Kuldip Nayar: The Lion in Winter

In a career spanning over six decades, India’s veteran journalist has covered a host of events; he has met, interviewed and written about major figures in India’s political life as well as also those from the world arena: Indira Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jai Prakash Narayan, Mujibur Rahman, Ziaul Haq, Z. A. Bhutto, A. Q. Khan. The list is endless. His first major assignment as a cub reporter working for the Urdu newspaper Anjaam (The Conclusion) from Delhi was to write on Gandhi’s assassination. The poignancy of that moment left a deep impact on his psyche. Only three months old in the field of journalism, he could ‘see’ history explode before his eyes; he admits he wept unashamedly. He is still haunted by Gandhi’s words, delivered at a public prayer service a few days before his death where Nayar was present: Hindus and Muslims are like my two eyes, the Mahatma had said.

In a previous book, Tales of Two Cities (co-authored with senior Pakistani journalist Asif Noorani), Nayar has written with empathy and clarity about the momentous event that changed countless lives, including his own, forever. Was partition inevitable, I ask? Could its thirst for blood been slaked by some means other than the division of the country? Holding Jinnah and Nehru equally ‘responsible’, he says, to begin with, Partition was not inevitable. The Cabinet Mission Plan held out promise of resolution but as events panned out and Nehru and Jinnah remained implacable, it became inevitable.

Having witnessed at first hand the blood and gore, the massacres and the communal carnage, how, then, did he not go the ‘other’ way? After all many did. In fact, right-wing organisations on both sides of the border – the RSS and its affiliated wings in India just as the Jamaat or the MQM and the pro-Muhajir parties in Pakistan – fed on precisely the trauma that the first-generation of migrants had experienced to swell their ranks and obtain sympathisers if not members? Nayar tells me that it is precisely because he saw the trauma and the madness that his belief in pluralism was strengthened. He learnt to judge a person by his beliefs and commitments, not his religion.

Nayar’s great love for the Urdu language is well known. In fact, in his youth, he even wrote poetry till the maverick but hugely talented poet-politician, Hasrat Mohani told him he was wasting his time ‘writing verses that made no sense’! Yet Urdu has remained his ‘first love’ and he is one of its most vocal champions. But what of the neglect of Urdu? Why is it that any Urdu-related soiree sees only a grey audience? What does he make of the Indian Muslim’s oft-repeated lament that Urdu has languished due to official apathy? Holding Urdu to be the worst casualty of the migration, Nayar blames political parties, including the Congress that held sway in post-partition India, to be responsible. In his characteristically blunt manner he asks, ‘(Such deliberate neglect) is understandable on the part of the BJP, but why the Congress?’

In 1992, Nayar started the practice of a candle-light vigil at the Indo-Pak border on the night of 14-15 August. Scores of peaceniks join him as he marches up to the crossing at Attari, candle in hand; an equal number of activists, writers, poets, performers, surges from the other side. This annual event is viewed with some bemusement by hard-nosed political commentators and dismissed as dewy-eyed idealism or jingoism of the worst sort by hawks on both sides, especially in times when bilateral relations suffer from frost bite. But what compels a man of 88 years to undertake this long journey – by rail from Delhi, by car from Amritsar and eventually on foot, that too at the perilous hour of midnight  – year after year to raise the cry of ‘Hindustan-Pakistan Dosti Zindabad’ in the face of continuing cynicism? ‘I am an optimist,’ he tells me. ‘One day, all of South Asia will be a Union – one visa, one currency… everyone will be free to work, travel, think.’ As we wind up our conversation, he recites this sher by Faiz Ahmad Faiz:

Jis dhaj se koi maqtal mei gaya, woh shan salamat rahti hai

Yeh jaan to aani jaani hai, iss jaan ki koi baat nahi

And this unshakeable belief, gentle readers, is the heart of the matter. Herein lies Kuldip Nayar’s real eminence.

 

(This interview first appeared in The Herald, Karachi, August 2012)

On Taiwan



There is the Taiwan of popular imagination: an economic giant despite its tiny size, an Asian Tiger revelling in its formidable clout, an export-driven economy churning out cheap commodities ranging from computers to shoes. But there is another Taiwan too, one that has been hidden from view of the Indian visitor who has so far comprised either the business traveller or, in recent times, the yuppy ‘incentive’ tourist. Why Taiwan has eluded the Great Indian Middle Class Tourist, forever in search of new travel destinations, is a mystery.

