Soni delivers a remarkable solo performance in Ek Lamha Zindagi, directed by Makrand Deshpande and Juhi Babbar Soni, exploring Razia and Sajjad Zaheer’s love, Partition and the democratic ideals that shaped modern India. Vinta Nanda’s review.

As the 45th anniversary celebrations of Ekjute Theatre Group opened at Prithvi Theatre on 22 September 2026, there could hardly have been a more fitting curtain raiser than Ek Lamha Zindagi. The ninety-minute solo performance, directed by Makrand Deshpande and Juhi Babbar Soni, is much more than a play. It is an act of remembrance, an intimate excavation of family history, and a deeply political love story that quietly asks what it means to belong to India.

Drawn from a sliver of the vast biography Juhi is researching on her mother Nadira Zaheer Babbar, the production reaches further back to the extraordinary lives of Juhi’s maternal grandparents, Razia Zaheer and Sajjad Zaheer. Their story unfolds between 1938 and 1979, traversing marriage, imprisonment, motherhood, exile, ideological commitment and repeated reunions. It is history distilled into human emotion.

Watching it today is impossible without recognising its contemporary resonance. In an era when minorities increasingly find themselves pushed to the margins of public discourse, Ek Lamha Zindagi reminds us of another generation of Indian Muslims who consciously chose to remain in India after Partition—not because it was convenient, but because the idea of a nation defined by religion fundamentally contradicted their faith in democracy and pluralism. That conviction lies at the heart of this incredible work.

Juhi Babbar Soni Comes Into Her Own

I had witnessed Juhi’s astonishing stamina earlier in With Love, Aap Ki Saiyaara, another ninety-minute solo performance she carried entirely on her shoulders. Even then, her ability to command an audience without allowing its attention to wander was extraordinary. But Ek Lamha Zindagi reveals an artist who has evolved beyond technical brilliance into profound emotional maturity.

For years, Juhi has lived beneath the towering shadows of two formidable parents—Nadira Zaheer Babbar and Raj Babbar. Comparisons were inevitable. They accompanied every performance, every directorial choice and every public appearance. It takes unusual courage to inherit such a legacy without becoming imprisoned by it.

This production feels like the moment she steps completely into her own light.

She does not imitate Nadira’s celebrated theatrical intensity. Instead, she discovers an entirely different rhythm—one built upon restraint, vulnerability and precision. Her Razia is never reduced to victimhood. She is witty, intelligent, fiercely independent and quietly resilient. Within seconds Juhi transforms from a young bride into an ageing mother, from an anxious lover into a revolutionary intellectual, altering nothing more than her posture, breath and gaze. It is acting stripped to its purest essentials.

What makes the performance exceptional is not its virtuosity alone, but its generosity. Juhi performs every character with empathy—even those who wound Razia. The mother-in-law who banishes her to the outhouse of the family haveli is not rendered as a caricature of cruelty, but as a woman imprisoned by superstition and grief. Sajjad’s long absences are never romanticised, yet neither are they condemned. Every character inhabits moral complexity, making the emotional landscape brilliantly rich.

The Democracy They Chose 

At the centre of the play stands Sajjad Zaheer, son of the Chief Justice of Uttar Pradesh, educated at Oxford, co-founder of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, and one of the most respected members of the Communist Party of India. History remembers him as an ideologue, writer and political thinker. Juhi’s play remembers him first as a husband whose love was repeatedly interrupted by history.

The cruellest interruption came with Partition.

Sajjad happened to be in Pakistan when the subcontinent was divided, and imprisonment separated him from Razia and their growing family for years. The play never treats Partition as spectacle, it explores its quieter devastation: letters that arrive but hurt, children growing up without a father, a woman waiting while history redraws borders around their lives.

Much of our contemporary conversation around Partition has become trapped within binaries of victory and loss, majority and minority, nation and enemy. Juhi’s play restores the forgotten centre: the millions whose deepest allegiance was not to religious identity but to an inclusive idea of India. Razia and Sajjad did not remain because they lacked alternatives. They remained because the democratic promise of India aligned with their intellectual and moral imagination.

The play gently reminds us that India’s secular foundations were not gifts bestowed upon minorities; they were ideals actively built by citizens of every faith. Progressive writers, poets and thinkers were among the architects of modern Indian cultural consciousness. Their contribution is woven into literature, theatre, cinema and constitutional values alike. To remember them is not nostalgia—it is historical responsibility.

Poetry As Memory

Few productions weave poetry into dramatic narrative as organically as this one. The verses of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Jaan Nisar Akhtar and Kaifi Azmi do not function as literary quotations. They become emotional punctuation marks, expressing what ordinary dialogue cannot.  

Equally evocative are the fragments of Hindi film songs from the era. Rather than serving as nostalgic embellishment, they recreate the emotional climate of a generation whose romances unfolded alongside radio melodies and revolutionary dreams. Music becomes another character, guiding the audience across four decades with fluidity.

Makrand Deshpande’s directorial intervention is understated. Knowing that Juhi had sifted through over eight-and-a-half hours of archival material before compressing it into ninety minutes, one appreciates the discipline behind the final structure. Nothing feels hurried, yet nothing lingers beyond necessity.

Lighting deserves special mention. It creates architecture where there is almost none, transforming Prithvi’s intimate stage into railway stations, prison cells, courtyards and lonely bedrooms with remarkable economy. The visual language never distracts from the actor; it breathes alongside her.

Forty Years Of Personal Memory

My own relationship with Ekjute stretches across forty of its forty-five years. I began my journey in the entertainment industry within this extraordinary theatre collective, learning discipline, writing, direction and the grammar of dramatic storytelling under its influence. Over decades, Nadira regaled many of us with stories of her remarkable family. Razia Zaheer was therefore not unfamiliar territory.

Yet familiarity disappeared within the first five minutes. What unfolded before me was not the anecdotal Razia I had heard about across countless conversations, but a living, breathing woman whose laughter, loneliness and conviction became overwhelmingly immediate. That transformation is Juhi’s greatest achievement. She does not ask the audience to admire Razia; she makes us recognise ourselves in her.

The standing ovation at Prithvi was deserved not simply because the performance was technically extraordinary, but because it reaffirmed what theatre can still accomplish. It can rescue forgotten histories from archives. It can humanise ideological debates. It can remind divided societies that love is often the strongest form of resistance.

Ek Lamha Zindagi is ultimately not about the past. It is about the fragile, magnificent idea of India that Razia and Sajjad Zaheer believed was worth staying for, worth writing for, and worth loving despite every separation history imposed upon them.

In bringing their story to the stage with such luminous grace, Juhi Babbar Soni has created one of the most significant theatrical performances of our time.