Zia Mohyeddin column
"An insignificant, inartistic and immoral writer"
In the mid-eighties, an ardent fan of mine in Lahore decided to write a book on me. I was living in England at the time and although I wrote several letters to the young author, a mild-mannered, soft-spoken television producer, trying to dissuade him, my wife, at the time, pleaded his cause with such fervour that I relented.

Between the

Assassinations

By Aravind Adiga

Publisher: Atlantic Books,

London

Pages: 355

Price: Rs940

There is little possibility you have heard the name of Kittur city in India. This is because this city of "richness and scenic beauty, and diversity of religion, race, and language" is nowhere on the world map. It is there, nonetheless, real as any other city of India. Kittur -- the setting of Aravind Adiga's collection of stories Between the Assassination -- is alive throughout the snippets of lives that are shaped by this 'historic' city. So much so that the city itself becomes the protagonist and an omnipresent figure that connects all these lives.

In this kaleidoscope of sights and sounds of Kittur, Adiga's characters come to life. Some have spent their lives here, some have been driven here by the circumstances, some could never escape it and some have no desire to. These people are quintessentially Indian, not only because of the obvious reasons but because Adiga seems to make a conscious, and at times forceful, effort to make them look and sound "the sorrowful parade of humanity."

The book is as much about an Indian metropolis as Moth Smoke was about Lahore. The Indian identity is always lurking in the background, even during the most personal of the characters' moments. And Adiga defines the 'Indian identity' for us too -- "I have the worst of both castes in my blood…I have the anxiety and fear of the Brahmin, and I have the tendency to act without thinking of Hoyka" or "a feeling that he was meant for some greater endeavour than could be found in a small town." You are defined by your religion, your caste, your ethnic background and your financial status, in that particular order "Do you think privilege has no place in Indian life?" The stories tell us of a system that is not just ridden by class distinction but by a controversial past not many are willing to own. The basic facts of the city are also broken down in religious division of population.

If you have read Adiga's Booker novel The White Tiger it is easy, even after reading the first story, to make a connection with Balram and Ziauddin -- you make a guess about the kind of lives you are about to encounter. You are right, you tell yourself. Most of the stories have almost a similar flavour with a strong and consistent censuring of the system that favours one at the cost of punishing the other and the divide between secular India and painful religious divisions.

That Adiga is a self-proclaimed representative of the underdog could be a rational conclusion from his brief body of work. But there is more -- it is Adiga's preference for the crude and the obscene. He seems to relish in the kind of obscenity that is reminiscent of Gunter Grass and his depiction of human waste and filth to expose the filth within. "History," says Gunter Grass "is like clogged toiled…we flush and flush but the shit keeps rising". Xerox, the bookseller's father in this book "took out shit for a living, sir: he couldn't even read or write." Then there is the young boy who sat with a prostitute and paid the price with a disease.

The stories are an intermix of attitudes. Adiga doesn't completely ridicule the system but tries to find the tragic-comic in the lives of these people. He is not appreciative either of a country that propagates secularism but is not able to bridge the divide at individual level. The last time he wrote a book, Adiga was criticised for the "defiantly unglamorous portrait of India's economic miracle." He is unlikely to please his critics this time too. But the writer believes this is the real challenge -- to write about people who are different from you; a quality also seen in the works of Daniyal Moeenuddin who delves into the slums and drawing rooms of South Punjab.

The interesting part is the division of stories. The book moves on like a traveller to the city who spends here seven days. Instead of titles, the stories are divided on the basis of different places of Kittur, some famous milestones or popular markets marked by an historical event. You begin with the railway station and move on to Alfonso High School and then to the Lighthouse and so on. As you pass through the city, from the first day i.e. the first story you reach the last story on the seventh day. Each story is an episode from a particular day and time in those seven days. The book ends, though, on Salt Market Village, probably in the outskirt but still a part of Kittur. The chronology at the end places this fictitious city in the real life by giving it a share of real India -- it starts with the assassination of Indira Gandhi and ends with a two day mourning for Rajiv Gandhi. Although the stories have no timeline, the chronology at the end gives the book a frame of seven years between the assassination of Mrs Gandhi and that of her son. The references to time and year are not consistent but placed here and there. It begins with the assertion of the Pathan identity separating itself from the Punjabi identity but ends on a man disillusioned with the political system and rejecting all ideological affiliations.

The complexity and diversity of India is one of the major strengths of the book. But Adiga's expression is not that of a story teller. For him the little facts of one's origin, of poverty, of skin colour highjack the tell-tale part. Like the first novel, there are no intricate patterns (also a limitation for the short story). The people are caught up in their daily lives and it is in the daily business of life that we get hold of them and get a story out of it. There are no heroes, only people. Indians caught between two assassinations.

