On Bhimbhetka, in The Hindu, 1 September 2013

My article on Bhimbhetka, near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh in The Hindu, 1 September 2013. It begins with these lines by Ijlal Majeed, the Urdu poet from Bhopal:

Jangal jangal phire darinda
Gharon mein but garhe darinda

http://m.thehindu.com/features/magazine/rocks-of-ages/article5075148.ece/

Invite for 29 Aug: Why Sahir Ludhianvi Speaks to Me

Dear Friends, I am delighted to announce the next event in the Hindustani Awaaz series 'Why it Speaks to me'.

 Pervaiz Alam, broadcaster-journalist-academic, will tell us why Sahir Ludhianvi 'speaks' to him on Thursday, 29 August 2013.

Venue: The Attic, Regal Building, Connaught place, New Delhi
Time: 6.30 pm sharp

Please join us for Tea at 6.00 pm.

All are invited.

On Intizar Husain -- in the Crest, Times of India

On Intizar sahib, one of the greatest chroniclers of our time, in the Crest, Times of India:

http://www.timescrest.com/culture/when-shoelaces-speak-10738

About Iftaar in my mother's house -- in the DNA

Posting a few weeks' old article about iftaar in my mother's house -- shared by a reporter from the DNA


http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1866563/report-delhi-no-meat-yet-a-feast

How It Happened -- review of new book by Shazaf Fatima

On arranged marriages and Shia-Sunni rifts in Pakistan...

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-literaryreview/living-life-the-arranged-way/article4986492.ece

Syed Rafiq Hussain's The Mirror of Wonders: A review

The Mirror of Wonders and other tales by Syed Rafiq Hussain, Translated by Saleem Kidwai, Yoda Press, New Delhi, 2013, Rs 250, pp. 165.

Syed Rafiq Hussain’s literary career was as remarkable as it was brief. A challenge issued by his younger sister and daughter spurred him to write in Urdu, a language he could barely read. Claiming that the ‘difference between English and Urdu literature was like that between a spinning wheel and a cotton mill or a bullock cart and a train’, he felt no need to read Urdu fiction. Yet, he chose to pick up the gauntlet thrown by his sister and daughter and write something to improve the prevailing standard! Replete with spelling mistakes, Hussain wrote the outlines of his stories in a mixture of Urdu and English. He would bring the drafts, written in his unformed Urdu handwriting, to the two ladies who would go over it painstakingly and insert Urdu phrases for the English ones. His niece recalls those frenetic sessions: ‘Between him, his sister and daughter there was a special bond; they also played an intellectual game between themselves where each had to tell a tale which made an assigned impossible situation probable.’

Hussain’s first short story, ‘Kalua’, was about a dog. In a short autobiographical sketch, he reveals the method behind his seeming madness: ‘Before I wrote [‘Kalua’] I walked all those streets and lanes of Lucknow where Kalua had wandered. The details of the railway crossing at Aish Bagh, where Kalua sniffs at the corpse of his mentor Bucha are still etched in my mind.’ Hussain wrote over a span of less than a decade, crafting his stories during his spells of unemployment and never accepted remuneration for any of his stories. He died of cancer in 1944; his first collection, Aina-e-Hairat (‘The Mirror of Wonders’) was published a fortnight after his death.

Hussain’s personal life was unconventional, to say the least. Born in 1895, he lost his mother at the age of seven; after some haphazard home tutoring and erratic schooling, he ran away from home. He reached Bombay with a bundle of books on mathematics and two sets of clothes, worked as a coolie in a foundry, carried iron for 12 hours a day, ate at roadside eateries and studied. Eventually, he took admission in an Engineering College in Bombay, was reunited with his family and after quitting several jobs found himself working on the Sharada canal in the Terai region. The Terai exercised a spell over him and appeared in his writings in all its vastness and mystery. Its densely forested tracts, its ravines and gullies, its valleys crisscrossed by many rivulets and the animals, especially the tigers, that had made it their home for centuries appear in this collection in a manner that is startlingly new even for English readers; when they first appeared in Urdu they must have charted unknown territory.

For someone who claimed to hate animals and never kept pets, Hussain showed a keen eye for detail in describing the behaviour of animals. Also, for someone who claimed to have read ‘four or five’ Urdu books, his stories established his reputation as a prose stylist and master story teller; the fact that this reputation rested on the eight stories included in the collection that, incidentally, comprised his entire ouvre, is no small feat. Combining the lyricism of William Wordsworth’s nature poetry with the exactitude of Jim Corbett’s shikar stories, The Mirror of Wonder and Other Tales is quite unlike anything in the repository of modern Urdu literature.

‘Unfortunately, my intelligence and the fickleness of my temperament had ruined me,’ Hussain writes with no trace of false modesty. And elsewhere, he admits: ‘I am a small man, I am true, I am mad, I am crazy. Whatever I am, here I am.’ Arrogant and enigmatic, yes, but also immensely talented and profoundly philosophical as is borne out by these stories that deserve to be read at leisure rather than described in a few short sentences for the purpose of this review. Yoda Press is to be congratulated for re-discovering these hidden gems, immaculately translated by Saleem Kidwai.

Invite for Hindustani Awaaz programme, 30 May, at the Attic

All are welcome. Please see details below...

thursday 30th may
6.30 pm Tarannum Riyaz will speak on 'Why Qurratulain Hyder and her epic novel, Aag ka Darya, speaks to me'.

'Monthly Monologue: Why it Speaks to Me?'
...
Hindustani Awaaz, in collaboration with The Attic, presents a monthly series of monologues: Poetry, literature, short stories, plays, essays, nazms, ghazals. A series of eclectic speakers will present/sing/recite their favourite Urdu text and explain why the text ‘speaks’ to them the way it does. We hope this series will highlight a neglected aspect of the Delhi cultural scene.

Qurratulain Hyder was an influential Urdu novelist, short story writer, academic and a journalist. One of the most outstanding literary names in Urdu literature, she began writing at a time when the novel was yet to take deep roots as a serious genre in the poetry-oriented world of Urdu literature. She instilled in it a new sensibility and brought into its fold strands of thought and imagination hitherto unexplored.

She graduated from IT College, Lucknow and moved to Pakistan in 1947, then lived in England before finally returning to India in 1960.

She is best known for her magnum opus, Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire), a novel first published in Urdu in 1959, from Lahore, Pakistan, that stretches from the 4th century BC to post partition of India.

She received the 1967 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu for Patjhar Ki Awaz (Short stories), 1989 Jnanpith Award for Akhire Shab Ke Humsafar. She also received the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India in 2005.


Tarannum Riyaz is a Kashmiri novelist, poet, critic, columnist, short story writer and essayist; she writes in Urdu and Punjabi. Her works include Barf Aashna Parindey (novel, 2009); Mera Rakhte Safar (short stories, 2008); Fareb-e-Khitta-e-Gul (four novellas, 2008); Purani Kitaabon ki Khusbhu (poetry, 2005); Chashme Naqshe Kadam (critical essays, 2005); Beeswi Sadi Mein Khawateen Ka Urdu Adab (anthology, 2005); Moorti (novel, 2002); Yimberzal (short stories; 2002); Ababeelain Laut Aaengi (short stories, 2000); and Yeh Tang Zameen (short stories,1998). Tarranum Riyaz is the recepient of several awards.