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review The
life and death of a mega city
A better world
review No translation of
literature is easy, and that of Intizar Husain’s quite impossible, as
principally the real merit of his writings lie in evocation. Bringing to life
the emotional side of an experience is only embedded in the particularity of
language, recognised as a very difficult assignment by those who have made
some headway in transferring the sensibility of one language to another.
Translation is a necessary evil as it is needed, no matter how imperfect, in
introducing the literature of one language to another, and if in English to a
much wider audiences. The writings in Pakistan have not been translated in
great numbers and it has carried the impression that there is paucity of
people writing short stories, novels and poetry, though to the contrary one
feels at times that too much poetry is written here and less of other
writings, mostly philosophical or analytical in nature. Intizar Husain was
recognised as a major force with the publication of his first writings in the
early years after partition. Drawing a relationship between the new place of
settlement and the home which had been left behind, this anguished
co-existence between the remembered past and the living present has stayed
forever, creating in the process some of the most evocative writings in the
Urdu language. The home is beyond one’s
choosing, being the janam bhoomi, but the place of settlement a matter of
choice and in the rational sequence of progression choice should be valued
above determinism. But literature and the other arts have always contested
these one to one relationships and causal contraptions for something more
heart wrenching. The evocative bulwark that questions rational decisions is
obviously very difficult to decipher and nearly impossible to translate. Rakhsanada Jalil was aware
of the near impossible task and that forced her to make her effort more
conscious, deliberate and perhaps tentative too. She was not led up the
garden path of having done a great job but was mindful of the monster that
she had wilfully taken to wrestle. She planned to translate the works
literally, stay as close as possible to the word and let the spirit take care
of itself. She conceded that the indomitable spirit of Intizar Husain soared
above the translation, intact and unharmed and she had only striven to find
exactness in the literal text. She might have opted for a
safer option because at least she was on firmer ground when dealing with the
literal translation of the text and did not bother to enter the insinuous and
mystifying world of the spirit. The syntax determines the emotional quotient
in creative writing as peril lies hidden in the ambiance, the nuance of each
word and each phrase. The stories of Intizar
Husain do not follow the Aristotelian sequence of a beginning, middle and end
but largely unfold as a monologue where the recalled past appears more
palpable than the present. Then what the translator called the simplicity of
Urdu prose became more deceptive, as cadence formed the unpinning of the
various images that grew out of the experience of a living culture and
language. The language was rich in allusion, drawn from the cultural
landscape of folklore, parables and oral narratives with a constant shifting
between past and present, memory and desire through the shifting of the
tenses. Jalil called it circle, the
title of her translations as well, implying that within one circle were other
circles, from one story grew other stories, one anecdote germinated further
and one parable led to another, equally convoluted and mystifying, recalling
the strength and the characteristic of the oral story telling of the Asian
subcontinent. The choice of short stories
which have been translated seemed to be the translator’s own but it left
question marks about why only these particular stories had been selected.
Intizar Husain’s oeuvre is quite extensive — he has been writing with the
commitment of a serious writer for the past sixty odd years. Some of his
writings have been admired by his worst critics and some have become the
signature tune of his style, theme and treatment. The slim translation and
the six stories may be an experimental effort, a testing of waters so to say
before taking the deeper plunge. Jalil had equipped herself now and can take
on Intizar Husain’s other works, some of the most celebrated pieces of
fiction in Urdu but not known outside the boundary of language because they
are particular to the culture and the environment. The true genius of Intizar
Husain has been waiting for a translator and perhaps one has arrived.
Rashshanda Jalil should venture forth and translate Intizar Hussain’s other
stories, the ones more representative of his work. An ongoing effort, can
through an incremental series, improve upon the quality of translation with
the passage of time for not to translate due to the difficulty involved is
not really an option.
The
life and death of a mega city Bombay, now renamed
Mumbai after the goddess Mumba, is the largest city in India and one of the
three largest in the world, along with Sau Paulo and Mexico City, is on the
verge of touching thirty million in population. Mumbai Fables is remarkable
in its range of the history and sociology of Mumbai. It is highly readable
and better than any book on a city that I have read. It is a tale of the
legends, poems, books, novels, mysteries, newspaper articles, film songs,
advertisements, architectural styles, comic books, apocryphal stories and
paintings inspired by Mumbai. Fictional accounts of
people connected to Mumbai make its history come alive. The cast of
characters range from Jawaharlal Nehru to Bal Thackeray, from Saadat Hasan
Manto to Salman Rushdie. Through them, Gyan Prakash, a professor of history
at Princeton University, is able to distill an imagining of Mumbai that is
more real than a clear-cut history, simply because it is told by so many
different voices. Mumbai Fables starts with a
detailed history of the dream city created out of seven islands. It all began
in the year 1498, with the arrival of the Portuguese with Vasco da Gama to
1626, when East India Company took over , to the 19th century arrival of the
Raj and the development and retrieval of land from the sea, till independent
India and today. Today’s Mumbai is
described as a coin with two sides. Glittering Marine Drive and Malabar Hills
and rich neighbourhoods: the shining, swinging Mumbai. On the other hand,
Mumbai’s underbelly: overcrowded tenements, low paid labourers, the mafia,
the slums and the poverty- stricken Mumbai’s story, as it
unfolds in Prakash’s narrative, is an absorbing one, with varied sources:
newspapers and pamphlets, books, paintings, interviews and songs, lawsuits
and art. One photograph for example is a group of writers that include Ismat
Chugtai, Qurratulain Hyder, Krishan Chander, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Sahir
Ludhianvi, Mulk Raj Anand, Rajinder Singh Bedi and half a dozen others that I
do not recognise. They are there to attend a Progressive Writer’s meeting. Interestingly, the
startling thing about Mumbai Fables is its sheer scope. Here you will find
the story of the film studios and the secular seeds of the film industry; the
rise and fall of the mill politics; the thrilling story of the Nanavati
murder case and how the newspaper Blitz reported it; and unsettling accounts
of the Babri-Masjid riots and the bomb blasts. Hindi film songs and Marathi
Dalit poetry feature here, as do Meera Devidayal’s Prakash goes on to trace
the economic history of Mumbai that started with the opium export to China.