Between the Assassinations is available at The Last Word, Hot Spot Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore

Duniya Zad

Issue 24

Editor:Asif Farukhi

Publisher: Shehrzad Karachi, May 2009

Pages: 310

Price: Rs120

"Half my friends are dead I will make you new ones, said earth no, give me them back, as they were, instead with faults and all, I cried o earth, the number of friends, you keep exceeds those left to be loved."

Derek Wallcot,

Sea Cranes

These haunting lines appear on the opening page of Duniya Zad Issue24, the Karachi based journal. Its current issue is dedicated to the memory of Dr Suhail Ahmad Khan, the poet, critic and educationist. His old friends, Intizar Husain and Masood Ashar point out in their articles that Suhail couldn't contribute to literature to the utmost of his potential and rather pursued a successful career as an educationist.

In an interesting article, Nayyar Masood picks up the brilliant Marsiya to critically analyse it while unfolding the mysteries of the main character Zaafr Jin.

Munib-ur-Rehman's poems are intense and replete with melancholy and nostalgia so peculiar to poets in their older years. Mujhay Jagna Jab Paray ga is an impressive piece by Yasmin Hamid while Ahmad Javed's poems exude hatred and anger towards our own government and the rulers of the rest of the Muslim world. This bitterness hints towards a mindset moving towards the extreme and harms the poetic essence.

Qehqaha Kahan Gya by Hussain Abid, Aik Asatiri Aurat by Kashif Raza and a couple of poems by Ahmad Azad reflect the new trends emerging in our modern poetry. Sabar Zafar and Shahida Hussain maintain their style and standard in their ghazals published here. Qamar Raza Shahzad, an important poet of the 1980s, comes up with fresh ghazals, which remaining in line with his diction, yield a monotony he needs to break to really advance in the future. He remains an excellent poet nevertheless, as is Zia ul Hassain. Syed Abrar Salak, a relatively new poet, writes ghazals contemporary in essence and sharp in expression.

Zafar Iqbal appears to be in full form and is writing tirelessly. He wrote two articles for the current issue, Chotay Barey ki Baysood Behes and Shaukat Siddiqi, both offer very absorbing reading.

It may be interesting to observe here that Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Waris Alvi -- two most important critics of the subcontinent -- are also rivals. Alvi is quick to down-size the genuinely inflated egos of authors while Faruqi is fond of issuing certificates of "greatness".

In his article for Duniya Zad, Faruqi writes," I count Akbar Allahabadi as one of the five or six greatest Urdu poets." Zafar Iqbal's first article also revolves around the question of greatness. He quotes Joan Eliya telling him how he had an argument with Faruqi while migrating to Pakistan in 1963, on his claim that Zafar Iqbal was a poet greater than Firaq. Interestingly, during the same years on the pages of Shabkhoon, a magazine edited by Farooqi, a debate raged on the claim that Ahmad Mushtaq was a greater poet than Firaq.

Gilani Kamran once wrote that Zafar Iqbal's collection of poetry Ghubar alood samton ka suragh was worth placing alongside Dewan-e-Ghalib, implying that Zafar Iqbal is a greater poet than Ghalib, while Zafar Iqbal writes he never believed to be a great poet. Joan Eliya in an interview categorically observed "I am the greatest poet of the 20th century." Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi made a similar claim indirectly and the list includes even Khalid Ahmad.

How "greatness" is achieved and decided is a question too tricky to be handled so hurriedly. At least declarations and statements can never serve the purpose and perhaps the only valid parameter in this regard is time.

The second article by Zafar Iqbal deals with Shaukat Siddiqi as the "great" novelist in Urdu. Zafar's parameter here is the popularity of Khuda ki Basti as a tele-play -- hardly a valid argument.

Other notable contributions are a translation of Nazaar Qabani's poem by Amjad Islam Amjad and a section on the late Aadil Mansoori, while Amar Jalil and Hassan Manzar have also contributed. The current issue of Duniya Zad provides absorbing reading material for which Asif Farukhi deserves applause.

In the mid-eighties, an ardent fan of mine in Lahore decided to write a book on me. I was living in England at the time and although I wrote several letters to the young author, a mild-mannered, soft-spoken television producer, trying to dissuade him, my wife, at the time, pleaded his cause with such fervour that I relented.

The book when it came out was full of gross inaccuracies and it embarrassed me no end. It was neither an objective study nor a biography. It was written in hyperbolic language making me out to be some kind of an avatar. In England you come across such books, (usually about the life of a parish priest) deeply buried under a pile in second-hand bookshops in Hull or Huddersfield.  