Possibly few would know that Taiwan’s real name is The Republic of China. Fewer still would know that while China, or The People’s Republic of China, considers the area known as Taiwan to be a part of its territory, the Taiwanese regard mainland China as an extension of its territorial space! Regardless of this David vs. Goliath analogy and regardless too of its ‘real’ name, the island holds out immense promise for the Indian tourist, especially families with children who set aside an annual budget for leisure travel.

Aware of its formidable reputation as a manufacturing giant, I went with visions of an island awash with factories and industries, SEZs and hi-tech industrial parks. Instead, I was struck by the breath-taking beauty and pristine natural charm of its countryside. The urban sprawl of Taipei, the capital city, gives way most spectacularly to scenes of pastoral idyll and scenic splendour: gentle hills clad in a seemingly impenetrable green cover, gurgling mountain brooks, orchards heavy with fruit, fields and terraces a’glimmer with all shades of green, in short, everything that reinforces one’s idea of a tropical paradise. Looking at this ‘other’ Taiwan, I am not surprised that the Portuguese called it Formosa, meaning ‘beautiful island’.

Lying on the Tropic of Cancer, this island – shaped like a sweet potato – has a series of mountain ranges running from the north to south leading to a gently sloping western plain. And it is on this western side that most of its population resides. But it is in its interior that Taiwan hides its real beauty. The area around the Sun Moon Lake in the exact middle of the island, known rightly as the ‘Heart of Taiwan’, is not only the most scenic but also most reminiscent of the island’s aboriginal past. The aquamarine lake ringed by green hills is like a magical lost land straight out of a fairy tale. Here, you can be lazy and just loll about taking in the misty waters; or you can be energetic and explore its lovely alpine setting. Hire a bike and choose one of the specially-planned bikeways along the periphery of the lake; or take the ferry to Lalu Island or hop on a cable car that will take you across mountain peaks. The Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village gives a peak into life at the island before ‘civilisation’ came knocking. A lunch of chicken-rice served in a pretty wooden barrel at the picturesque Cedar Tea House can be followed by shopping for local black tea, pottery and carved wood handicrafts as well as sun-dried locally-grown cherries, plums, peaches, apricots, apples, pineapples, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes. A night’s stay at The Lalu, with each one of its 96 elegant rooms overlooking the lake, allows you to make the most of the serenity that lies at the heart of this charming country.

My itinerary, drawn up by the Taiwan Tourism Board, includes visits to Taichung, a large city on the western coast; a drive through the pretty Nantou County; whale watching off the Wushi Harbour in incredibly ink-blue but choppy waters; a visit to the Leofoo Theme Park with its mind-boggling variety of rides, adventures and safaris; a DIY session of making sun cakes with master chef Chen Shun-Chuan of the Pao Chuan chain of pattiseries; a tea ceremony presided over by a Tea Master who raised the business of making and pouring tea to a fine art form; and a tour of the whimsical Lin Lin-Hsin Puppet Theatre. In-between, there is time for a quick tour of the National Palace Museum – the fourth largest in the world -- to gaze at its sumptuous treasures culled from across Imperial China and preserved for posterity. Other Taipei must-dos are: a ride to the top floor of the Taipei 101 – the tallest building in the world till the Burj Khalifa came up in Dubai; a visit to the harbour; a traditional massage; lunch at the quirky Five Dime Boathouse and dinner at the Modern Toilet (that is, if your stomach permits its stomach-churning interiors); and a shopping expedition at the electronics market.

Of course, no visit to Taiwan can be complete without at least one evening spent at a night market. The one at Shilin, the largest in Taipei, is a riot of fun, food and fabulous shopping. In between buying armfuls of clothes, accessories, shoes et al remember to snack on white karela juice, piping hot corn in a pungent barbecue sauce, an assortment of cut fruit and fried, steamed and braised fish and fowl and every (un)imaginable kind of meat.

Coming away after a week, I am reminded of the words of Francis Hu, our tourist guide: ‘Taiwan is not a country; it is an idea.’ For me, it is an idea that works wonderfully well.

Fact File:

Travel: China Airlines operates twice weekly direct flights from Delhi to Taipei

Food: Enough options for vegetarians available; eating from street vendors is safe and inexpensive.

