essay
Ghosts of old books

A book acquired from an old bookshop never makes the reader feel alone
By Ali Sultan
Four years after I was born, on Christmas 1985, Alissa got a present from Mamma. Its all there, the faded red ink now turned into a light purple, the distinctiveness of how the As are formed, the long slashes. Years later, I found Signs of Life stashed between old fashion magazines in an old bookshop. On the page following ‘Mamma’s’ inscription is my own signature; the ink this time is blue.

Conscience of the individual
Graham Greene’s attempt to rid the proverbial secret agent of the thrill and violence of James Bond brought forth the moral ambivalence The Human Factor
By Qudsia Sajjad
For a novel that tells the story of a double agent, The Human Factor by Graham Greene ends up quoting Anton Chekhov and Anthony Trollope. Greene makes tantalising references to both these authors in such a manner that one is tempted to read all three.

Zia Mohyeddin column
Down Memory Lane

(The Munshi)
One of the juiciest parts I have ever played on television was that of Abdul Karim, later to be known as Munshi Abdul Karim. He was one of the two Indians chosen to serve Queen Victoria. The Queen had written to her officials in India asking for two Indian servants to be sent to her for a year’s duration. She wanted them to be at hand to help her address the Indian princes who were due to attend her Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887.

essay
Ghosts of old books
A book acquired from an old bookshop never makes the reader feel alone
By Ali Sultan

Four years after I was born, on Christmas 1985, Alissa got a present from Mamma. Its all there, the faded red ink now turned into a light purple, the distinctiveness of how the As are formed, the long slashes. Years later, I found Signs of Life stashed between old fashion magazines in an old bookshop. On the page following ‘Mamma’s’ inscription is my own signature; the ink this time is blue.

Signs of Life itself is an interesting book of essays on various photographs. One man’s thoughts on what they mean or can mean. But the inscription itself is haunting. Many times going through it, I turn back to Mamma’s handwriting. Was Alissa interested in photography or looking at them? Did she hate the book and never read it? Who was Mamma: A mother, an older sister, a grandmother, some friend? Was Mamma herself a photographer who could never really explain the why of it and the book was somehow a token of bringing them together. There are no answers to this, but it makes you imagine, to think.

Another old book’s first page says “Will you remember this?” It’s my own handwriting. I wrote that not because I wanted to remember the ‘why’ of buying it but because it ties up to a significant event in my life, but that’s another time.

The thin-skinned thesis of this piece is something one of my close friends uttered during a rather taxing bull session. He said “Old books with inscriptions or any other alien artifacts remind me of public toilets.” After which we both cracked up laughing at 3:00 am and woke up my parents in the next room.

Anyone who has owned an old book or two knows the annoying routine of underlined passages, meanings of words in upper or side margins, slashed out pages. Phone numbers, email whereabouts, the works, engrained in many old books.

The public toilet analogy might seem rather rude to some except to those who have passed on socially aware material. A wonderful example is of a certain black magic book I acquired, which someone took and never gave back, that not only had many passages blacked out but the wonderful person who had it before meticulously wrote “F—- You” in the right hand margin on every single page, not excluding the bibliography. You can read this but I will curse you on every page, rather intelligent right?

But here’s the catch, two actually if you don’t mind. The most illuminating passage out of Robert M Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is this one: “We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.’’

The point in this respect being, that books, old books, are ghosts in themselves. You see, the inscriptions, the short notes, the long notes, the scribbles, the underlined passages, the drawings, anything anyone has done to a particular book is not damaging it, far from it, it’s showing someone’s presence before yours, a token, a memento, a ghost. If I were to sell or give away Signs of Life today, the person receiving it would in fact be visited by three, Alfred Appel Jr. (the gentleman who wrote it) Mamma’s and mine (to say only if it’s passed two hands).

The problem, however, is that many people, the ones who enjoy books and collect old ones only notice one ghost, the writer’s, the words transcribed on the page. It’s actually a very huge difference, the one between what Anne Bogart the theatre director calls hearing and listening. “There is a difference between hearing and listening, and the distinction is anatomical. Hearing is basic and physical. Listening is complex and cognitive. The ears hear. The brain listens. The body hears and the mind listens. Hearing happens physiologically in the parts of the ear that receive and perceive sound. Listening, on the other hand, is born in the interaction of brain functions and synapse and neuron events that interpret the sound. Attention and consciousness are brought to bear upon the signals, and added to that is the imagination. The process starts with attention and then extends into the complex cross-referencing of the brain, including memory, perception, images, thoughts, imagination, and consciousness. The pathway travels from sensation to feeling to imagination to thought.”

And here’s the second catch, you shouldn’t be “hearing” old books. They can only be “listened to.”

