Perinthalmanna(Malappuram) KERALA / Edinburgh, SCOTLAND :
Malayali scholar Mahmood Kooria has been awarded the prestigious Rs 84 lakh Infosys Science Prize for his groundbreaking research on Islam and the Indian Ocean region. The award recognises his exceptional contribution to the study of history, culture, and Islamic law.
Dr mahmood kooria (file image)
Professor Mahmood Kooria, a distinguished academic from Kerala, has been awarded the prestigious Infosys Science Prize 2024 for his groundbreaking contributions to the study of Muslims in the Indian Ocean region, including Kerala. The award, which recognises excellence in scientific and social research, honours Kooria’s work in humanities and social sciences.
A landmark achievement for Kerala
Kooria, a native of Perinthalmanna in Malappuram, is currently a professor at the University of Edinburgh. At just 36 years old, he is the youngest recipient of the Infosys Science Prize.
The award acknowledges his extensive research on the history of sailing across the Indian Ocean and his unique approach to studying the history of Kerala from a global perspective.
In a statement to Mathrubhumi, Kooria expressed joy and surprise, saying, “this is totally unexpected, and I am very happy. This award is a recognition for ocean studies and Kerala studies.”
Prize details and award ceremony
The Infosys Science Prize includes a gold medal, a citation, and a cash award of USD 1 lakh (approximately Rs 84 lakh). The award will be presented to Kooria at a special ceremony in Bengaluru on January 11, 2025.
Focus on Indian Ocean history and Kerala’s role
Kooria’s work offers fresh insights into the history of the Indian Ocean region, particularly focusing on Kerala’s crucial role in global trade, cultural exchanges, and the development of Islamic law. His research delves into how the legal traditions of various religious communities shaped the political, cultural, and economic transformations across the Indian Ocean coast.
Professor Kooria’s research also explores the historical role of animals such as elephants, horses, and donkeys in shaping key events, including the Malabar Rebellion. His innovative approach to integrating animals into historical narratives is a notable contribution to contemporary academic thought.
Kooria’s work on this subject was published in Mathrubhumi Weekly and later compiled into a book by Mathrubhumi Books.
A leading scholar of Islamic Studies in the Indian Ocean
Kooria is widely regarded as one of the leading scholars of Islamic discourse in the Indian Ocean region. His research highlights the critical role of Islamic law in influencing the region’s political, cultural and economic exchanges. His work also covers the broader impact of Islamic legal traditions on the development of diverse communities along the Indian Ocean littoral, including the cultural and commercial interactions between different religious groups.
Earlier, Kooria was awarded the National Research Fellowship by the Dutch government, worth Rs 2 crore.
Recognition from Infosys Science Foundation
The Infosys Science Foundation, which recognises exceptional contributions in science and research, announced the winners in a statement led by President Kris Gopalakrishnan and Trustees N. R. Narayana Murthy, K. Dinesh, Dr. Pratima Murthy, Mohandas Pai, S. D. Shibulal, and others.
source: http://www.english.mathrubhumi.com / Mathrubhumi.com / Home> News> Kerala / November 15th, 2024
This commemorative volume is a timely and necessary reminder of the greatness of an extraordinary writer, film-maker and social commentator.
FL19 BK ABBAS 1
KHWAJA Ahmad Abbas wore many hats and distinguished himself in each of the roles he chose. As a pioneer of progressive cinema, a consummate writer of short stories and novels that depicted the human condition and a committed journalist whose Last Page column acquired legendary status, he blazed new trails and fashioned his own path.
Abbas was an important figure from a critical past. His body of work deserves to be studied and his life remembered by millennials and generations to come.
This commemorative volume, a celebration of the man on the occasion of his 100th birth anniversary, arrives as a reminder of the humanism that characterised his life and work. Lavishly produced and deftly edited by Iffat Fatima, an independent filmmaker from Kashmir, and Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, the social and women’s rights activist, educationist and writer, this book from the Khwaja Ahmad Abbas Memorial Trust provides invaluable insights into his mind and personality.
A man of many talents
Despite his many talents, or likely because of them, Abbas could never be boxed into any creative category. And he was well aware of it. As Syeda Saiyidain Hameed informs the readers in her marvellous introduction to the compendium, Abbas himself would often ask his readers: “Who am I? Writers say I am a journalist; journalists say I am a film-maker; film-makers say I write short stories.” The editors of this volume, who recognised that the only way to appreciate Abbas fully is to study him in totality, have paid a perfect tribute to his oeuvre by dividing the volume into 10 sections that feature selections from his writings, focus on his cinema through his interviews and conversations, talk about his beginnings and early life and adventures, and reveal the man behind the mighty pen through reminiscences and tributes by actors and associates.
The nature of the public adulation of Abbas also kept changing over the decades during which he was active. For one generation he was the man who collaborated with Raj Kapoor to unveil some of the finest examples of high-quality mainstream Indian cinema, such as Awara and Shree 420 , while another celebrated him as the writer of powerful and poignant stories such as Sardarji , a lamentation of the violence and mayhem the country witnessed in the wake of Partition. And much before Independence, his was a significant voice writing about the marginalised sections of society. Abbas slipped in and out of the many roles he had chosen to play with a rare finesse, much like a thespian.
Abbas was fortunate to have inherited a long tradition of intellectualism and reformist ideals from both sides of the family. His mother’s grandfather, Maulana Altaf Husain Hali, was a poet who used verse as a tool against social evils and as an instrument of reform within the Muslim community. Abbas began carrying forward the torch early on, even as a college student, when he published Aligarh Opinion , a handwritten weekly newspaper that he personally peddled on a bicycle.
This was the start of his life in journalism which would eventually see him pen one of the longest-running columns in the history of news in Blitz , a weekly tabloid founded by R.K. Karanjia.
Reading the compendium is like taking a train journey back in time, to a world far removed from the present. Be it Abbas’ harrowing first-person account of what he saw in Calcutta (now Kolkata) during the Bengal Famine—which inspired him to make the groundbreaking film Dharti ke Lal (1945)—or his active involvement with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), his cinematic endeavours or his first meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru, the reader is taken on a walk-through of events, institutions and happenings that are now the staple of history textbooks.
A particularly striking example is his narration of the celebratory procession of people in Bombay (now Mumbai) on August 15, 1947, where he was one among the hundreds of thousands rejoicing in their new-found status as citizens of a free country.