Currency: Taiwanese$ 1=INR 1.87

Best season: October to February

(This article first appeared in The Tribune,Chandigarh, 26 August 2012)

Cyrus Mistry's Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer

Echoes of a Living Past

Legend has it that sometime in the 10^th century, shiploads of Zoroastrians, fleeing persecution in their native Iran, landed on the coast of Saurashtra in Western India. They met the local king and sought asylum. The king, Jadi Rana, pointed to a tumbler full of milk, indicating thereby that his empire was full to the brim and he had no place for more people. The leader of the strange new people took a pinch of sugar and mixed it with the milk, telling the king that his people would add sweetness to the milk but never let it overflow. And so they stayed, putting down roots, in Sanjan, Variav, Thane, Broach and cities as further afield as Bombay and Karachi. Their women wore saris and spoke Gujarati, the men excelled in trade and commerce with many occupying high posts in government – from Mughal times to colonial to present day. Called Parsi (having come from Persia), they are India’s smallest minority constituting less than 0.02 % of the population. However, being a distinctive community due to their dress, speech, culture, food as well as their visible presence in fields as diverse as law and medicine, politics and industry, arts and cinema, they have a hold on the Indian imagination disproportionate to their actual numbers. Possibly this is to do with the largely stock characters that the Indian film industry has propagated of the Parsi bawa. 

Cinematic representations continue to be unfair in some ways, showing the Parsis as colourful and privileged but also dysfunctional, antsy, idiosyncratic, miserly and querulous; Being Cyrus, Pestonjee and Earth, being recent examples of this brand of cinema verite. On the other hand, a slew of books has provided a corrective and portrayed members of this community in a more realistic manner. Rohinton Mistry, Thrity Umrigar, Sooni Taraporewla, Farrukh Dhondy, Firdaus Kanga and Cyrus Mistry have, in different ways, explored the Parsi psyche but also located them firmly within the mainstream of Indian life. Cyrus Mistry’s latest offering, Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, shows how the story of a small, marginalised community of untouchables – the khandhias  who bathe and carry corpses to the Towers of Silence – can rise above its time and circumstance and speak of larger, universal concerns.

In speaking of the Khandhias and the terrible humiliation, isolation and segregation they suffer, Mistry not only throws light on this almost invisible sub-group but also weaves a compelling story of love and loss. Phiroze Alchidana, son of a revered priest, falls in love with Sepideh, the daughter of a corpse bearer who lives in the Doongarwaadi atop Malabar Hill. To have Sepideh, he must leave his father’s home, become a khandhia and live the life of a pariah for such is the fear of contamination from the dead and those who handle dead bodies. Sepideh, a fey child-woman who has lived her entire life in the deeply-forested Doongerwaadi, dies a few years after their marriage leaving Alchi to weather the rigidly-enforced isolation as well as take on the might of the powerful Parsi Punchayet.

Running through the warp of Alchi’s benighted love story is the woof of India’s struggle for Independence. Gandhi’s call for Satyagraha finds an echo deep in the khandhias’ disaffected, disgruntled hearts, inspiring them to launch their own peaceful non-cooperation movement, to go on hartal to down tools or, to be precise, not lift corpses, till their demands for more humane working conditions are met. When Gandhi urges the nation in a radio address – ‘The chains of a slave are broken the moment he considers himself a free man’ – his words become a catalyst for change. Part-fiction, part-truth, Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer is a story of courage and hope, a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story of one man and a nation on the high road of history.

(Rakhshanda Jalil blogs at www.hindustaniawaaz-rakhshanda.blogspot.com)

Also Read:

1.     The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie dealing with the rise of a world famous Indian rock star named Ormus Cama, has shades of Freddie Mercury  aka Farrokh Bulsara.

2.     Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry, details the travails of a Parsi family living in Bombay in the 1970s.

3.     The Space between Us by Thrity Umrigar outlines the lives of two women: a privileged Parsi lady and her maid

 This review first appeared in the Herald, Karachi, August 2012

Mussoorie

‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills…’

--Psalm 121

Sunlight filtering through tall pine trees creates a brilliant patchwork of dark and shade, green and gold on this serene mountainside. All around me lie crumbling headstones, moss-encrusted and indecipherable, some embellished with fine pilaster work and engraved marble, others unadorned save for an ivy-covered cross. The air is crisp and crystal clear; the springy turf underfoot carpeted with fallen leaves and trailing vines; a profusion of ferns and wild flowers peep from every nook and cranny. I am reminded of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

I am at the Mussoorie Christian Cemetery looking for the grave of Eugenie Catherine West (d. 1895). After much diligent searching and scraping off many a moss-encrusted tombstone we find it. A simple grave and in fairly good condition, it contains the mortal remains of a remarkable woman who embarked upon a brave and selfless cause. She was the first superintendent of the Christian Training School and Orphanage that began with precisely two pupils in a rambling house atop Jaberkhet and was to later transform into the Wynberg Homes and finally the Wynberg Allen School as it is now called. In fact, I am in Mussoorie researching the early years of the school, its contribution to the education of Anglo-Indian children, its provision for orphans and destitutes of European and Eurasian descent. From a purely philanthropic initiative meant to provide quality education in a healthy environment at highly subsidised fees to a professionally-run, high-ranking school, among the best of the hill schools in Upper India, the Wynberg Allen School has had a long journey as it gears up to celebrate its quasquicentennial year.

