May 25, 2003

MUSHARRAF Farooqi’s first novel Salar Jang’s Passion, (Indian edition as Passion Among the Termites) marks the debut of yet another talented English language writer of Pakistani origin. The author, who is also an English language translator of Urdu literature, was born in Hyderabad, Sindh, worked as journalist in Karachi and migrated to Toronto in 1994.

A lively magic realist satire, Salar Jang’s Passion is a tale of human foibles and fantasies, against a backdrop of corruption and chaos. Set in the fictitious town of Purana Shehr, the plot revolves around the inhabitants of Topee Mohalla, a badly designed, concrete labyrinth, constructed by the government to provide accommodation for non-gazetted officers. In this architectural disaster, the cheapest wood has been used. Soon it is set upon by a multiplying army of termites, after the monsoon when “all elements of nature seemed involved in a conspiracy to smother human life”.

The coexistence of man and nature runs through the story. The rhythms of Salar Jang’s life in Purana Shehr: his arrival, his attempts at marriage and his death, coincide with those of the termites.

Salar Jang, a decaying septuagenarian, belongs to another time and age. Accompanied by his priceless pigeons and Muneemji, his factotum, he comes to stay in Topee Mohalla with his daughter Bano Tamanna and her husband Mirzban Yunani, a school teacher. Salar Jang has an ulterior motive for his visit however: to file a lawsuit in Purana Shehr against his troublesome tenants “so that they would be obliged to travel some eight hundred miles from up country for every hearing” while he can remain in the city with his daughter, indefinitely. A wily lawyer, Ladlay Qalabaz ingratiates himself with Salar Jang but intends to defraud him of his considerable property.

The widowed Salar Jang, is an erstwhile aristocrat, equestrian and profligate and holds dear the sword and khilat bestowed upon him by the Nawab of Gulmoha. He has never quite been able to cope with the loss of that privileged world and status, when he migrated at partition. Soon afterwards, to compensate he had entered into a spate of marriages in his fifties, but none lasted. Twenty years later, to the consternation of his daughter, Salar Jang begins to peruse the matrimonial pages again. He enters into correspondence with the relatives of prospective brides, without revealing his real age.

These efforts fade in the light of his new obsession: the corpulent screen goddess, Noor-i-Firdousi. Her lyrics have so inspired the troops in wartime, that they have found “victory-in- defeat”. She has been honoured with the title ‘Nightingale of the Battlefield’ by none other than the president himself. Her prowess in the bedroom is legendary.

Salar Jang decides to write an ode to her. He also expends a great deal of time and money, to publish a book of his verse, to impress her. He is encouraged by the insidious lawyer Ladlay, who is also the lover of Mirzban’s sister, Mushtri Khanum, an employee in the Desh Bank. Salar Jang’s search for a suitable calligrapher takes him to countless and nameless letter-writers lined up on a pavement, outside the post office which Musharraf Farooqi describes with an eye for detail and an assurance, that embodies his writing:

In the science of postures, the letter writers had their own trade mark. In its shape, it was modelled on the squat, but the body weight was distributed between the heels, pulled together and tucked under the hips, with the back leaning against a wall. It was also a posture which signified general apathy. Seated on the low wooden stools in proximity with these scribes, a man felt by himself, and was encouraged to modulate his thoughts and shape them into lucid rhetoric.

The book is filled with strong, descriptions and vivid scenes. There are cockfights, wrestling matches, a kathputhli performance, a movie called Umrao Khanam and the antics of alley cats. At one point the termites seem to take over the book, though the many facts about their habits and life-cycle, are built into the narrative in entertaining detail, as is the havoc the termites create in Purana Shehr, munching their way through everything from chairs and beds to tea leaves and banknotes. Politicians, bureaucrats, administrators duly respond to the crisis, in the following manner:

From the beginning, the city administration had shown an apathy towards the termite problem. Official bulletins downplayed the gravity of the situations at hand, and at every stage tried to divert public attention from this more immediate and pressing problem to distant issues, for instance by drumming up support for the ruling party’s candidate in the forthcoming polls.

There are too many characters however. At the beginning, they make their appearance in rapid and confusing succession, ranging from Mirzban’s neighbours, Tabaq Sahib, Basmati and Begum Basmati, to the maulvi Imam Jhubba and Chhalawa, the waiter. They depict the richness, colour and variety of mohalla and street life, but could have been pared. Nevertheless this is a novel full of insight and a great sense of the absurd. Hopefully Musharraf Farooqi will follow it up with another, very soon.

 

Salar Jang’s Passion

By Musharraf Farooqi

Summersdale Publishers, UK

Website: www.summersdale.com

ISBN 1-84024-224-8. 303pp. £7.99

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