“It was an inspiring sight to see a famous poet like Josh Malihabadi, a film celebrity like Prithviraj Kapoor with his film star son Raj, a dancer of international fame like Zohra Sehgal, and a front-rank writer like Krishan Chander, singing and dancing in the streets to celebrate this happy occasion….Today, they had come in the midst of the people, as singers of their songs, not to sing about the people, but to sing with the people; not to dance a symbolic representation of life on the stage, but to dance the dance of freedom with the people in the streets.”
The collection also offers a peek into his personal life; his own accounts of life as a newly married man and the banter between him and his wife Mujji (Mujtabai Khatoon) are straight out of the myriad Muslim socials that Bollywood was famous for a long time ago. The scenes from his marriage tragically culminate in the death of his wife.
Describing the day his wife died in an elegiac memorial, elegant yet heart-breaking, Abbas says: “It looked like her—but it was not her. For that life that was always bubbling with intelligence and compassion was no longer in her. I collapsed near the bed where she lay inert. It was not her—but something resembling her—like the lifeless photograph of a beloved person. When I returned after burying her I walked alone and knew that henceforth I would have to get used to walking alone.”
Pathbreaking cinematic efforts
Although acclaimed for his association with Raj Kapoor and, of course, for introducing Amitabh Bachchan to the silver screen in Saat Hindustani , Abbas deserves a special chapter in the history of Indian cinema for his breathtaking corpus of work that saw him don the mantles of producer, director and screenwriter at once and also established him as a pioneer whose films broke new ground. He took on challenging issues and translated his thoughts on to the screen, with varying degrees of success.
Only a man ahead of his times could make a film like Hamara Ghar (1964), a film about a group of children marooned on an island where the protagonist is a motherless Dalit boy.
As Ahmer Nadeem Anwer, who played the lead role of Sonu at the age of 10, says in an essay on the film: “It is this boy who embodies the defiance of those who shall not accept their exclusion from education, work, self-respect—or even recreation and pleasure.” The film, along with several others, is testimony to Abbas’ willingness to take risks and make the cinema that he wanted to make.
Collaboration with Raj Kapoor
Abbas liked to describe himself as a communicator. “I want to communicate my ideas, my impulses, my ideologies to other people. That is my basic interest in writing, in films and in drama.”
It is a moot point which vehicle of communication served his purpose best, but one could not make a better choice than his cinematic collaborations with Raj Kapoor, especially from the early days of the showman’s career, such as his directorial debut, Awara , Shree 420 and Jagte Raho .
These films manifest the distilled brilliance of a mind that displays an unparalleled skill in weaving riveting stories for the big screen. His phenomenal grasp of the medium and Raj Kapoor’s showmanship resulted in timeless classics.
Abbas himself considered Awara to be the best of his collaborations with Raj Kapoor.
It is another story that the two would later go on to make Mera Naam Joker , which Raj Kapoor considered his magnum opus but viewers thought otherwise.
The monumental failure of the film devastated him, driving him into debt and depression, and it was Abbas who helped him bounce back by writing the iconic teenage romance called Bobby , which turned out to be Raj Kapoor’s biggest blockbuster.
Nehru: A love story
It was love at first sight, as Abbas confesses, recollecting the first time he saw Jawaharlal Nehru, at the Aligarh railway station. The essay about the entire episode is a fascinating recollection of an awestruck student meeting his idol in flesh and blood and the resulting conversation, which culminates in Nehru signing his autograph book with the message: “Live dangerously.” Abbas certainly seemed to have taken it to heart, as his life demonstrated. He lived dangerously all his life, always true to himself and never wavering from his convictions, never hesitating to helm a project even at the risk of grave financial loss.
He firmly stood up for what he thought was right and did not shy away from opposing what he felt was wrong, irrespective of ideology.
His ability to introspect and accept criticism separated him from other giants of the screen or the world of letters of his time.
In his tribute, Amitabh Bachchan writes: “Mamu Jaan’s [Abbas] socialism was not just restrained to the books or columns he read, believed and wrote about. He practised it too in the way he lived and conducted his life, and in the way he made his films. I was a newcomer in the illustrious star cast of Saat Hindustani , but his treatment to all was universal. In his eyes we were all equals, and we were treated with the sameness that he followed and believed in.”
My sons, Morad and Yavar, were born in 1968 and 1972, respectively, and my daughter, Ayesha, in 1974. When I was pregnant with Morad, my husband said to me that he hoped for a girl in my image. But I gave birth to a robust ten-pound son! My male gynaecologist, Dr Beck’s remark is my first recollection when I regained consciousness from the Caesarean section, “Congrats, you have a little football player!” A Canadian could not have given a greater compliment. Later I realised that my husband’s desire to have a daughter had no firm basis. Holding his firstborn, he declared to all in the hospital room that from now he wanted only sons!
When I first set my eyes on Morad, I had just come out of general anaesthesia in the maternity ward of the University of Alberta Hospital. I saw his face and I can still feel my own gasp. His face was my mirror. He was lying, neatly bundled beside me. It had been a breach delivery. It took eight days for the stitches to heal before I could be discharged from the hospital. Hameed brought us home, both mother and child, wrapped and bundled. A memory that lingers is placing him on a white sofa before a large bay window overlooking the front lawn in which the grass had begun to turn brown. It was October 12, 1968.
Over the years, how did I see my older son? Introspective, and sensitive, he used to tease me by saying that his sensitivity was the result of his regressive genes! He was thoughtful, gentle, and he always had the right words for the right moment. One summer in Delhi, my children and I were at the Jamia Qabristan to recite Fatiha at their grandparents’ graves. As we waited in the drizzle for Mohammad Yunus, who was like family, to arrive to recite Fatiha for his son, Adil Shahryar, Morad must have felt the immediacy of death. “The land on which peoples’ marble is placed,” he said to me, “is incredibly fertile.” He remarked how lush and green the place was. Death, Morad said, was just a flash in this evergreen process of incarnation and reincarnation.
I think of another side of Morad: to put away his clothes, to pay his bills, to open his cheques, and to eat his packed lunches may not always happen. But he can pick up the brush and carefully clean the cobwebs. He has beautiful hands and a mane of dark curly hair. Tall like Yavar, a little stooping (which Hameed continually checked). Always a smile and word of encouragement for those around him.
“Mother, I was just thinking about you,” he said once as I came in, sweaty, rushed, and irritated.
“About me? What?”
“How beautiful you look and how much I love you.”
Sitting in my father’s home in Delhi years later, I wrote about my children in my diary. At the end of the piece on Morad, I wrote: I hope people can appreciate his quality and I hope I don’t fall into the trap of wanting to protect him. A man who has just finished studying five months of human anatomy. A man who has been running from work to school for two years. Surely, he doesn’t need his mother in that sense. Am I pig-headed?