Partition dealt a severe blow both to the Anglo-Indian community and to the educational institutions set up and managed by them. With a dwindling flock of both staff and students – some having migrated to Pakistan, others emigrated to the ‘Home Country’, still others having found new homes in the Commonwealth countries or in Africa – Wynberg Allen coped bravely with the exigencies of a newly-independent country. Responding to Pandit Nehru’s call of fashioning new temples of modern India, the school strove to adjust with the times that were a’changing. All through the turbulent years of nation-building, it kept producing soldiers, sportsmen and statesmen as well as athletes, teachers and entrepreneurs. And while no longer a school exclusively for Anglo-Indians, it reflected the changing face of the community.

As the school grew and evolved, sadly the city of Mussoorie fell into decline. The former ‘Queen of the Hills’, robbed of her gaiety and grandeur, ravaged by the Mandal agitation and later by the demand for statehood that culminated in the hiving out of the state of Uttarakhand, is a shabby, over-grown, over-congested dump. The picturesque estates of the Anglo-Indians and the rajwadas having changed hands and fortunes, haphazard and unauthorised building activity has irrevocably changed its skyline. Its once-forested slopes are pockmarked with neon-lit hotels and garish spa-resorts. Its arterial road, the Mall that runs from Kulri till the Library, is choked with kiosks selling tacky mementoes you are never likely to want to keep at home alternating with over-priced shops selling winter woollies and hole-in-the-wall restaurants outdoing each other in fleecing hapless hungry tourists. A ramshackle cable car takes you on a clanging journey to Gun Hill; flea-infested ponies offer a shamble along Camel’s Back; rapacious cab drivers take you to Kempty Falls, reduced to little more than a muddy trickle during the ‘season’.

But there is the other Mussoorie, too, one that reveals itself reluctantly to the visitor, the Mussoorie that is carefully guarded by the ‘locals’. This is the Mussoorie of churches, cemeteries, flea shops crammed with collectibles and a community of writers, teachers and other retired folk who live in quaint cottages tucked away among the oak and deodar copses. Sunday mornings are best devoted to service in one of the many old but beautifully preserved churches. Christ Church -- built in 1836 and said to be the oldest church in the Himalayas, with its soaring Gothic roof, stained glass windows, a giant deodar planted by the Princess of Wales in 1906 -- is definitely worth a visit. The richly-timbered voice of Reverend Templeton makes the words of the battered old hymn books come alive even for uninitiated visitors. The Union Church at the mouth of Landour is served by the much-loved Pastor Cornelius and his charming wife who welcome both the faithful and the stray with equal warmth. The two other famous churches are the Kellogg Church and St Paul’s way up in Landour, the latter being a garrison church still bearing pews with grooves to rest the  guns of soldiers during worship.

Once a cantonment and famous for its sanatorium for ailing soldiers, Landour is today a part of the giant amoeba that is Mussoorie. Derived from Llanddowror, a village in southwest Wales and reminiscent of the many nostalgic English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish names common during the Raj, it still retains traces of its once-pristine charm. Unfortunately, the few tourists who take the steep ascent up to Landour go as far as Char Dukan (literally, four shops built on what was the Parade Grounds) and end up eating Maggi noodles and pancakes or peering through a telescope at Lal Tibba. Few bother to take in its other delights: chiefly, a leisurely walk along the circular road that takes you past its serene old cemetery to the American Presbyterian Kellogg Church and Landour Language School set up over a hundred years ago to teach Hindi to missionaries; Prakash’s shop at Sisters’ Bazar to buy home-made gooseberry jam, a sharp cheddar cheese and a still-warm-from-the-oven banana bread; the home of film actor Victor Banerjee, profusely decorated with Buddhist prayer flags and called somewhat incongruously ‘The Parsonage’; and the wonderfully scenic Rokeby Manor named after Sir Walter Scott’s long poem. A brisk walk along the old bridle path from Lal Tibba till Sisters’ Bazar followed by an idyllic lunch at the Rokeby is a perfect antidote to the Mussoorie Blues set off by the clutter on the Mall.

Black Ice by Mahmudul Haque -- a Bangladeshi partition novel

Black Ice, by Mahmudul Haque, Translated by Mahmud Rahman, Harper Perennial, Rs 199, pp. 123+ PS section.

