The old book bazaar

IT is said that in fiction everything is true except names and dates while in history books nothing is true except names and dates. Well, maybe. But genres like historical novels and autobiographical novels that defy such classification make the distinction between fact and fiction even more difficult.

Anwaar Fatima Jaffrey may be justified in calling her autobiography “Badalte Rang” memoirs. A memoir it is not. Neither is it an autobiography. You cannot call it an autobiographical novel either. And when the purpose of writing an autobiography or a memoir is not to sum up one’s personal experiences or to boast of one’s perceived achievements but to search for one’s identity and cultural values, the traditional lines dividing genres into autobiographies, memoirs, first-person novels and autobiographical novels become almost meaningless. The author’s first book was ‘‘Salaasil’’, a translation of Alex Hailey’s “Roots”. Published a couple of years ago, it received instant critical acclaim and ran into second edition, a rare feat for Urdu books.

In her foreword, Ms Jaffrey says: “Family traditions, moral values and religious substance are nurtured in children, generally, through elders. But the interaction between the old and the new generations is on the decline these days. Many of my family members have settled in far-off lands where our traditional values are alien to our younger folks. I felt the need to preserve in writing the cultural background to which our forefathers belonged so that our new generation remembers who they were and their identity remains intact.”

“Badalte Rang” was launched at Karachi Gymkhana last week. Prof Sahar Ansari, Mahmood Sham, Syed Mazhar Jameel, Mubeen Mirza, Ambreen Haseeb Amber and Sajida Ishtiaq shed light on the literary merits of the book.

Koocha-i-Saqafat is the name given to a weekly bazaar that has stalls of books, pottery, paintings, handicrafts and eatables. Held near the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, the Sunday bazaar has completed two years of its life. Though there is a visible decline in the number of visitors now, for booklovers it brought some relief when it opened two years ago as the old book bazaar at Frere Hall had closed down due to security concerns.

The interesting thing about the price of books sold at Koocha-i-Saqafat is that they fetch a better price than the ones sold at the old book bazaar in Saddar.

The reason why the prices are comparatively low at Saddar is that, according to a bookseller, people from posh localities visit Koocha to buy second-hand and pirated books and they are willing to pay higher prices because new books are very expensive.

Some bibliophiles say that even at Saddar, where books are laid out on the footpath and not properly displayed on stalls and the neighbourhood is generally filthy, some second-hand books can be prohibitively expensive. It is true that some dealers in old books at Saddar ask for a price that is often as high as that of a new book. When asked why they are demanding such a high price, they point out that the book being sold is extremely rare.

But my personal experience suggests that in view of ever-rising inflation, the prices at old book bazaars, whether Koocha or Saddar, are still reasonable. A few months back I spotted on a Saddar footpath a copy of Abid Ali Abid’s ‘Talmeehaat-i-Iqbal’, published some 30 years ago by Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab, Lahore.

The bookseller, a courteous but very shrewd young man, asked for Rs100. I left the book and looked for something ‘less rare’. But only last week I had a look at the new edition of ‘Talmeehaat-i-Iqbal,’ published by Sang-i-Meel Publications, Lahore, and it was priced at a ‘meagre’ Rs600. I felt like crying but the old copy of ‘Talmeehaat’ had been sold long ago… perhaps to someone from a posh locality.