My second son, Yavar, was born on Canada’s Dominion Day on July 1, 1972. Morad was the firstborn but Yavar was equally the joy of our life. He grew into a responsible young man, as well as a poet and an artist. One year, when I was away in India, he was invited to deliver his class valedictory address in Grade 12. He wore his father’s sherwani and delivered a beautiful speech. Why didn’t I return for the event? It remains one of the deepest regrets of my life. Through handwritten letters exchanged with him and with my sister I learnt how hard he had worked all year. Cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, hauling the garbage, washing dishes, folding laundry, and shovelling snow. Then he would sit down and compose a beautiful poem, play his guitar, paint, act, or run a marathon for the city. Initially, he had considered a career in community medicine or public health, but then he was accepted for a joint Master’s degree in law at the North Patterson School of Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. So he became a lawyer.
In 2009, I timed my return to Canada so that I could be in Ottawa for Yavar’s birthday. He received me at the train station since I had flown directly from Delhi to Toronto and taken the train from there. We drove straight to his office where I asked him about the landmark case he was fighting. Abousufian Abdelrazik was a Sudanese Canadian who was arrested in Sudan, while he was visiting his ailing mother in 2003. He was denied re-entry to Canada based on a United Nations anti-terrorism listing. The Federal Court of Canada later concluded that this arrest likely took place at the request of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Though never charged, Abdelrazik was beaten, threatened, and tortured during two periods of detention totalling a year and a half. Blocked from returning to his home in Montreal, Abdelrazik went public with his story and took refuge in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum, where he remained a virtual prisoner for fourteen months. Finally, a groundswell of public support from across Canada and a Federal Court ruling forced the government to issue permission. It was his lawyer, Yavar Hameed, my son, who fought the case with unswerving grit. He flew to Khartoum and returned home with his client.
That night I wrote in my diary: Yavar is on the brink of something big, something which will make him rise to great heights one day. I am so proud of him. His name will be up there with global crusaders for human rights.
From his office, we drove to his apartment which was across the street from the hospital where I had worked when I first stepped on Canadian soil in 1967, General Hospital on Bruyere Street. It has another name now and looks nothing like it was thirty years ago, but its sight revived some precious memories. Looking around Yavar’s well-kept apartment, I was happy to see that my three gifts were beautifully displayed. Three carpets that I had given him over the years: one from Peshawar, a Killam, one from Baku in Azerbaijan, and the third from Bokhara in Uzbekistan. The next morning, Yavar drove me to the airport. I wrote in my diary, “I am going to Edmonton with a heavy heart; it is always painful to leave Yavar.” I told him, “Yavar, you will become our torchbearer towards better climes and hemispheres. I will arrange my work so I can spend a few months with you every year.” Happiness flushed his face. At the end of my life, I say with regret that it never happened.
Excerpted with permission from A Drop in The Ocean: The Story of My Life, Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, Speaking Tiger Books.
source: http://www.scroll.in / Scroll.in / Home> Book Excerpt / by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed / October 03rd, 2024
“Down Memory Lane II”, the second in the autobiographical series of books authored by Abdul Muhib Mazumder, former Minister and Advocate General of Assam, was launched in presence of a host of dignitaries at the Guwahati Press Club on 29 July.
The book has been edited by Abdul Wadud Aman, a lawyer and civil rights activist and published by the Centre for Minority Studies, Research & Development (CMRD) Assam.
At the outset, a citation on behalf CMRD was presented to Mazumder by Anowar Hussain, working president while a sorai was handed over by Zamser Ali, general secretary of CMRD.
Mazumder addressed the audience on this occasion saying, “I am tempted to make an appeal to the readers to enter into a discussion on the subjects dealt with by me which have a pronounced effect on social restructuring of our polity.” He appealed to the legal fraternity, in particular, who were present at the event in good numbers, to take up the issues, discuss them, analyse them and suggest solutions acceptable to all sections of people and the polity to pave way for emergence of a resurgent Assam.
Harsh Mander, Director of the Centre for Equity Studies & Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case, was the chief guest. Along with other dignitaries on the dais, he released the book. In his address, Mander said that he was born in Shillong and has had a long association with the North East. He has been visiting the region regularly to bring succour to the victims of natural and man-made calamities. He appealed to the youth of the region to stand by the side of the oppressed and the persecuted and raise their voice whenever their human rights are violated.
Others who addressed the event included Justice Aftab Hussain Saikia, former Chief Justice of J&K High Court; Justice DN Choudhury, former Justice of Gauhati High Court; Prof Abdul Mannan of Gauhati University; Ram Chandra Saikia, President of the Gauhati High Court Bar and Chinmoy Choudhury, Advocate General of Assam.
Incidentally, except for Prof Abdul Mannan, all the above mentioned personalities were students of Mazumder when he taught law at Gauhati University and were his junior colleagues when they started practice at Gauhati High Court.
(Nurul Islam Laskar — nurul.laskar@gmail.com)
source: http://www.milligazette.com / The Milli Gazette / Home> News> Community News / by Nurul Islam Laskar / August 29th, 2016
In the biography of Syed Fazl, Dr. K K Muhammad Abdul Sathar traces the political outlook and disposition of Mamburam Syed Fazal Tangal (1824-1900) from his roots among Ba alwis in Yemen to the Malabar of the 19th century.
There are references to Syed Fazal as a religious scholar, reformer, and spiritual guide, all these roles buttressing his political stance against the British and the feudal aristocracy.
In the preface to her memoir, the author B. M. Zuhara writes, “I grew up at a time when Muslim girls did not even have the freedom to dream.” The Dreams of a Mappila Girl is set at the time when independent India was embracing its new identity as a free nation. It offers a rare portrait of women in Muslim households in North Kerala through the lens of a woman writer. Zuhara showcases how women, bound as they were by the rules of society, still managed to hold key positions in their family and had an important voice in the discussions concerning their lives, contrary to popular perception.
The following piece is an excerpt from Fehmida Zakeer’s translation of the book, soon to be out from Yoda Press.
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During the holidays, the hall upstairs turned into a playground for the children, who were allowed to play outdoors only in the evenings. Lined by long windows without grills, and furnished only with Uppa’s charukasera and writing table, the hall was an expansive place for us to jump and run and skip and play. Below the glass windows was a cement slab broad enough to be used as a seat, running the length of the hall. If you sat on it and looked out of the window, you could see paddy fields and coconut groves and people out on the road in front of the house.