 ‘Everything becomes a story one day.’ So begins the PS section of this Bangladeshi contemporary classic. Its writer, Mahmudul Haque, is credited with fashioning a new idiom and a distinctly modern sensibility in the post-1947 writing coming out from what was once East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh. Haque (1941-2008) belonged to the ‘twice-born generation’, those, that is, who experienced the trauma of birthing a new nation not once but twice over. Moving from Barasat on the outskirts of Calcutta to Dhaka as a small boy, he was assailed by not only new sights and sounds, but an altogether new sensibility. Being slapped by a school teacher for failing to wear the Jinnah cap, he struggled to find meaning in an irrevocably changed world. Later, during the siege and fall of Dhaka in March 1971, he witnessed the looting, killing and destruction that preceded the birth of a new nation that was expected to rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old. Each event, each new phase in his life and his country’s, each new milestone spurred him to write. Everything became a story one day.

Black Ice, first published as Kalo Borof in 1977, is quite evidently the work of a child of the partition. It carries the scars of leaving behind people and places once so dear and familiar but now accessible only in dreams.  The relentless nostalgia of its protagonist, Abdul Khaleq, brings to mind another young man, Zakir, who too had to leave his home in India in search of a new one across the border in Intizar Husain’s seminal work, Basti (written in 1979 but set in 1971 when the war clouds loomed large over the sub-continent). But Mahmudul Haque is not Intizar Husain and Black Ice is not Basti. Despite the detachment of the protagonists, the tone of quiet aloofness of the narrator, the dream-like motifs, the ceaseless journeying into the past, the invoking of an innocent childhood free from bias and fear and the sullying of that innocence, Basti and Black Ice are as unalike as apples and oranges. Black Ice has none of the allegorical richness that leavens Intezar Hussains narrative, nor the directness but haunting simplicity of Husain’s elegant prose. Possibly, there is something about Husain’s prose itself that remains intact and unharmed by translation. Not having read Haque in Bangla, I cannot tell, but I am struck by the comparison and the fact that it is an unfavourable one.

Vanished days never come back and time past is passed forever. While Khaleq, and perhaps Mahmudul Haque himself might acknowledge this, everywhere in Black Ice, the past hangs heavy, threatening to overwhelm the present. Why is this so? The answer is provided partly by Mahmudul Haque himself in an interview with the young Bangladeshi writer, Ahmad Mostofa Kamal, appended at the end of the novel in the PS section. The writer’s mother, he confesses, had not wanted to leave her home outside Calcutta to come to Pakistan; she had, in fact, even begun to build a new house in West Bengal. Her (two previous) visits to Dhaka had led her to conclude that only barbarians lived there, for she had seen no women moving about in public and, in her opinion, a place where women were not allowed to move freely could only be inhabited by barbarians. Yet, the communal tensions grew to such an extent and it became difficult to even step out of her home that she was forced to move to the new Muslim homeland with her children, leaving a part of their being behind. Decades later, while ostensibly claiming that there can be no love for ‘a birthplace that forces its children to leave’, Haque breaks down and his voice ‘cracks with anguish’. The hurt, evidently, is too deep. In Intezar Hussain, there is no hurt; just a bewilderment that something as grotesque as the partition happened. Round and round, like a kite with a cut string, Husain’s story drifts and soars, backwards and forwards, flitting between then and now but with no trace of bitterness.

Khaleq, a teacher in a mofussil town, finds time hanging heavy on his hands as he copes with the ennui of living in the backwaters and coping with the harangues of a demanding wife. He sits down to write about his life, especially his childhood. He remembers Puti, the girl who spoke to fish and birds, his friends Jhumi and Pachu, the vendors who came by selling shonpapri and dalpapri, the Hindu neighbor who bought him roshmonjori and pantua, his elder brother Moni Bhaijaan who loved Chhobi  Di and had left, taking with him her ribbon as a keepsake, promising to return but never did. Khaleq remembers, also, leaving his home in West Bengal, taking a ferry, setting off on a hijrat to a new land when life became impossibly fraught in the old one.

Years later, travelling with his wife deep into the countryside, he revisits Louhojong, the spot where he had boarded the ferry and is reminded yet again of that fateful night of migration:

Everything becomes a story one day. Louhojong, Louhojong! For the first time in his life, that cry had pierced his ears in the deep of the night. Beside him stood Moni Bhaijaan, in his pocket a ribbon, on the ribbon the fragrance of hair, in the fragrance such sorrow, in the sorrow so much love, in the love so much of their childhood.

