April 27, 2008

                 Reviewed by Saulat Pervez

Urdu literature has a rich lineage of diverse authors whose writings have both entertained and infuriated generations but their readership has, nonetheless, been limited. For instance, these works have largely remained elusive for English readers due to the scarcity of translations, until recently.

Tahira Naqvi, a translator, writer, and Urdu language lecturer is among the new breed of translators who are actively working to bridge this gap. She has translated the works of Sa’adat Hasan Manto, Munshi Premchand, Khadija Mastoor, and Ismat Chughtai. A Very Strange Man is Naqvi’s latest offering of Urdu prose to the English readership.

Translated from the original novel Ajeeb Aadmi, it follows the journey of an unknown director as he tastes fame, love, depression, and finally, death. In the process, Chughtai skillfully weaves an unflinching critique of the film industry, making her readers starkly aware of the behind-the-curtain life in Bollywood — from one who lived and breathed it.

Indeed, Naqvi charts the connection between the Urdu literati and the Bombay film industry in her Introduction. She explains that the Progressive Writers’ Movement was very much linked with the film industry, as many of its writers earned their bread and butter by writing scripts for Indian movies. Chughtai herself was married to a film director, Shahid Latif, with whom she produced and co-directed six movies. Even after his death, she continued her association with the film world and produced six more pictures. She was the script writer of famous titles such as Ziddi, Buzdil, Sone ki Chiriya, and Garm Hawa, among others.

Hence, the subject matter of Ajeeb Aadmi is neither novel nor recreational for Chughtai. She focuses her mind’s lens on an obscure director, Dharam Dev, who catapults to fame and glory with the release of Bali, an innovative movie. His signature technique, touch, and style are touted and his genius is trumpeted all over the industry. He loves the limelight and soon, not only does he start his own production company, he also becomes the hero for most of his films — as was the trend in those days. Introduced as an ‘incorrigible lover,’ he nevertheless marries Mangala, a Bengali playback singer after she, bereft of his attention, attempts suicide.

Rumours abound of Dharam Dev’s affairs, but he manages to sidestep them and eventually Mangala is satisfied with her husband’s loyalty to her. Enter Zarina Jamal, a talented dancer from Hyderabad, as the heroine hired by Dharam Dev on a five-year contract and the story takes a predictable turn. Although Dharam Dev puts a lock on his heart more than once in the course of the story, the very thought of Zarina Jamal effortlessly becomes the key. Her evasiveness after submission is too much to bear and this man, the very strange man of the title, is willing to give up everything to win her back.

Readers look on in horror as he begins to undo his hard work, with random gasps of his genius here and there like the sputtering of a car before it dies. His life becomes a pendulum between fame and depression — the former being a temporary panacea. He seeks consolation in alcohol and a filmi tawa’if, but in the end, after a series of attempted suicides, he — just when he is so close to his objective — dies, leaving behind a mangled Mangala who has wreaked havoc with her life ever since her marriage fizzled out.

As this sorry tale unfolds, the reader is sickened by the depravity behind the glitter, so much so that it is difficult to continue reading but then one realises that this is the true aim of the book: to present the reality in all its gory details. We are being shown the tumultuous lives led by heroes, heroines, directors, producers, script writers, singers, and even the staff working on a set, beyond the silver screen. We are made to see how the fictitious story of a movie slowly creeps into actors’ lives — how the on-screen romance blossoms off-screen. Yet, we can also see how it wilts afterwards, with dangerous consequences for all the parties involved.

The storyline makes it clear that Ismat Chughtai was heavily influenced by the real-life love triangle of Guru Dutt, Geeta Dutt, and Waheeda Rehman. However, she refrains from making any direct references most likely for fear of a lawsuit. She does mention other contemporary artists such as Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand, Madhubala, Dilip Kumar, Lata, Rafi and even Shahid Latif at one point, which add to the realism in her story. Similarly, actual film titles and song lyrics are also interspersed in the narrative, with the same effect.

The plot itself is easily overtaken many times with Chughtai’s preoccupation with industry trends — from black money to publicity ploys and the ‘adoption’ of heroines by producers. It is this crisp commentary which keeps the narrative alive, more so than the lives of the main characters — after all, they simply become representative of the general picture and are put up as models of the destructive forces within the industry.

Naqvi deftly captures Chughtai’s spirit in A Very Strange Man. One can clearly hear the author’s voice echoing through the narrative. She also maintains an informal and spontaneous style, which makes the reader feel as if they are reading Urdu in English! Indeed, the text repeatedly jumps around — it goes off on a tirade and then returns in the next breath, so to speak, to continue the story. As a result, the reader must keep a vigilant eye for the ever-changing twists and turns in the novel because one never knows how suddenly a tangent will begin and when it will come to a dead stop.

Robert Frost once said, ‘Poetry gets lost in translation.’ While Tahira Naqvi has successfully circumvented this trap, one does wonder whether the title A Very Strange Man fully encapsulates the implications of Chughtai’s choice of Ajeeb Aadmi. After all, the term ‘aadmi’ in Urdu is used for both singular and plural — hence, could the author be putting Dharam Dev on the spotlight as an example of many others like him in the film industry? In fact, she points out other cases in the story like Dharam Dev’s where directors/producers leave their families for some young starlet, who in turn leaves them once she reaches her peak.

All in all, A Very Strange Man is a useful reminder for those of us who are enamoured by the ‘glossy’ lives of the glitterati. The reality behind the gossamer veils is not as luminous as the silver screen — and, at times, their real lives are stranger than the fiction they create.