Start listening to old books, front cover signatures, back page confessions, a love poem in the middle of a book, a scribble, a doodle, underlined words, passages, abuses, insults, they all start to form thoughts, from one person to another, a chain, a connection. The feeling of presence, of not being alone.

 

 

Conscience of the individual
Graham Greene’s attempt to rid the proverbial secret agent of the thrill and violence of James Bond brought forth the moral ambivalence The Human Factor
By Qudsia Sajjad

For a novel that tells the story of a double agent, The Human Factor by Graham Greene ends up quoting Anton Chekhov and Anthony Trollope. Greene makes tantalising references to both these authors in such a manner that one is tempted to read all three.

Graham Greene wrote his first novel in 1929. The Human Factor came along in 1978. Despite such a long literary career(his last novel came out in 2005), there is no sign of decadence in Greene. His metaphors are apt and so are his literary allusions. His concern with the condition of the modern man is arguably not metaphysical in nature. Greene’s concern is the institutionalisation of the modern man. From secret agents to police officers, Greene is a master of the art of showcasing moral ambivalence in different characters. To him, the issues of morality and righteous action come as naturally as the South comes to Faulkner. The subject explored in the human factor is a strange one, the life of a double agent. Greene said of the novel that it was an attempt to rid the proverbial secret agent of the thrill and violence of 007. At the end of the day, the secret agent also goes home after a day at work like any other office worker. Still The Human Factor is not without its own share of violence and paranoia. Mostly, the violence is Pinteresque in nature. It is subtle, a violence born of communication failure, and an unfulfilled desire to communicate; it is unfulfilled because one happens to belong to the agency; or the firm.

Novels about secret agencies always seem to focus on the ability to provide thrill. The protagonist is self righteous and totally sure of his moral superiority over the others. There is chase and easily defined villains. With Greene, all such certainties one expects to encounter in spy fiction are turned upside down. Villains are mundane and so are the heroes. A consistent reference throughout is the solitude and loneliness which seem to be everyone’s lot. For some people the breakdown comes with the need to talk, to communicate freely. For some, it is signified by nostalgia. For the most part though, characters in The Human Factor fail to rise to dignity by a very small margin. This lack of dignity is, once again, bred by secrecy: thou shall not talk. The paranoia and apathy experienced by the agents also contributes to the lack of dignity. More than any other factor The Human Factor deals with the dreariness of secrecy; its unglamorous and official nature. Here, men are not sure of being right. The right ones seem to be villainous in nature as well as apathetic and uncompassionate. Unsurprisingly, such is the nature of secret warfare and that it quickly becomes squalid and loyalties go rotten. Here, there is little room for self assuredness. In any case, the doubting man has always been the philosophical hero, the man sure of his so called truths is the one primed to suffer a fall. Just like pride, righteousness hath a fall too.

A very interesting dilemma in the novel is present in the form of conflicting loyalties. How do people who aren’t committed to a cause stay loyal to it if they cannot believe? Their only moral sustenance comes from being hired by an organisation. Another dilemma to face: what loyalty does an organisation has the right to demand? A free man’s loyalty must always be bespoke by himself and his deepest, unfathomable urges and beliefs. With the tenets of modern life, the individual has only to believe in his own sense of right and wrong. A very important issue here is the response of human beings when appeals are made to their sense of justice. For man, the biggest tragedy is to live without his sense of justice. But this is exactly what an institution might require you to do. To live and abandon one’s sense of humanity, of right and wrong, must surely demote one from the position of modern man; these are indeed the only laurels that man has won for himself so far. With Graham Greene, characters lament the gray areas, where right and wrong are not as easily definable as they once were in the novels of Trollope, where you could spot the bad guy a mile away.

 With such an atmosphere of lies and deceit, the secret agency becomes just another tool for hindering the progress of mankind. The agency becomes the opposite of what it means to be human; for it to survive; it must feed on secrecy and paranoia. It must keep reducing men to marionettes. Sanity and humanity both become hostages in this scenario.

Greene uses the finest paintbrush to create his characters. Overall his work shows a compassionate understanding of human beings; where villains seems hardly any different from heroes. Even though his themes can be increasingly Catholic in nature, they have such universal appeal that they seize to be applicable to just one group of society. His themes become studies of human nature, of modern man in self created institutions, of persona desires amidst a backdrop of communism and capitalism. Greene is an artist well noted for exploring the conscience of the individual.

 

 

Zia Mohyeddin column
Down Memory Lane
(The Munshi)

One of the juiciest parts I have ever played on television was that of Abdul Karim, later to be known as Munshi Abdul Karim. He was one of the two Indians chosen to serve Queen Victoria. The Queen had written to her officials in India asking for two Indian servants to be sent to her for a year’s duration. She wanted them to be at hand to help her address the Indian princes who were due to attend her Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887.