In the PS section, Haque recalls how Bikrampur, beside the Buriganga, fascinated him. When the monsoons flooded the low-lying plains and the river became a vast expanse of glimmering water, he would take long boat trips down the river, exploring nooks and corners of the lush countryside. His friendship with boatmen, sharing their simple but delicious meals, meeting people who travelled from one house to another by boat, as well as the lush green forested hamlets beside the river soon became a recurring motif in his novels. In Black Ice, the area around Ichapura appears as a fantasy world, an escape from the rigours of a humdrum meaningless life. The doctor with whom he took some of these boat trips, appears as Doctor Narhari, the conscientious, hard-working country doctor, an idealized yet human figure.

Khaleq is able to find intellectual companionship in his adult life;the emotional connection with people and places, however, seems to be missing. The generosity and wisdom, the freedom and innocence, the pluralism and syncretism of his childhood was destroyed, forever, by the partition. What came in its place – aloofness and rootlessness – is the only legacy for these midnight’s children. Boat rides on the river allow an occasional escape but not a return; there is no going back, at least not for ever. The only certainty, Black Ice seems to be suggesting, is hopelessness and alienation.

Masooma by ismat Chughtai -- a review

Masooma: A Novel, Ismat Chughtai, Translated from the original Urdu by Tahira Naqvi, Women Unlimited, 2011, pp. 143, Rs250.

Squeamish readers would do well to stay away from Masooma, for this book was not written for the faint hearted. Its writer, Ismat Chughtai, never one to pull her punches, is out to draw blood. The wit and gentle humour of earlier stories, the ones based on her experiences in Aligarh and the smaller provincial towns of Upper India, is entirely missing here. A gritty anger and a biting realism combine with a keen eye for detail to depict not merely the dark underbelly of Bombay (as it was then called) but also scratch the mask of sharif culture and expose its desperate poverty.

Ismat wrote voluminously till she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 1988. Her formidable body of work comprises several collections of short stories, novels, sketches, plays, reportage, radio plays as well as stories, dialogues and scenarios for the films produced by her husband Shahid Lateef as well as others. Much of her non-film writing was autobiographical; if not directly related to her own life, it certainly stemmed from her own experiences as a woman, especially a middle-class Muslim woman. Some critics, like Aziz Ahmed, have viewed this as a flaw rather than strength, objecting to the constant, overwhelming presence of Ismat herself in all that she wrote.  Regardless of Ismat’s own larger-than-life persona, while it is true that her interest was primarily in women, it is also true that she saw women in the larger social context and not merely within the confines of the zenana. She wrote stories (such as Jadein) and plays (Dhaani Bankein) on other issues such as communal tensions, issues that did not concern women alone, but issues that can be viewed from a unique perspective because they come from a woman’s pen.

Like many of her fellow-travellers in the progressive writers’ movement, Ismat proved over and over again that she was a progressive more by inclination than indoctrination. We see evidence of this in almost her writings; in Masooma too we see Ismat depicting the effects of a world cleft by social and economic injustices upon the life of a young girl. The trade of women and the commodification of a woman’s body, she seems to be saying here, is a direct consequence of human frailty and lust but also of poverty and inequality.

However, Masooma – written in 1962 when the influence of progressivism had considerably waned and the core group within the PWA no longer held its members in thrall -- differs from her other writings in several notable respects. One, the overwhelming presence of Ismat herself – noticeable in her early works – is absent here. Yes, she draws upon her experiences in the film industry; yes, her impressions are refracted through the prism of her own experience; and yes, she continues to be more interested in women than in men. But here, she has managed to camouflage her presence. The story of Masooma, a girl from a wealthy and respectable family from the erstwhile state of Hyderabad, takes centre stage. Also, in the telling of this story of a girl’s descent into prostitution, how innocent Masooma is sold by her aristocratic mother to keep the home fires burning and how this girl from a decent family turns into Nilofer, a mistress who changes hands till she becomes no better (or worse) than a common prostitute, and her mother too is transformed from a haughty begum to a seasoned madam, Ismat sheds her coyness and her tendency to use allusion rather overt descriptions.

While Ismat had always written bold stories that challenged traditional morality and worn-out notions of a woman’s ‘place’ in society, till Masooma she had not written anything that can be described as overly ‘sexual’ – not even in Lihaaf. Given her interest in sexual matters, and the fact that both she and the original bête noir of Urdu – Manto – had been hauled up by a Court in Lahore on charges of obscenity, comparisons between the two have always been inevitable. Noted writer and critic Intezar Husain has drawn an interesting parallel between these two enfant terribles of the Urdu short story:

‘Where Ismat moves away lightly after making a passing reference to (such) a subject, Manto is like the naughty boy who flings open the door, claps his hands and say, ‘Aha! I have seen you!’

