October 5, 2003

Asad Jan, who studied at the Aitchison and the Government College Lahore and the London School of Economics is additional income tax commissioner in Peshawar

ASAD Jan fell into the book habit in his childhood because there was no television in those days of yore. With both his parents and two elder siblings being avid readers, it was inevitable that Jan too began exploring the printed word. His father loved to tell stories to his children and that is how Jan came to be so fascinated by books and the knowledge they contained.

You ask Asad Jan about the books he likes to read and he rattles off a long list of titles. Variety is the hallmark of his choice — ranging from J.K. Rowling to Camus, Kafka and Sartre.

Recently he read The Hours before seeing the film. He read the book again and found both very good. He is not surprised that one has won a Pullitzer prize and the other an Oscar! “I was attracted to the book by the fact that after almost 32 years of public interest in her works and life, here was a book featuring Virginia Woolf. I was puzzled by the title as none of her works was called The Hours. But I soon discovered that the novel was by Michael Cunningham. The next challenge was to get it in Peshawar. No one had even heard of it. So I got a friend to send it from Karachi,” he says. Incidentally, when Woolf started writing Dalloway it was titled The Hours, which was then changed.

When asked if he found it depressing, he says, “No, but it was sad. Its strength lies in its exquisite eloquence. In fact I think it is better than Mrs Dalloway. Death, suicide, melancholy, depression — aren’t they a part of life? The Hours is an expose of all that.”

Jan had read Mrs Dalloway a long time ago when he was curious about Woolf’s depressions and mental illness. Later on he discovered that other masters of creative and literary writing like Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, also suffered from depression. “There is a connection between the two. It is plain that all of us reel under dark moods at one point or another. It’s getting back in the saddle that’s important,” Asad Jan observes.

The stream of consciousness denotes the flow of inner experiences and is a literary technique used by many writers, he explains. Quoting Virginia Woolf, he says, “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged. Life is a luminous halo... surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end,” Jan points out, “At any moment the mind is bombarded by myriads of impressions. If a writer were to capture these there would be no sequence of events in the accepted sense of the word. This is Woolf’s forte which has been skillfully used by Cunningham as well.”

Another book Jan has been reading is V.S. Naipaul’s Beyond Belief. Highly controversial, it is a sequel to his earlier travel book Among the Believers. “It holds a mirror to the societies of Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia,” Asad Jan says. “Naipaul’s explanation for the underdevelopment of these societies is disturbing to many. He thinks that they suffered from disequilibrium caused by imperialism and the conversion which came in the wake of the revealed religions. I don’t have any problems with this thesis,” says Asad Jan. “Neither do I think he is anti Muslim. Isn’t he married to one for a start? He doesn’t offer prescriptions and calls a spade a spade. I know that improvement can only come after we subject ourselves to some self examination and soul searching.”

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)