ABSTRACT
This chapter is written in two parts – the first part by Kavita Panjabi and second part by Debaroti Chakraborty and Debasish Sen Sharma. The first part offers a cross-cultural reading of Rabindranath Tagore’s short story Kabuliwalah (1892), Zaheda Hina’s fictitious letter ‘Kumkum Theek Theek Hain’ (2008) within a comparative framework to question deeply embedded borders of narrow nationalisms in South Asia, of cultural xenophobia, of religious fundamentalism through an understanding of shared history and cultural traditions of the subcontinent. The second part examines the aesthetic choices and challenges of making a performance based on these narratives to forge an emotional and affective bonding in the face of contemporary narratives of political and cultural violence.