In Masooma, Ismat is flinging open that door with a vengeance. We have far more references to ‘such subjects’ here than in any of Ismat’s other works. If anything, we see an Ismat deriving an almost vicarious pleasure when she depicts the debasement and moral descent of Masooma, with insouciant references to trysts in seedy hotels where people watch French films and perform unimaginable acts of abomination! The incorrigible gossip in Ismat causes her to leaven her narrative with generous dollops of spicy snippets about real film stars and real events. Having worked in the film industry herself and known at first hand the seedy goings on between needy starlets and avaricious hangers-on and the unsavoury nexus between producers, directors, financiers, she flavours her story with a robust realism.

‘What a strange place this world is!’ she mock sighs and then embarks upon a rambling digression about Mazhar, the son of a degenerate nawab who, like so many other young men and women with stardust in their eyes, had flocked to Bombay but with his money robbed and youth faded is now a peddler of young girls, supplier of every whim, ‘indentured to the fancies of an ageing heroine’. Somewhere, this seemingly rambling tale hides a stinging observation, sharper than the sting on a scorpion’s tail:

‘When someone who has been the object of toadyism himself has to turn around and become a toady, then there’s no more to be said. He was now well versed in the subtle craft of toadyism.’

And, elsewhere, the mock-sermonising hides a sardonic realism:

‘So many avatars and prophets struggled, lost, and relinquished their lives while trying to teach lessons of goodness; evil is interesting and exciting while goodness is like chewing tough metallic marbles…But this was not the fault of evil or goodness. The fault lay with the artificial society in which she had been raised. There was fasting, namaz, Haj, and zakat – but there was also whoring and vice carried out in secrecy.’

Ismat’s language – always her strength as a story teller – is different too in this novel. Here, she uses biting satire as a tool to sharpen her depiction of social realities and give an extra edge to her pithy, flavoursome, idiomatic language, the begumaati zuban that she herself knew so well. In her hands, Urdu had acquired a new zest, a special zing that made it more readable than ever before; in Masooma she shows how it is also better equipped to reflect new concerns, concerns that had been hitherto considered beyond the pale of literature. Also, her Urdu is full-bodied and vigorous, redolent with the flavours of Bombay, its sights, smells, sounds so different from the genteel world of chaste Urdu speakers of Upper India.

As we witness a revival of interest in Ismat with several translations into English crowding our shelves, we must pause to take note of the translator’s role in the continued popularity of a writer. Ismat is particularly blessed in having in Tahira Naqvi a devoted and able translator. With several Ismat translations behind her, Naqvi is emerging as the most faithful voice for Ismat in English.

This review was published in The Biblio, May-June 2012, New Delhi.

Fatty -- A Biography of Zohra Segal

Sometime in the year 1361 a Jew from Afghanistan, named Quais, travelled to Medina. There, he converted to Islam and began to call himself Abdul Rasheed Quais. A couple of centuries later, his family settled in the area of Roh in the North West Frontier Province. Known as Rohilla Pathans, they eventually made Rampur, a princely estate in the United Provinces, their home. Zohra Segal, veteran film and theatre actor and dancer, traces her lineage to Abdul Rasheed Quais; she attributes her kanjoosi (miserliness) to his being a Jew and her stubbornness and courage to the pure Rohilla blood flowing in her veins! An affectionate – and astonishing candid – biography by her daughter, Kiran Segal, brought out by Niyogi Books to coincide with Zohra Apa’s 100^th birthday tells us all this, and much more.

Called Fatty, the title is an instant giveaway, as is the cover photograph showing the actor (in the role of Mrs Pong in the film The Primary English Class) poised to deliver a karate chop! Clearly, this will be no hagiographical account, no loving but earnest tribute by a doting daughter, no rose-tinted view of an extraordinary life, no soft-focus portrait of a stage and cinema thespian. Kiran is an especially gifted dancer and a Padma Shri awardee, but she is not a writer. She admits as much early on. But by virtue of having a ringside view of her mother’s life and having chosen to live with her for much of her adult life (in a ménage a quartet along with her daughter and her daughter’s daughter, i.e. four generations under one roof), she is also uniquely placed to write about the many ups and downs in her mother’s life, her quirks and eccentricities, her struggles and tragedies, her moods, in short all it takes to make her tick. There is empathy, yes in this telling of a mother’s life by a daughter; there is ample love, too; but Fatty makes no attempt at glorification. The portrait that emerges from the daughter’s pen is not of Saint Zohra but of Mother Courage meets Ma Baker. But then, surely, you can expect no less of someone who called her father Dost and her mother Fatty.

