Five shows of the play were to have been staged in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad -- beginning May 21. But with barely 24 hours left for the first show, organiser Tasneem Jaffer called off the play citing threats held out by ``certain organisations'' that the auditoriums staging the play would be attacked, according to Shabana Azmi.

The show was being organised by Citizens Foundation, an organisation that runs schools for poor children. A spokesperson for the organisers said the cancellation follows what he described as ``an all time low in relations between Pakistan and India.''

Tickets, many priced at nearly Rs 3,000 each, were sold out for the two days that the play was to be staged in Karachi. ``I believe there would have demands for extending its run. Such was the overwhelming response to the play,'' said AsifNoorani of The Star.

``We did not advertise the play because we knew we would not have been able to cope with the demand for tickets,'' said a member of the Citizens Foundation. Significantly, there have been very few requests for refunds. Ticket holders are apparently confident that the storm will soon blow over and Tumhari Amrita will, after all, be staged in the near future.

One organiser said that the decision to postpone the play was taken after the nuclear tests in India. ``It had nothing to do with Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali's concert being disrupted in Mumbai,'' he said. Shabana thinks otherwise.

The critically and popularly acclaimed play, directed by Firoz Khan, was cleared by the Pakistan government. ``We had got visas from the government two days after the nuclear blast,'' recalls Shabana. ``Everything was cleared and Firoz Khan is still there at the moment, trying to sort things out,'' she said. The play by Javed Siddique delicately etches the relationship between two protagonists, Amrita(Shabana Azmi) and Zulfi (Farooque Shaikh) over a lifetime through a series of letters.

Commenting on the cancellation, Shabana said that she was ``deeply disappointed''. ``What has happened to Tumhari Amrita is similar to what happened in Mumbai to Ghulam Ali: the fringe elements just took over.

Shabana, a Rajya Sabha member, says the government should formalise a policy for culture and sports with neighbouring countries. ``Problems arise when ground rules are broken. And since the Shiv Sena seldom reacts from one position, it is difficult to anticipate what the response should be. Therefore if there are formal guidelines set by the Central government, one would be on firm ground.'' However, she said that she was not entirely surprised by the cancellation. ``I had been feeling a bit apprehensive about these shows right since the attack on Ghulam Ali.

'' To prevent such issues from snowballing, the actress said it was imperative that no party is allowed to hijack an agenda. ``At the moment the ShivSena is saying that they disrupted Ghulam Ali's show to protest against the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits by Pakistan. What the people have to be told is that while we must condemn most severely Pakistan's actions against the pandits, there is no point in attacking Ghulam Ali. He's just a cultural ambassador who came into the country after due visa from the government of India. And he should be accorded full protection.'' Shabana was last in Pakistan in 1990 for the Channel 4 movie Immaculate Conception and has fond memories of the trip. ``Each place I went to they wanted to know not just about me but also about Smita Patil. This is as clear an indication as any that as far as the common Pakistani is concerned, it not just a Muslim thing.''