One evening, I was playing with Achu, the elder brother nearest me in age. Though his name was Assoo, I called him Achu. We were racing cars, or rather matchboxes converted by our imaginations into pretend cars. Since both Achu and I were recovering from a fever, we did not have permission to go out and play with the others, and so we were playing in the hall upstairs. Suddenly I heard the sound of Umma’s medhiyadi on the staircase leading from the women’s section of the house.
In those days, people used wooden footwear indoors. Climbing stairs in a medhiyadi, gripping the peg in the middle with the big toe and the second toe, was a feat in itself. Valippa’s medhiyadi, which he wore when he went out, had leather straps. Uppa preferred to wear shoes when he stepped out of the house. Once a year, Chandu Aashari, the family carpenter, made medhiyadi for the whole family. Achu once broke the small medhiyadi made for me by Chandu Aashari, and how I wept!
Umma did not normally come upstairs in the evenings. I looked enquiringly at Achu when we heard the sound of her footsteps.
‘Umma is going to Kozhikode tomorrow morning. She knows that you will cry and insist on going with her. That’s why she didn’t tell you.’
Even though I knew Achu was trying to provoke me, my eyes started filling with tears. I was five years old at that time, and in class one at school. I missed school frequently because I used to accompany my mother wherever she went. This continued in class two. At the end of each year, Uppa would visit the school and meet the teacher, and I would be promoted to the next class. This was the usual practice.
I closed my brimming eyes and stood there thinking.
Achu spoke again. ‘Umma must have come upstairs to pack her clothes for the trip. You’d better go quickly.’
‘Don’t take my matchboxes. I’ll be right back,’ I called out as I ran to Umma’s room.
‘I told you about Umma’s trip, so now the matchboxes are mine,’ I heard Achu shouting after me, but I decided to ignore his words for now.
When I entered the room I saw the doors of the meshalmarah opened wide. The scent of kaithapoo filled the room. How it lingers, the fragrance of screwpine! The meshalmarah doubled as a table and a cupboard, and was actually a long table with drawers on both sides with space to store things below. Umma called the meshalmarah her clothes cupboard. Umma stored her clothes on one side and the children’s on the other side. In those times, children usually had only one or two sets of clothes, made from lengths of cotton. Trousers and shirts for the boys and chelakuppayam, or frocks, for me.
‘You are packing to go to Kozhikode without me?’ I whimpered.
Umma turned to look at me. ‘The crybaby has arrived!’ she said.
At that, I wailed even more loudly.
I had three nicknames as a child. Karachapetti, Tarkakozhi and Ummakutty. Karachapetti because I cried a lot; I did not know the meaning of Tarkakozhi but when someone called me that, I would put on a sullen look; I actually liked my third nickname of Ummakutty, ‘mother’s darling’. When someone called me by that name, a shy smile would tug at my lips. I liked to sing the lullaby Umma often sang to me. ‘Umma’s little girl Soorakutty, darling little daughter of mine.’
But at that moment, I was not thinking about the nicknames or Umma’s special song for me.
‘If you go without taking me with you, by God, by the Prophet, I will not go to school till you come back.’
‘Moideen will tie your hands and legs and take you to school,’ Umma said as she placed her clothes in a cloth bag fitted with wooden handles.
Moideen was the caretaker of our house, and all the children were scared of him. But even though he put on a stern face when any of us misbehaved, he really liked us. Whenever I cried and created a fuss, he would arrive and take me to the pond at the back of our house. He would get into the pond and pluck a lotus for me or teach me how to make toys with lotus leaves.
‘If I complain about a stomach ache, Ummama will not send me to school,’ I said, pouting.
‘This is too much. Don’t you want to learn to read and write? If you follow me around all the time, how will you learn your lessons?’
‘I don’t want to,’ I said resolutely.
‘Don’t imagine I’ll take you this time, Soora. If you hide inside the car, I will drag you out.’
Usually when it became clear that Umma would not take me with her on a trip, I would hide between the seats in the car without even having changed into an appropriate outfit. It did not occur to me that my grandfather, seated in the charukasera on the verandah, the driver, and the servants busy in their tasks would all notice my presence. I thought I was fooling Umma by hiding in the car. When Umma came out of the house and went up to the car, Valippa would jokingly call out, ‘Mariya, be careful, there is a cockroach in the car.’
Umma would understand immediately. She would get into the car and pinch my ear and say, ‘Don’t get smart with me. Get out of the car.’
I would hug the seat and wail loudly.
Valippa would say then, ‘Take her with you. She’s a baby after all.’
‘Baby indeed, she’s over five years old. You are all spoiling her.’
And I would get to accompany Umma to Kozhikode once again. Umma’s younger sister lived in Kozhikode and, to us children, her house was a source of wonder. Umma had to see the doctor in Kozhikode every three months and she would drop in at her sister’s house when she made the trip.
Now Umma ignored my wails and placed the bag filled with her clothes on the table. Then she went downstairs. Sobbing loudly, I followed her.
‘Why is the baby crying?’ Ummama called out from below the stairs.
‘If she complains of a stomach ache tomorrow morning, don’t allow her to take the day off from school, Elama.’
When Umma was fifteen years old, her thirty-year-old mother, nine months pregnant, died. Later, Valippa married again. Our present Ummama was his second wife. I understood all this only later. Even though my mother and her siblings called their stepmother Elama, Ummama treated them as if they were her own children.
Ummama intervened on my behalf now. ‘Take her with you, Mariyu. If you leave her here, she will raise the roof with her crying.’
By then we had climbed down the stairs.
Umma ignored me and asked Ummama, ‘Is Uppa sitting on the verandah?’
‘He was asking for you. He just sent Assan to look for you.’ Assan, the handyman, was Moidyaka’s son.
Every evening Umma and Ummama went to the verandah to keep Valippa company. This was the only time they were allowed on the verandah.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Umma asked as she made her way outside.
‘You go on. I’ll come soon,’ Ummama said, walking towards the eastern side of the house where the bathrooms were located.
As Umma made her way to the front of the house, I followed close behind, sniffling and crying.
‘Soora, don’t irritate me. If you don’t stop I’ll lock you up in the kunhiara. I’m warning you.’