Told in a fairly chronological fashion, the book traverses Zohra Apa’s roots in Rampur, her education at Saint Mary’s Convent in Lahore, and the fact that her schooling and upbringing were such that she became ‘nothing but an Anglicised snob; even now she dreams in English!’ The years with Uday Shankar’s dance Academy in Almora and subsequently with Prithviraj Kapoor’s Prithvi Theatre in Bombay are accompanied by rare photographs, making an era come to life. Dressed in stylish sleeveless blouses and exquisite handloom saris, the two sisters, Zohra and Uzra, appear in these pages like two resplendent creatures. Bohemian yet khandani, culturally rooted to India yet global citizens, they travelled the world and lived life according to their terms all through the 1930s and 40s. Much of Fatty covers similar ground covered by Zohra Apa herself in her autobiography, Close-Up: Memoirs of a Life on Stage and screen (Women Unlimited, 2010). Taken together, we get a portrait in different stages of its making: of An Artist as a Young Woman; Glory Days of Dance and Travel; Personal Tragedy followed by Long Years of Struggle; and now the Lioness in Winter. The indomitable courage to go on, the impishness of youth after a life spanning a century, the perseverance and long hours of daily practice all this combine to make Zohra Segal what she is.

For all the fame and accolades that she now enjoys, Zohra Apa is no stranger to tragedy and hard times. First, there was the Partition that split her family, with most of her siblings choosing to go to Pakistan, including her younger sister, Uzra who had travelled the world with her during her days with the Ravi Shankar Academy and later with Prithvi Theatre. The elder sister, Hajra Begum, a member of the Communist party of India and married to Dr Z A Ahmed stayed back, as did Zohra. But by post-partition, the Glory days of dance and travelling theatre were over. After Zohra Apa’s husband, Kameshwar Segal, a talented painter, actor, dancer and set designer committed suicide in 1959, Zohra Apa moved to Delhi to teach dance at the Delhi Natya Academy. In 1962, she moved to London and took whatever work was available to fend for herself and her two young children. These were years of hard work for little rewards. Zohra Apa recalls these years in her autobiography with not a trace of bitterness; if anything she wears them as a badge of courage and endurance. To sustain herself and her two small children, she took whatever work that came her way in London, including that of a dresser at the Old Vic. With great good cheer, she records the time when she accepted her first tip from an actor she was helping dress:

‘All the Nawabs of Rampur and Najibabad must have turned in their graves that night! And yet, later, I began to look forward to the extra odd pound per week and even enjoyed the sensation of guilt which this recently acquired vice induced!’

Stardom eventually came her way and fame nudged her out of the drudgery of backstage work when a string of roles in mainstream English films and television series began to come her way. Her role as Lady Lili Chatterjee in Jewel in the Crown was followed by the hugely popular Tandoori Nights on BBC. Now, of course she is used to sharing screen space with the leading actors of the Hindi film industry: Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya rai, Salman Khan, Preity Zinta, et al.

Fatty’s real strength lies not in its narration of the facts of Zohra Segal’s life, many of which have been narrated with equal fidelity to detail by Zohra Apa herself. I think where Fatty scores is in its author’s candidness. Here’s a sampler:

On her mother’s incorrigible flirtatiousness, Kiran writes:

‘Even now when she is flirting or being naughty with the opposite sex, I cringe; my brother and I really suffer! Had I not been her daughter, I would have also enjoyed her comments, like everyone else. But, being her daughter, I just can’t and very often when she is uttering these embarrassing comments to an interviewer, if I am in the same room, I just walk out.’

And elsewhere:

‘Ammi is just like a child at times. You’ve got to see her when guests are at home and she has dressed herself in a new outfit…She actually comes down the stairs as though she is making an entry on stage and laps up all the praise when her presence, outfit, and so on are admired with ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’! Not one for being shy, she can easily talk to anyone if she wants to and also snub anyone if she is not interested – something which I can never do!’

And:

‘Ammi has two very bad habits – one is blowing her nose at the dining table and the second one is when she does not let you even sit down and take a breather when you come home. She starts straighaway with whatever has to be done, or any message that has to be given!’

Having had the opportunity to meet Zohra Apa on several occasions and to invite her for some of the programmes organised by me for Hindustani Awaaz, I have always wondered at her amazing youthfulness and vitality. Kiran’s book reveals the secret: a disciplined life with large doses of hard work and good humour. On her hundredth birthday, we can only say: ‘Here’s looking at you, Zohra Apa! Salut!’