Not so long ago a young man from Islamabad rang me up to say that he wanted to come over to Karachi to have an extended interview with me with a view to writing a book on my life. I put him off rather bluntly saying I did not think the world needed such a book.

I thought I had put him off but my resolute follower telephoned me again after some months to say that he avidly reads every word that I write, that he is my ardent admirer and that he wanted to "learn a bit about Shakespeare". Since I was the only man in this hemisphere who could reveal the 'mysteries' of the greatest playwright the world had ever known, he hoped that I would not disappoint him.

Try however, I might, I could not make him believe that although I have read some of the major Shakespeare scholars and have been most impressed by Granville-Barker and Wilson Knight (both of whom were actors as well), I cannot say that I have fully comprehended Shakespeare. Indeed, no one who is not born in the British Isles, ever came. Did he know, I said to him that some of the most eminent literary figures, including Tolstoy, dismissed Shakespeare as "an insignificant, inartistic and immoral writer." My ardent devotee was shocked.

Tolstoy found Shakespeare's works insignificant and simply bad. They induced in him "repulsion, weariness and bewilderment." He came to the conclusion that Shakespeare is a poor writer. "Shakespeare," he wrote," is a man quite devoid of the sense of proportion and taste."

Was it simply a hasty reaction from the extravagant praise and approbation that had been showered upon Shakespeare down the centuries? It could well be, but Tolstoy contends that his criticism "is the result of repeated and strenuous efforts extending over many years." He had read and re-read Shakespeare's works several times over in Russian, English and German and he could find nothing worthwhile in the Bard: For him the plays " have absolutely nothing in common with art or poetry."

Tolstoy rejects and ridicules nearly all Shakespeare's plays but he is particularly severe in his denunciation of the two great tragedies: King Lear and Hamlet. In his essay titled Shakespeare and the Drama Tolstoy says:

"Lear walks about the heath and utters words intended to express despair: he wishes the wind to blow so hard that they (the winds) should crack their cheeks, and that the rain should drench everything and that the lightning should singe his white beard and thunder strike the earth flat and destroy all the germs that 'make ungrateful man. The fool keeps uttering yet more senseless words. Kent enters. Lear says that for some reason, in this storm all criminals shall be discovered and exposed. Kent, still not recognized by Lear, persuades Lear to take shelter in a hovel. The Fool thereupon utters a prophesy quite unrelated to the situation, and they all go off."

This is how Tolstoy describes one of the greatest (and profoundest) dramatic scenes ever written. It would be presumptuous of me to scoff at Tolstoy's lack of insight. The fact is that Shakespeare does not show us people acting or speaking as people ordinarily do. His characters usually speak blank verse, not spoken in the real world. Wilson Knight rightly points out that "To understand Shakespeare one must make this original acceptance: to believe first in people who speak poetry: Thence in human actions which subserve a poetic purpose, and, finally, in strange effects in nature which harmonise with the persons and their acts; the whole building a massive statement which, if accepted in its entirety, induces a profound experience in the spectator."

Shakespeare's imaginative effects not merely baffled but repelled Tolstoy. Again, on Lear:

"The extraordinary storm during which Lear roams about the heath, or the weeds which for some reason he puts on his head -- as Ophelia does in Hamlet or Edgar's attire -- all these far from strengthening the impression produce a contrary effect."

It surprises me that Tolstoy, a deeply religious personage, fails to see that Lears's crown of flowers (weeds) is the crown of his purgatory. It is obvious even to us, non-Christians. Wilson Knight's enlightening observation is also worth noting: "It touches the crown of thorns of the crucifixion, its flower-sweetness also suggests and prepares us for the child-like innocence of Lears's later state, when he is re-united in love with Cordelia."

And what about Hamlet?

"But as it is accepted that Shakespeare the genius could write nothing bad, learned men devote all the power of their minds to discovering extraordinary beauties in what is an obvious and glaring defect -- particularly obvious in Hamlet -- namely that the chief person of the play has no character at all. And lo and behold, profound critics announce that in this drama, in the person of Hamlet, is most powerfully presented a perfectly new and profound character…"

Tolstoy's simple mind can never accept the idea that in drama, a single person may well express variations of feelings as well as complex and contradictory emotions. Poetry can do this better than prose because it can lay bare the essence and show us the naked world of thought and quick-changing feelings. 

Tolstoy believed that the essence of art must reveal the highest religious understanding of a given period. He had no hesitation in declaring that, "He alone could write a drama who had something to say to men about man's relations to God." How could such a man cope with what he dubbed as vulgarities in Shakespeare's plays? His ultimate verdict was:

"And really the suggestion that Shakespeare's works are great works of genius presenting the climax both of aesthetic and ethical perfection has caused and is causing great injury to men"

Is there any room for discussion?