Kunhiara. As soon as I heard that word, my wails dwindled to a whimper. Kunhiara was the small room where the sparingly used big and heavy copper and brass utensils were stored. The room was dark even during the daytime and was a haven for cockroaches, moths and rats. I was not really scared of the cockroaches, the moths, the rats. What terrified me was the tomcat installed in our house to catch the rats. Its glowing eyes struck terror in my heart. To me, spending time there was like being in hell, and once locked inside I would remain there until the servants came to rescue me. I was still sobbing when we reached the verandah.
‘Chu, why are you laughing?’ asked Valippa.
My grandfather called me Chu.
‘Your darling Chu cries all the time,’ Umma said crossly.
‘Don’t say that, Mariya. Look at her smiling now. She looks so beautiful.’
On hearing this, in spite of the tears streaming from my eyes, I attempted a smile.
‘That’s my brave girl. Come here.’ Valippa beckoned to me. ‘If you massage my legs, I’ll give you a mukkal.’
Forgetting about the trip to Kozhikode, I walked towards the charukasera where my grandfather sat with his legs hoisted over its elongated armrests. I massaged his legs one by one with my small hands.
‘I want the coin with the hole.’
In those times, one pice coins came with a hole and without. I preferred the ones with the hole. I dropped all the coins I got from Valippa into a powder tin which had its top cut open with a knife.
By then, Ummama had reached the verandah. Ummama would sit on the bench and Umma would stand by the door as they talked about the events of the day with my grandfather. I listened to them talking as I pressed Valippa’s feet, directing smug looks at my mother and feeling like the valiant Unniarcha.* Absorbed in conversation, Umma too seemed to have forgotten the whole episode.
***
* Unniarcha is a mythological warrior woman celebrated for her fearlessness, immortalised in the vadakkan paatu, the ballads of the region.
Translator’s Bio
Fehmida Zakeer is an Independent writer with bylines in several publications including, The Bangalore Review, The Hindu, Al Jazeera, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, Whetstone Magazine, NPR. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as The Indian Quarterly, Out of Print Magazine, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Asian Cha, among others. A story of hers was placed first in the Himal South-Asian short story competition 2013, and another was chosen by the National Library Board of Singapore for the 2013 edition of their annual READ Singapore anthology.
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B. M. Zuhara
BM Zuhara has written novels and short stories and is the first Muslim woman writer from Kerala. She won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for her contribution to Malayalam literature in 2008 and has received awards such as Lalithambika Antharjanam Memorial Special Award, Unnimoy Memorial Award and the K. Balakrishnan Smaraka Award. Her novels, Iruttu (Darkness), Nilavu (Moonlight) and Mozhi (Divorce), have been translated into Arabic while the English translation of Nilavu was published by the Oxford University Press in an anthology titled, Five Novellas. She translated Tayeb Salih’s Wedding of Zein and Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk into Malayalam.
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source: http://www.bangalorereview.com / The Bangalore Reviews / Home> Non-Fiction / by B M Zuhera / July 2022
Book on ‘Post-Truth India’ by Syed Ali Mujtaba being released by former Rajya Sabha MP, Mohammad Adeeb, journalist Vinod Sharma, social activist Syeda Hamid and human rights activist John Dayal
New Delhi:
A new book titled, ‘Post-Truth India –The Brand New Republic’, by Syed Ali Mujtaba was released at a glittering function in the Constitution Club of India last week.
The book launch ceremony was graced by prominent personalities like former Rajya Sabha MP, Mohammad Adeeb, former Planning Commission member Dr. Sayyeda Hamid, senior journalist Vinod Sharma, and veteran journalist, and social activist John Dayal among others.
Authored by Dr. Syed Ali Mujtaba, a well-known author, and journalist, the book is a treatise on the contemporary situation in the country. Inspired by legendary Indian journalist and author Frank Morris’ work ‘Witness to an Era’, this book can be called a witness to contemporary India, whose value will be appreciated by those who read it living in a different era.
Speaking on the occasion, Adeeb said the author through the book, raised the concerns of a citizen living at a time when the country’s economy is in a mess, poverty, and unemployment is at an all-time high and the social fabric of the nation is in tatters.
Adeeb described the book as a testimony of the freedom of writing without fear. He lauded the author for the courage he displayed in speaking up about the truth at a time when it is considered a sin.
Addressing the gathering, well know journalist, Vinod Sharma, congratulated the author on bringing many aspects of contemporary life out of the closet. He expressed reservation over the title “The Brand New Republic” and said in the Post-Truth era that we are living, Republic is an illusion. He stressed the need for a campaign to fight hatred with truth.
In her turn, Syeda Hameed called the book ‘candid and bold. She said she found the book very direct and clear. “What fascinated the most about the book is that it talks about communal harmony and the re-establishment of real India,” she said.
The author, Dr. Mujtaba recounted his predicament when publisher after publisher rejected his manuscript, and said, at one point in time; he had lost hope of the book seeing the light of day. After encountering 10 rejections, when eventually one publisher mustered enough nerve to publish the book, he took a sigh of relief.
He said through the book, he raised the concerns of a citizen living in this great country. I have used four positions to write the book, the author said, one as a concerned citizen, second as a journalist, third as an academic and professor, and last his own identity as an Indian Muslim.
There was a consensus among the speakers that the work will serve generations as a reference book to relate to and learn from the contemporary realities faced by Indians living in this era.
The book release function began with the felicitation to the author by different media organizations where his writings appear regularly. Website ‘The India Observer’ published from New York; ‘Siasat Daily’ from Hyderabad, ‘Good Morning Kashmir’ from Srinagar, ‘Muslim Mirror’ from New Delhi felicitated the author.
The book launch ceremony was a well-attended event. Even the rains could not dampen the spirits ofi the Nobel souls, who braved the downpour to make the event a grand success.
source: http://www.muslimmirror.com / Muslim Mirror / Home> Books / by Muslim Mirror Network / October 16th, 2022
Rashid un-Nisa’s life and work continue to inspire, reminding us of the importance of education and the courage to advocate for change in the face of resistance.
Representative image of girl students. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Rashid un-Nisa, India’s first female Urdu novelist, wrote Islah-un-Nisa, advocating for women’s education and reform. Born in 1855 in Patna, she was also a champion of girls’ education, founding Bihar’s first girls’ school. Her novel, published in 1894, addressed social issues and encouraged women to seek education. Rashid un-Nisa’s pioneering efforts in literature and education have left a lasting legacy, inspiring generations of women and contributing significantly to India’s literary and social history.
The premise of Islah-un-Nisa is something like this: “I am aware of the fact that there are many problems in our Muslim families. I also want to remove these problems. But instead of giving any sermons for this, I have chosen an interesting way to do this work the way of writing a novel.”
