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June 16, 2002
REVIEWS: Nostalgic Eden
Nostalgia is power. It is a catalyst for inspiration and at its best rejuvenates the past in the ruins of the present. At its worst, it sinks the entire nation into a vacuous pit of eternal denunciation.
In Pakistan, when you talk of the written word, particularly literature, Intezar Hussain is known to create powerful work on the basis of nostalgia, and he has the language to back it up with layer upon layer of memory. His latest book under review, Shehrzad ke naam, is a collection of short stories and a couple of autobiographical essays. It is a delightful amalgam of various literary and legendary traditions, and he harks back to the characters of those endearing stories of Alif Laila, Kalila aur Damna and Dastan-i-Ameer Hamza etc, with lots more emphasis on the animal characters portrayed in his work.
Intezar Husain has masterfully juxtaposed Kalila and Damna in the present socio-political scenario, and cleverly implies that the characteristics of various animals have changed over a period of time, which has created immense chaos in the ranks of the ones true to their nature. For instance, he repeatedly refers to the jackals, who have come into play in this new set of rules, as lackeys of the new progress.
Similarly, he uses the mice and crows as symbols for different sets of confused individuals in this scheme of things. But, it does become tiresome at times, due to a repetition of characters and contexts. For instance, “Hum nivala” and “Manoos ajnabi” seem to be similar sort of stories. In another story concerning Shehzada Toraj, the story meanders into an anti-climax. At times, he loses the symbol in the monotony of the similarities between stories, and his prose becomes one-dimensional.
Intezar Hussain is nostalgic for the homeland he left behind, as most immigrants. Visions of bygone times emerge from a reservoir of thoughts that create lucid prose. But then, only such nostalgic glow lights up short stories better than novels. After all, nostalgia cannot be turned on and off, like your living room chandelier. Writing a novel needs craft and concentration much beyond just the realm of nostalgia. In the last fifty years or so, Intezar Husain has proven himself capable of exercising a brilliance in fusing past and present, with the multi-lingual joints, as has been the craft of some of his other contemporary writers like Ashfaq Ahmed, Abdullah Hussain, Bano Qudsia, et al.
The only difference between him and others, in that context, is that apart from Persian, Arabic, Hindi and the local version of Urdu that Intezar Hussain uses, the other masters add a delightful smattering of Punjabi to their prose making it a fabulous nexus of various languages, some of which are quickly dying in Pakistan. It is unfortunate that these are the last of the masters, whom we can savour in essence, now.
After this generation that magic of novel knitted with the past will die out. The younger lot of writers derive their inspiration from European languages, which provide them a reservoir of new thought. But divorced from the local dialect, the foreign ideas and concepts lose their power. Thus they lose a huge chunk of local readership as well.
There is little doubt that the craft of bringing back the past, with such throbbing words, depends almost entirely on the usage of an incredible mix of languages. Add to that the treasury of legends, myths, sagas, stories, proverbs and anecdotes that come with that lingual finesse, and you have a craft that is impossible to acquire for those not acquainted with those languages.
In the first story of this book, “Daera”, a sort of soliloquy, Intezar Hussain seems tethered to his impressive novel, Basti, and recounts how he feels he should re-write that earliest story of his career, and proceeds to do it, partly. The reason why he feels he has to re-write the story is that he regrets that he had totally ignored the main character of that story when he wrote it first, concentrating on the character- actors instead. He feels that he lost the main character, who is the author himself, in the crowd, and that sidetracked the issue.
Basti, as one recalls, captures the experience of being uprooted from one’s ancestral surroundings and being dumped in a lifestyle that bred disillusionment. But, the novel was brilliant in its nostalgic reflection while it underlined the initial lie of the old system, which was transferred to the new land. He showed how the seeds of corruption were sown by the local pawns of the imperial bureaucracy much before the land was divided. The killing blow of the narrative was what made Basti a powerful novel.
In Shehrzad ke naam, Intezar seems to go into overdrive, complicating the new symbolic force of the well-known characters, which terminates the flow of the narrative many a time during some stories. “Morenama” is a fine essay-story, colouring the peacocks in the true regality of the genuine specimen. The double or triple track of a story within a story carries on throughout the book. “Shehrzad kee maut” is a fascinating story and is one of the highlights of the book, reflecting how Shehrzad, the story-telling beauty in Alif Laila, lost interest in life when she stopped recounting stories in later life. That happened because her initial fear of death ended after she managed to postpone her execution by keeping the emperor engrossed for a thousand and one nights in her narration.
Over the years, Intezar Hussain’s commitment to fiction and empowering symbols has hit a low. He is more inclined towards essays, which send his fiction to the backburner. It seems that Shehrzad ke naam has been written more in awe of the idea of using old stories and legends in the new context, than for presenting something classical, in his usual style.
Shehrzad ke naam
By Intezar Hussain
Sang-e-Meel Publications, 20 Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Lahore
Tel: 042-7220100.
Email:
smp@sang-e-meel.com
ISBN 969-35-1332-0
192pp. Rs175
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