The Poet. The Madman. The Myth.

He was a man who lived with his heart torn open and his pen dipped in blood. A man who spoke to God in metaphors and kissed despair like a long-lost lover. His name was Mareez. The Ghalib of Gujarat.

Born Abbas Abdul Ali Vasi in the bylanes of Surat in 1917, Mareez grew up chasing questions no one could answer. As a child, he stopped going to school—not because of poverty, but because he couldn’t bear the silence of blackboards when the world outside screamed with meaning. The cries of injured birds, bleeding stray dogs, and the quiet ache of human loneliness haunted him far more than any textbook ever could. And so he wrote. Feverishly. Furiously. Fearlessly.

But genius rarely finds a home in comfort.

Addicted to poetry. Addicted to alcohol. Addicted to a love that refused to love him back. He stumbled through life like a man set on fire from the inside—selling his ghazals for five rupees apiece to rich men who published them as their own. His verses lit up the smoky mehfils of Mumbai, but the poet himself remained cloaked in shadows.

Mareez is not a play. It is a lament. A hallucination. A ghost story told by the soul of a man still looking for peace.

Directed by Manoj Shah, this production refuses to offer a neat narrative. Instead, it invites you into the fragmented mirror of a man’s life—where time collapses, where hallucinations speak truth, and where poetry becomes the only light in the darkness.

Visually rich, musically hypnotic, and emotionally shattering—Mareez unfolds like a ghazal written in human flesh.

This is not just the story of a man.
It is the story of every poet silenced by poverty.
Every artist devoured by their muse.
Every voice that echoes long after the room has emptied.