Early life and family background
Rashid un-Nisa, also known as Rashidatun Nisa or Raseedan Bibi, was born in 1855 in Patna, Bihar, into a scholarly family. Her father, Shamsul Ulama Syed Waheeduddin Khan Bahadur, was a prominent Islamic scholar. Growing up in a rich intellectual environment, Rashid un-Nisa received her education at home through private tutoring. Though formal schooling for girls was rare, her intellectual curiosity was nurtured in this setting.
Her marriage to Maulvi Mohammad Yahya, a lawyer, introduced her to progressive literature, particularly Mirat-ul-Uroos by deputy Nazir Ahmad, which deeply influenced her views on women’s education and reform.
Islah-un-Nisa: Breaking new ground
Rashid un-Nisa began writing her most famous work, Islah-un-Nisa, around 1868, though it took over a decade to publish due to challenges as a female writer in a male-dominated field. With the help of her nephew, Mohammad Suleman, the novel was finally published in 1881. Its significance as the first Urdu novel written by an Indian woman cannot be overstated.
The novel advocates for women’s self-improvement through education and moral upliftment, tackling issues such as superstitions, societal constraints, and regressive customs. It promoted the empowerment of women and their active participation in social reform, much like the themes Rashid un-Nisa had encountered in Mirat-ul-Uroos.
Jamia Millia Islamia’s research scholar, Dr. Uzma Azhar, comments on the novel, stating, “Islah un Nisa is the first novel in Urdu literature authored by a woman (1881). Rashid un Nisa came from an educated family of Azeemabad (now Patna, in Bihar) and later started a girls’ school as well.
Titled “Islah” meaning “to rectify/reform”, and “un Nisa” of women, it conveys ways through which a woman could improve herself. She has advised women on broad mindedness, importance of education against ignorance and has also tried to talk about the lives of literate women of that era through her story.
The main story of Bismillah is followed by further similar short stories. She has given delightfully detailed descriptions of the various traditions around marriage, pregnancy, birth of a child in simplified common language interspersed with local regional songs, making this book an interesting historical document.”
The novel’s appeal stretched beyond its time, with later editions being released in 1968, 2001, and 2006, highlighting its enduring influence in India and Pakistan.
Social reformer: Championing girls’ education in Bihar
Rashid un-Nisa didn’t limit her reformist spirit to literature; she founded the first girls’ school in Bihar, a revolutionary step at a time when educating girls was controversial. The colonial administration even recognised her efforts, with Lady Stephenson, wife of the lieutenant governor, personally praising her work during a school visit.
Her educational philosophy was grounded in the belief that women’s education could transform not only their own lives but also the wider society. By ensuring access to education, Rashid un-Nisa opened new avenues for countless women, many of whom went on to contribute significantly to education and reform.
Educational Philosophy and Social Impact
Rashid un-Nisa’s educational vision was deeply embedded in her literary work. Islah-un-Nisa reflects her belief that intellectual and moral growth were essential for women. Her protagonist, Bismillah, navigates societal challenges, embodying the values of enlightenment and self-improvement. Through conversations between her characters, Rashid un-Nisa critiques harmful customs and superstitions, urging women to rise above them.
Senior journalist and well-known historian Shams Ur Rehman Alavi notes, “Islah un Nisa, gave message to women to shun regressive cultural practices that were a burden on them, and instead, aim at achieving excellence in all fields.
Through conversation of characters, she emphasised that it’s not just about ability to read and write, but learning and expertise in all spheres, which was the need of the hour for women. It must be remembered that it was a period, when all the social reformers were not so enthusiastic about women’s rights and adequate priority was not given to women’s higher education, as some of them still felt that basic literacy was enough, so that a woman could communicate through letters with husband in case he is away or be able teach own children a bit.
Sample this from a paragraph in the novel: Mir Waaez’ wife says, ‘Beti is mein bhalaa kya buraai hai [What’s wrong with this]’ and Karim-un-Nisa replies, ‘Aap badi hain, aap ki baaton ka jawab dena be-adabi hai magar….be-adabi maauf ho….ye rasm buri hai...[You are elder and it is disrespectful for me to speak but I need to say that this custom is bad’.
The writer shows her disgust towards superstitions also that are continued in the name of ‘tradition’ and disses fake healers as well as those who are obsessed with spreading fear about apparitions and paranormal. On one hand, language and Urdu idioms heard in households of the era, keep the reader fixated, the unique description of the rituals that brought financial burden on households and forced families into debt, was clearly aimed at discouraging the practice of going to money-lenders and falling in this trap, which affected the families.“
The novel blends traditional and progressive values, challenging superstitions while depicting modern aspirations. It offers a vivid portrayal of customs like marriage and childbirth, making it not only a piece of literature but also a historical document of women’s lives at the time.
Legacy
Rashid un-Nisa passed away in 1929, but her contributions to literature and social reform endure. She is remembered not only as the first Urdu woman novelist but also as a pioneer of women’s education in India. Her novel Islah-un-Nisa remains a powerful reminder of the struggle for women’s rights and education during an era resistant to change.
Her school continues to inspire generations, and her work has been reprinted several times, testifying to her lasting influence. As Dr. Uzma Azhar reflects, “Islah-un-Nisa offers delightfully detailed descriptions of the various traditions around marriage and other social practices, making it an interesting historical document.”
Rashid un-Nisa’s life and work continue to inspire, reminding us of the importance of education and the courage to advocate for change in the face of resistance.
Sahil Razvi is an author and research scholar specialising in Sufism and history. He is an alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia. For inquiries, you can email him at [email protected].
source: http://www/thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Culture / by Sahil Rizvi / October 13th, 2024
Remembering the prolific Urdu writer from Lucknow whose novels and short stories were full of insights about the lives and concerns of women.
Photo: Mehru Jafar/WFS
The prolific Urdu writer, Begum Masroor Jahan, quietly slipped into literary immortality in her beloved Lucknow on September 22 at the age of 81. Though she left behind an astonishing legacy of some 65 best-selling novels and more than 500 short-stories, the news of the passing of this titan did not even make it to the leading Urdu publications of India, what to speak of English and other languages.
Masroor Jahan belonged to that remarkable generation of Urdu women writers, born between 1925 and 1940, which includes novelists Nisar Aziz Butt, Altaf Fatima, Jilani Bano and Khalida Husain; and the short story writer Wajida Tabassum. With her passing, only two living representatives of that generation remain – Butt from Pakistan and Bano from India.
