High afternoon drama | Return review by Annie Zaidi

The Folk Play ‘Jas Ki Tas’ in the Meta Festival 2025 in New Delhi is still. , Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Many novelists have detected mutual activity between art and life to illuminate their subjects. A recent example that comes to mind is 2020 novel by Irish writer Anne Enterite ActressWhich is set against the theater and film world and delays a terrible mother-daughter relationship. Annie Zaidi Ki Return Uses the same world to find out the ideas of friendship and self-interview.

Zaidi’s novel is an actor who named John from Jaun Kazim. To get widespread acceptance, a decision that reflects their self-desired view to navigate the world. After years of auditions for soulful roles in Mumbai, he attacks Sona when a producer listens to an audiunt’s statement and selects him for the central role in the film version.

John, “north of Lucknow but to the south of Bareilly” is from Baisa city. It was when he was here in college that he was bitten by acting bug, and his talent was seen and shaped by a close friend and theater group leader Asghar. “He had a hand that raised a rock”, John accepted, “and polished it in a gem”.

Now, however, John is on tightening success, while Asghar works as a bank employee. After a wrongly associated interview with a film publication, in which the actor revealed details of his misdeeds during the college examination, Asghar is fired from his job, a lot for John’s Chagrin.

Asghar with his wife and children withdraw from his mother’s house in Bansa and is planning to lick her wounds and her future. John attributed to his fate, he refuses to return the call and message. The rift between friends grows on the day, even John dedicates himself to sign the contracts and to “the maximum benefit of my moment”.

This, then, is the central ball of the slim novel, which belongs to both affordable and absorbed. It contains some touches of widespread irony, especially when it comes to the business of art and the way eastern and western dramatic traditions are approved by the cagnosainti.

In the late 30s of his 30s, and now with his career on the skids, John becomes obsessed to find out what Asghar is. When he finds out that his old friend is returning to the stage, it seems that there is “a needle-stab in my heart”. Consolidated with jealousy, he tries his best to put it in the upcoming production.

Author Annie Zaidi

Coming with the past

Return Well -well had banned himself to an island world in front of arc lights, but Zaidi widened the lens to bring them to other relationships. She detects John’s shifting bonds, among others, his ex -wife, family of her and Asghar and a former possible love interest. He also contacts the earlier members of his theater group, one of which acts as his ears and eyes in search of the next stages of Asghar. In passing, it leads to a serviceable fint, in which the first-person story briefly turns to deal with the concerns and dilemmas.

In Prayag Akbar Mother India (2024), leading work for crime and awareness in the works of a character came out against the background of right -wing social media posts. In ReturnSocial media, especially Instagram, becomes a vehicle for John to orkstrate its return and amend in a character-serving manner.

In this process, he examines the “twisted inn” of honesty to move towards a type of redemption. This means that with the influence of previous tasks and the way his narrowness has interrupted relationships, it means dealing with. “I can be selfish, an ambitious fool, and a false, even a coward”, he thinks, “but I have a good quality: a strong sense of self-preservation”.

‘What is your soul?’ Reads a poster tagline for one of theater products ReturnTeasing the potential answers to this question, the novel suggests that the route towards more understanding may not be straight, but it is ultimately worth trying.

The reviewer is a Mumbai -based writer.

Return

Annie Zaidi

Aleph

₹ 599