Karim was working as a clerk in Agra. He was given a crash course in English language, social customs and court etiquette, fitted out with smart English clothes and dispatched to London. He was 24 at the time.

Nobody has ever written anything about who the other servant was, or what services he provided, but, our hero (or scoundrel, in the words Ponsonby, the Queen’s Private secretary) became her favourite The Queen was then 68 and had been a widow for 26 years.

In 1982, Farrukh Dhondy who, by then, had become a well-established television playwright wrote a one-man play about Karim. He tilted it The Empress and the Munshi. He sent me the script and said, perhaps to flatter me, that he had written the part for me.

I was then producing for Associated Television. My remit was not only to produce, and present a weekly magazine programme which was seen only in the Midlands, but to produce off-beat musical and dramatic programmes which were screened on mainstream television. Dhondy’s exceptionally well-written play, I thought, deserved a nationwide screening. It didn’t take me long to convince the top brass of ATV that we shouldn’t let the BBC grasp it.

Since I was playing the only part in the play myself, I asked Michael Hays, an ex actor-turned director, if he would like to take on the assignment. He swooned with delight after reading the script. Michael was not one of the most sought-after directors at the time, but we had an equation. He had directed me in a few television plays and I felt that — more than anyone else — he would alert me about my failings and coax me to go beyond my capacity without alarming me about my shortcomings.

Dhondy’s play opens with the scene when Munshi Abdul Karim is squatting in front of a bonfire tearing and tossing scraps of papers into the bonfire. He has been ordered by King Edward the VII, Victoria’ son to destroy every letter, note and memo that the Queen has sent to him over the 13 years he had served her. Munshi is reminiscing and relishing the time spent with her. But he is also puzzled and sad. Sharabani Basu in her recently published book Victoria and Abdul describes the plight of the Munshi almost exactly as though she had seen the play.

Karim began his life with the Queen by waiting at her table. He impressed her with his dignified bearing and was soon assisting her with boxes of official correspondence. She even took to discussing their contents with him. He made a curry for her one day which Victoria pronounced to be excellent. She decreed that curry should be served regularly at her table.

Victoria also became fascinated with Karim’s language. He convinced her that Urdu was the most beautiful language in the world. (He was a born hyperbolist). And so the Empress of Indian began to learn Urdu and Karim was appointed the Munshi — teacher — a much better title and a huge honour. Within a year, she wrote to her daughter Vicky, the Empress of Germany: “Young Abdul (who is in fact no servant) teaches me and is a very strict master and a perfect gentleman.”

Worried that he might be missing his family the “perfect gentleman” was allowed to bring his wife (wives in Dhondy’s play whom the Munshi declared were his aunts) over from India. Even his nephew and his mother in-law were allowed to accompany the entourage.

At Balmoral, the Queen, much to the resentment of her children, had a house built for him. His photographs hung in her bedroom. She showered Abdul Karim with medals including the CIE companion of the Indian Empire. He was given the best rooms in the hotels and villas where the Royal party stayed, his own royal carriage and footman.

When Karim fell ill she would attend him herself, smoothing his pillows. When he returned to India for his annual leave she wrote to him daily. Karim, a wily creature was quick to exploit her devotion. He demanded a special pension for his father and he asked for himself a grant of land in India from which he could receive an income. She overrode the objections of the Viceroy and granted him his wishes. Alas! All his endowments were confiscated after Victoria’s death.

The favours that Victoria bestowed upon her handsome Munshi infuriated the rest of the Royal household. They referred to him as a “Blackguard” even though he was no longer a menial in the Royal house. Victoria was so furious that she ordered that the word “black” was not to be used in connection with the Karim family.

But the intrigues against the Munshi grew. At one stage, the entire Royal Household threatened to resign if Victoria insisted on taking Karim on her annual European holiday. Victoria, as always took the Munshi’s side turning angrily on her mutinous staff. The household backed down realising that there was little they could do to dislodge the Munshi while the Queen was alive.

But as soon as the Queen died in 1901, the man who had arrived in Britain 13 years earlier as a mere waiter and had risen to become the Queens closest companion was hounded out of the Palace. His cottage was raided and he was ordered to burn all the letters that the Queen had sent him signing them as “Your affectionate Mother” As anyone would have done Karim had treasured them.

Postscript: The Empress and the Munshi received excellent notices when it was shown in 1984. We had selected a country house in Worcestershire to film the play. The Duke who owned the estate was a shrewd businessman who not only negotiated long and hard over the rental fees of those portions of the estate that we needed for filming. It amuses me to this day that I received a letter from him a month after the shooting was over that one of his ashtrays was missing and could I compensate him. The sum demanded was astronomical. I referred the letter to the legal department and never heard anymore about it.

 

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