Then it became the largest centre of cotton textile industry. It was both the
importing port as well as the manufacturer of cotton. The expansion of wealth
and labour, however, pushed the industry out and land became king. Business
houses and financial and commercial concerns controlled 60 percent of the
whole of India’s wealth. But Mumbai grew and grew
and today is creaking under the pressure of overpopulation. What was once a
temptress is now shattered by its own unbalanced growth. It now also has the
largest slum in Asia. The novel feature of this
book is how the government, politicians and the press interact. The Higher
Courts both in India and Pakistan rose and stayed above this mess, but the
politics of corruption is the real denouement. It is not a piece of
demagoguery in this book. Research and analysis by Gyan Prakash in this
regard is both scholarly and insightful. Hindu/Muslim divide, big
money and violence define Mumbai politics now. It is still India’s
financial hub but as Gyan Prakash notes Mumbai offers too many opportunities
for corrupt communalism, ethnicity and crime syndicates and too many places
to hide.
A
better world Amar Sindhu is a
keen observer of the oppressed society especially oppression against women.
Her feminism reminds one of French existentialist Simone de Beuvoir who wrote
in her brilliant book The Second Sex “One is not born a woman, one becomes
one!” Eminent poet Fahmida Riaz in her preface has rightly said that
“Amar’s pain can produce art.” Riaz fears about the fate of Sindhu in a
brutalised and intolerant society. Her poetry is not only of
pain, it is also of hope; hope for a better world that is free of
exploitation in any form. Sindhu is a professor of philosophy and no wonder
her poetry along with her activism amply demonstrates that she is not merely
a keen observer of Pakistan society, its people, women and men, rivers and
streams, in short the gifts of nature but also has determination to change
the status quo. Her hero is also different
from traditional heroes:
Sindhu
is inspired by writers and poets of that era such as Muneer Manik and Anwar
Peerzado but is also disgruntled by many of them who made compromises at a
later stage in their life. Fahmida
Riaz has rightly pointed out that Sindhu is “uncompromising” and has
apprehensions about her fate but she fails to understand that only
uncompromising people make history. Sindhu’s optimism never dies.
In her poem “Untitled” she not only points to bullets, blood and
gallows but also shows optimism about a better future.
Mein ney ek naray ko janam
dia Nara jis ke mustaqbil mein
sankroon kaienateen aur Haal mein gandhak ki
goolian aur Phansi ke phande latak
rahey hein One also finds bitterness
of the highest order in her poetry because while the vast majority makes
compromises at one or the other point, Sindhu is infact uncompromising. Faqat Rome shehar mein hey nahein,
her kahein Brutus bhi bohat khanjar bhi bohat Cesar bhi bohat Sindu’s poetry reminds
one of the great thesis of Erich Fromm that, “love is giving’ but she
hates dream merchants. Sindhu traces her roots in the Great Indus
Civilization and feel pride in it, but her sleepless nights also reminds one
of Kafka. Her poetry reveals that she is not only influenced by Marxism but
existentialist literature and Kafka whose writings have remained an enigma.
Asif Farukhi has rightly said that Sindhu’s poetry is truthful and portrays
confidence. Her poem “Jagti
aankhoon ke sapne” seems to be a combination of several schools of thought.
Atiya Dawood has
beautifully translated Sindhu’s poetry from Sindhi to Urdu and the
illustrations by Khuda Bux Abro are also a treat.
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Mumbai-taxi-inspired paintings, the wonderful Hindi comic/graphic novel Doga,
cartoons from Marathi newspapers, and the pulsating life and commerce of
Dharavi. 
Sindhu’s
poetry also gets inspiration from the resistance literature of Sindh in the
1960s when a large number of poets, short story writers, singers, TV artists
and playwrights emerged in Sindh who very bravely fought against the
notorious One Unit imposed on Pakistan by military dictator General Ayub
Khan.
