While going through a collection of sketches titled Roshan Dan, I felt like oscillating between two cities, Rampur and Bombay.

Seemingly a gallery of portraits, it is a sad story of a vanished culture.

The author Javaid Siddiqi, himself from Rampur, left his city in his early years. He was bound for Bombay where he found shelter in a place which appeared to him an extension of Rampur. The Khilafat House, which in days gone by stood as the headquarter of the Khilafat Movement, vibrating with the emotional outbursts of the Ali brothers, was now in ruins, with no trace of its past glory. Those tumultuous times had elapsed and the Muslim youth were now under the spell of a new ideology, whose headquarters stood in the city at a respectable distance from this dilapidated building.

Siddiqi too was destined to form part of the same band of progressives. However, arriving here, he at first found shelter in Khilafat House under the patronage of Maulana Zahid Shaukat Ali, son of Maulana Shaukat Ali, and the last vestige of the movement. He was seen as the figurehead of this vanished movement as well as of the Ali brothers’ family. Siddiqi has portrayed him well.

The account of the man starts with a graphic description of the Khilafat House. From there emerges his personality now acting as its head. Though carrying in his behaviour the image of a fallen Nawab, we can however detect in him, as portrayed by Siddiqi, some traces of his father. He seems to belong to the category of people aptly called bharbhariya in Urdu, a short-tempered man. He took no time in losing his temper and regaining it with the same quickness. He was in the long run a kind-hearted man ready to help people in distress.

Siddiqi looks back to the people in Rampur. The state of the Ali brothers’ family was not different from that of the Khilafat House. With the exception of a few fortunate ones, almost all were living in wretched conditions. But they had not lost the sense of pride peculiar to their family. And they liked to help those in trouble.

Some such souls have been finely portrayed in this volume. Their relations with their Hindu neighbours were cordial. In some cases they were so friendly with each other that they appeared to belong to the same family.

So we see in these sketches glimpses of a culture which once was. Its traces are still visible, reminding us of the good old days of Ganga-Jumni culture.

Back to Bombay, Siddiqi introduces us to a newly-emerged brotherhood, a group of writers and intellectuals showing signs of a new culture by their way of living and thinking. Most of them are Urdu writers well-known to us as the progressives. They attracted admirers by their exuberance in their service to the socialist cause dear to them.

Siddiqi, himself a man of theatre committed to the cause, feels one with them and talks about them with love and admiration.

His portrayal of Sultana Jafri, the wife of Ali Sardar Jafri, in particular, speaks of his deep admiration for her though he doesn’t praise her in a direct manner. What a fine portrayal and what an amiable personality with a trail of a culture behind her. Even if he had not revealed her Lucknavi origin to us, we would have sensed from her manners, as depicted in the book, that the personality of this soft-spoken elegant woman has been nourished by some rich culture. Ilyas Shauqi, in the preface, has correctly pointed out that these sketches also introduce us to a culture and society which is fading out with the passage of time.

In fact, we find two kinds of personalities portrayed here. The personalities of the first kind are the remnants of a vanished traditional culture. The others may be seen as the manifestation of a newly-emerged culture tinged with a wave of idealism. With the passing away of the leading figures of this milieu, this culture, too, seems to have breathed its last under the pressure of growing commercialisation.