Born on July 8, 1938 in an educated and literary household in Lucknow, Masroor Jahan’s father, Sheikh Hussein Khayal Lakhnavi, was considered a good poet. Her paternal grandfather, Sheikh Mehdi Hasan Nasiri Lakhnavi, also had a collection of poems to his credit and was the author and translator of many books. Masroor Jahan had a passion for reading stories from an early age.
Her first short-story ‘Woh Kon Thi?’ (Who Was She?) was published in the Qaumi Aavaaz from Lucknow in 1960. Just two years later, she published her first novel Faisla (Decision). She began writing under the pen-name of Masroor Khayal – among others – which she later changed to Masroor Jahan at the advice of her publisher.
From her paternal side, her milieu was feudal, while her father was a teacher and the domestic atmosphere was middle-class. She was married at the tender age of 16 to Syed Murtaza Ali Khan, a nawab. Due to this background, her short-stories portray the minds and matters of all these three classes.
She claimed that whatever she wrote was given to her by her personal experience and observation, and was not fictitious. In a few instances, she even mentioned the real names of people living with her in her novels and when asked about this, pat came the response that she did not fear those folks ever going to court.
Her writings were popular with not only older homemakers but also students. Her stories published in the Urdu journals Beesveen Sadddi and Hareem had a seminal role in the upbringing of Lucknow’s middle-class young women. One of the standards of literary success is also that they be read and liked by every class of society. In that respect, many of her novels went into multiple editions.
Though Masroor Jahan’s forte was the novel, she turned her attention to short stories in the later years of her life and it can be said that the real form of her art is manifested in these tales. The simplicity of her story, the popular manner of writing and easy imagination were the qualities that distinguished her from her contemporaries, including her fellow-Lakhnavi, Naiyer Masud, who passed away in 2017, and Altaf Fatima, who hailed from Lucknow and died in Lahore last year.
Masroor Jahan belongs to the pantheon of female writers like Rashid Jahan, Ismat Chughtai, Quratulain Hyder, Hajra Masroor, Khadija Mastoor, Razia Sajjad Zaheer, Sarla Devi, Saleha Abid Hussain, Bano Qudsia, Jamila Hashmi, Zaheda Hina and Jilani Bano who drew attention to the woman who is present somewhere in society in some form through their short-stories and novels. She witnessed the era of the Progressive Movement as well as that of modernism, post-modernism and other trends in literature, but did not attach herself to any movement or trend.
But while presenting them, she did not adopt the conservative manner particular to some female fiction writers; neither did she adopt the kind of boldness which tramples upon cultural values in the heat of realism.
Whether her topics consist of middle-class or lower-class women, or the Anjuman Aras being nourished in high palaces, or the educated woman of the new society, she always maintained a cautious manner in the presentation of these matters and problems, especially when it came to sexual and psychological tension. She was acutely aware of how the decline of feudalism – when the life of Muslim households of northern India scattered owing to economic and moral decline – made women the ‘altar’ of the false honour of men. She created her stories by making women the subject through small incidents and characters.
Boorha Eucalyptus. Photo: Rekha
Masroor Jahan also wrote romantic stories like the classic Boorha Eucalyptus (The Aged Eucalyptus) from her eponymous collection published in 1982, as well as stories where a helpless woman is hung on the cross of relationships. Then there are women who are the epitome of love and loyalty at one place, but at other places, create problems in others’ lives.
Many novels and short-stories have been written on the debauchery of nawabs and landlords. Wajida Tabassum had become famous at one time for writing such stories. Masroor Jahan too wrote many stories on this topic. But where she made the sexual waywardness of the nawabs her theme, she also presented the positive traits of their character.
In the character of begums too she tried to present every aspect of their life. These stories of a particular milieu express the solitudes and splendours of this culture, whose traces have themselves now become legend.
‘Kunji’ is a classic story of this milieu. Kunji was an extremely beautiful young dancer. Audiences were enthralled by his performances in the nautankis where he presented his dance. People of the highest rank were devoted to his coquetry and beauty. Nawab Zeeshan lost his heart to Kunji. He arranged for the whole nautanki troupe to stay near his harem and gave a beautifully decorated room attached to his bed-chamber to Kunji. In his love for the male dancer, he even forgot the beauty of his begum Anjuman Ara.
Anjuman Ara was amazed at what had happened to the nawab. She was also embarrassed thinking that her rival was not some woman, but a man. Indeed, she herself liked Kunji’s dance; but found her husband’s attachment to him obnoxious. One day when the nawab was off visiting the nearby village, she went to Kunji’s room. The dancer was bewildered by the unexpected sight of a beautiful woman in front of him. ‘I am Anjuman Ara, the begum of Nawab Zeeshan’, she says.
She looks around the room, which had feminine dresses and other articles of feminine adornment everywhere. But the beautiful youth sitting in front of her bore no relation to femininity. His long black hair appeared artificial. She tells him with great gravity that she liked his dance. Despite this praise, Kunji begins to consider himself inferior in front of her. He is also embarrassed listening to praise from her mouth; and he did not have the courage too to look towards her. Firstly, it was the awe of beauty and then that aspect of ridicule in her praise of him which he felt. Despite primping and preening for several hours, he could not compete with this beauty and femininity. People kept encouraging his coquetry now but real beauty was present before him. For the first time in his life, Kunji’s heart beat in a different manner.
He looked at Anjuman Ara with eager eyes. She too was looking in his direction. Their eyes met and lowered. Anjuman Ara’s beauty and femininity had brought to life a man whom the praise and admiration of others had patted to sleep. Anjuman Ara was stupefied reading the message of yearning in his eyes; and worried too. She immediately got up to leave. Kunji too regained consciousness, and said slowly, ‘You’re leaving so soon.’ Anjuman Ara replied, ‘Yes. The nawab will be here soon and then you too will have to change your appearance.’ When Nawab Zeeshan stepped into Kunji’s room upon his return, he saw that instead of the preening dancer he sought, a man was sitting there; and there was a heap of hair before him.
At the point where Masroor Jahan ends the story, looking at Anjuman Ara and Kunji one by one, the reader feels that he has seen with his own eyes how one beauty gives birth to another. Had she wanted, she could have presented Kunji like Ismat Chughtai’s ‘Lihaaf’ (indeed she cited Ismat Chughtai as an early influence and had attempted to make her female characters bolder after the latter’s advice). The nawab of Lihaaf too was happier with boys and left his Begun Jan. But Masroor Jahan did not let Anjuman Ara become Begum Jan. For her, homosexuality was not the refuge Chughtai hinted at for her protagonist.
