satire, he says he uses it subtly to lampoon them. Now he is busy with reviving folk stories and great writers of children's tales through puppetry. Recently he has worked on Hans Christian Andersen's The Nightingale and The Ugly Duckling.
Meanwhile, Monwar is upbeat about his puppetry medium. As he says, "Puppetry is a great medium to learn aesthetics and painting. All art forms can be combined in puppetry--painting, voice and oratory, for example. It is a very important medium for children." And his delighted young and old fans would tend to agree.