What one wants to comprehend life?

^{Of course, truth.}

^{Saleem, a young man, is seeking truth. He has good friends, a pretty woman who loves him, and a caring mother, in his life.}

^{Saleem’s mother Fatima advises him: “Before you presume to seek the greater truths, you must learn to distinguish between right and wrong in simple everyday things.”}

^{Oblivious to their presence and their sentiments towards him, Saleem goes in in his search for truth but at the end of the day he is left alone.}

^{He finds a bitter truth: “Life is as complicated as we make it”.}

^{The bitter truth comes out of a powerful performance in three-act stage play Foothold, presented by the Kinnaird College Najamuddin Dramatics Society.}

^{The club staged the drama, beautifully penned by poet Taufiq Rafat, on Friday and Saturday in front of a packed audience. Pin drop silence, occasional laughter and thunder of applause spoke volume of the perfection of acting, set design, dialogue delivery and direction. The event was attended by the Kinnaird College community.}

^{The play, Pakistan’s first full length English, which Taufiq Rafat wrote in 1969, remains unpublished till date and has been performed twice – once in 1969 and then 2008 (that was in fact a performed reading by the NCA).}

^{The play opens at a railway station platform, a metaphorical place of departures and arrivals. As typical Pakistani railway stations are a place of dirt, and refuge for homeless and passengers, the set is strewn with fallen rusting leaves, and is home to two disciples and a station master. A peasant woman is waiting for the train, which never arrives. Saleem, disciples and the station master get themselves indulged in discussion on truth. As disciples would like to seek truth through faith or religion, Saleem dismisses the narrative.}

^{“Religion is not merely prayer, Fast and Pilgrimage. There is something more,” he says in a dismissive tone.}

“Your sympathy is worse than your cruelty,” complains Nasreen about his indifference. She sobs, “I wish I had never met you.” 

 ^{As he is advised to turn to worship, prayers and a life like a malang, Saleem says: I 've wept, have been a lone worshipper in a ruined mosque for lost innocent the faith that was.}

^{“A prayer is an appeal to God, not to lessen suffering, but to give it a motive. Not the repeating of accepted formulas the singsong rote and practiced waist-bend, but the saffron hour of expectation for the simple and expected answer."}

 Disappointed, Saleem turns to his fried Mustafa house. There his beloved Nasreen, his longtime friend Ali and mother Fatima try to keep him on the track. He, however, keeps brooding over his invisible destination that hurt the feelings and sentiments of those attached to him.

^{“Your sympathy is worse than your cruelty,” complains Nasreen about his indifference. She sobs, “I wish I had never met you.”}   

^{When they see futility in their tries to convince the central character, friends and family taunt and prick Saleem over his oscillating nature.}

^{The play though philosophical in nature, provides comic relief to the audience through the characters of a vendor and a police man, who see life in pleasures of everyday life.}  

^{The play is reminiscent of Gautam’s quest for nirvana to become the Buddha, or the Sufi acolyte or talib’s to realise mystic ‘Irfan’.}

^{It interprets that journey for self-discovery in a modern middle-class setting.}

^{Saleem, however, suffers angst and taunts. But that work as towards the end of the play, he gradually begins to comprehend that enlightenment comes through a balanced life.}

^{That is what the station master teaches him showing him the railway track, where two lines run parallel. The two lines keep the train balanced and on the track.}

^{Of course, truth is to keep the life balanced.}

^{That is a bitter truth indeed.}