Unlike ‘Lihaaf’, with which the former was often compared to, Kunji was based on a real-life character. In an interview conducted just five months before her death, Masroor Jahan named Kunji as her favourite real-life character from her stories.
The short-stories of Masroor Jahan with their absent and present realities are those milestones of her creative journey which will not be easily forgotten. About her own stories, she used to say, ‘Actually life is not unidirectional, it has a thousand aspects; and every aspect is a complete world in itself. The fiction writer is a pulse-reader of life. It is her duty to present every aspect of life in its proper context.’
Among the 65 novels she wrote, the social realist Nai Basti (New Colony) is of special interest. Published in 1982, this was topically different from all her novels. Indeed, to my knowledge, this is the first Urdu novel where the problems of nameless city settlements – which are called ‘illegal’ – have been narrated. Premchand had made the rural poor the subject of his novels, but in this novel are the urban disadvantaged, who have their own problems and life – and values that are being trampled on.
I got acquainted with Masroor Jahan barely a month ago when I read Shafey Kidwai’s lucid review of her two recent collections of short-stories namely Naql-e- Makaani (Migration) and ‘Khuvaab der Khuvaab Safar (A Journey Dream After Dream) in the Friday Review of The Hindu.
From there, I sought out the January/February issue of the monthly Chahaar-Su, issued from Rawalpindi, which was dedicated to Masroor Jahan and consists of an excellent and quite revealing interview of the writer with the editor Gulzar Javed. These readings also sent me down memory lane to my maiden visit to Lucknow back in 2014 when I was invited to the Lucknow Literature Festival.
It was there too that I made the acquaintance of the lovely and erudite Saira Mujtaba; I sadly do not recall any conversations we might have had with regard to her late grandmother, Masroor Jahan. Now when I think about that visit, I am disconsolate because I know I should have been spending time with the living monuments of Lucknow like Begum Masroor Jahan and Naiyer Masud, rather than admiring the dead buildings of that city. That regret will always be mine!
Masroor Jahan’s quintessential short-story The Aged Eucalyptus talks about the eponymous tree which is a witness to the eras, revolutions, stories and secrets of the haveli where it had stood so proudly for decades in addition to being the recipient of the imprinted affections of the doomed love affair of the two main protagonists, Maliha and Ahmer.
Later on, the aged eucalyptus would provide solace to Maliha as she held it to console herself in her lover’s absence. The story ends with the uprooting of the aged eucalyptus in a storm overnight.
I would like to think that the aged, kind, empathetic eucalyptus was not only a metaphor for the doomed love affair in the story itself but for Masroor Jahan’s own life, patiently accumulating the various sorrows of her life, in which she had to contend with the early deaths of her brother and her son, as well as another brother who went missing in 1973 but never returned (her 1980 novel Shahvar is dedicated to him), and which she never spoke of.
The aged eucalyptus for me also reflects not the physical passing on of Masroor Jahan, but the uprooting of a whole way of life and a system of thinking and feeling which was Lakhnavi culture.
It is now up to her younger successors like Anees Ashfaq and indeed Saira Mujtaba (to whom Masroor Jahan’s last volume of stories Khuvaab Dar Khuvaab Safar is co-dedicated and who is currently translating a collection of her grandmother’s short stories into English) to pen the dirge of Lucknow in our own time.
Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, book critic and award-winning translator and dramatic reader currently based in Lahore, where he is also the President of the Progressive Writers Association. He can be reached at: (email protected).
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Books / by Raza Naeem / October 07th, 2019
Anees Ashfaq’s ‘Khawab Sarrab’ is destined to blaze a new trail in fiction writing in Urdu.
Presenting a new Avatar – Anees Ashfaq
Truth is not what it appears at first glance. It lurks behind popular narrative and often reveals itself through a text that remained obscure for years.It is a pulsating narrative trajectory to retell an old story that is aptly adopted by an eminent Urdu author Anees Ashfaq in his latest novel Khawab Saraab (Dream, Mirage). The inspired story telling adds a strong sense of dreaminess to the old themes of love grief and cultural isolation. The narrative a sort of transgressional fiction leaps backwards and forward in time and throws light on the powerlessness that people feel in a fragmented world.
The protagonist of the novel desperately looks for an unpublished but widely discussed manuscript of the famous Urdu novel Umrao Jaan rendered into film by Muzaffar Ali. Undeterred by the popular pare down script, the narrator looks for the script that had not seen the light of the day.
Revelatory prose
Anees Ashfaq’s revelatory prose articulates how an old story can be presented as an awe-inspiring cultural force that we need to explore. The story betrays a renewed rendezvous with the literary and cultural history of 20th century Lucknow that was hardly told by the colonial historians and novelists.
A prolific writer, Ashfaq picks up different but equally fascinating narrative threads to weave a story that goes well beyond the mourning nostalgia. It is a story that skilfully blends connection between texts. The plot of Khawab Saraab does not harp on the notion of an absolute truth that is shared by various characters, but zeroes in on multiple and individual truths. It is a world where no master narrative with a definite moral exists. The first edition of Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s famous novel Umrao Jaan carried a concluding line which says that the author prepared another copy of the script. It was widely believed that the author tried to narrate the story with multiple focalisation about a city that was ravaged with the decay and decline. In one of the versions of the story, Umrao Jan was presented more than a dancing girl, she was a mother as well. It is what the narrator of the Anees Ashfaq’s trail blazing novel tries to explore.
Characters with culture
With remarkable narrative skill, the author produces a text that does not draw on the dazzling presence of mass media, consumerism, globalism and corporate world and his characters have not put aside their cultural concerns and values and they are not driven by greed. The protagonist’s painstaking efforts to find out the script that disappeared brings forth a tantalising tale of life that seems real but actually it is not really real. For Anees Ashfaq, reality is what we construct through language and he builds his narrative by referring to the celebrated writer Ruswa time and again. His insistence on the lost script makes his novel closely resemble with “histographic metafiction” It is a text that pins point the historicity of several heritage buildings and cultural practices of Lucknow. The author reveals that famous safed Baradari of Lucknow was the Qasrul Aza (place of mourning) constructed by Wajid Ali Shah and the building which houses Bhatkhande Music College was his ‘parikhana’.
Seldom does one come across with a text bursting with different genres, autobiography, memoirs, anecdotes, romance and some what detective fiction and Anees Ashfaq’s creative dexterity produced such a nuanced and multi-sensory narrative of metafiction .
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Going Native / by Shafey Kidwai / October 27th, 2017
