HITHERTO, ghazal writing has been the most popular activity in Urdu. But, thanks to the modern facilities of travelling, travelogue writing, too, has emerged in recent decades as a favourite form of expression vying with the ghazal in popularity. Not writers alone, but even non-writers will at times be seen engaged in this activity. In fact, travelling abroad, which is something new with us, has brought with it new excitement for us. So anybody who gets the opportunity of going abroad feels tempted to write a travelogue so as to inform his people that he had the privilege of seeing a foreign land and had thus undergone a new experience.
So now we have an abundance of travelogues in Urdu. The journey may be short, but the travelogue is, in general, long enough to make a voluminous book. I have always wondered how a trip of about a week puts a traveller in a position to put his observations and experiences in a big volume. But, fortunately the two travelogues I have recently read have unravelled the secret to me. I could read them with interest because of the attraction I feel for the land known as Nepal. The travelogue writers appear to be very much under the spell of the land. The one written by Mustansar Husain Tarar has been published by Sang-i-Meel under title of Nepal Nagri. The other, written by Amjad Saqib, has also been published by Sang-i-Meel under the title, Gautam ke Des Mein.
Mustansar Tarar has specialized in the art of travelogue writing and is regarded as a leading travelogue writer in Urdu. In fact, travelling is a passion with him. With his romantic bent of mind, he embarks on a journey of distant lands and on his return sits down to write what he has seen and experienced. But he rarely confines himself to his observations. His romantic imagination adds much to what he has observed. There is much blending of fact and fiction. So each of his travelogues tends to turn into a novel.
In fact, Mustansar doesn’t bother much about facts. For instance, in the travelogue under discussion he claims to have discovered the grave of a Mughal princess in Kathmandu. He mistook Begum Hazrat Mahal for a Mughal princess. Had he cared to read the inscription on the tomb, he would have known that the Begum was the consort of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah and was in no way related to the Mughal dynasty. Begum Hazrat Mahal is a distinguished figure belonging to the freedom fighters of 1857. She led the rebellion in Lucknow. She fought bravely. When defeated, she refused to surrender and escaped to Nepal. She lived in Kathmandu till the end.
However, the Himalayan land interspersed with old temples provides much food for Tarar’s romantic imagination. He successfully recreates the atmosphere of this culturally rich land. Nepal Nagri carries with it a romantic flavour of the Mustansar brand.
As for Amjad Saqib, he is a bit more realistic though he, too, finds reason enough to be romantic. His romanticism owes much to his flair for Nepal’s Buddhistic association. After all, Kathmandu is not a city of Hindu temples alone. Buddhist temples may also be seen with all their splendour on the hilltops. More than that Lumbaini, a place which has the honour of being the birthplace of Buddha, Amjad Saqib is so much enamoured by all this that at one stage he suspends his travelogue and begins narrating Gautam katha. The whole Buddha story has been written chapterwise and consumes enough pages of the book. It makes a pretty little book within a book.
But Amjad Saqib cannot afford to be romantic all the time. His was not a journey for journey’s sake as has been generally the case with Tarar. He had gone there with a purpose. An international conference was to be held there under UN auspices. He participated in that conference as a delegate from Pakistan so this journey was tied to a mundane purpose. It was not possible for Amjad Saqib to breathe all the time in the romantic atmosphere associated with Nepal.
He had to move among the delegates, participate in the proceedings of the conference, and to take part in the discussions on topics like poverty in the Third World. Now he deems it fit to report all this and to describe people whom he had met. He has also to give vent to his bitter feelings in respect of what he had seen and experienced at the Delhi airport. All this compels him to be realistic. Only in between he steals moments for flights of the imagination. Once again in the end he suspends his travelogue and manages to meet on an imaginative level with characters belonging to ancient times.
Amjad Saqib has suspicions that his travelogue may be seen lacking in what goes to make a travelogue but he is not assertive. He is content to see his travelogue treated just as a book — of course, a tolerably good book.
HITHERTO, ghazal writing has been the most popular activity in Urdu. But, thanks to the modern facilities of travelling, travelogue writing, too, has emerged in recent decades as a favourite form of expression vying with the ghazal in popularity. Not writers alone, but even non-writers will at times be seen engaged in this activity. In fact, travelling abroad, which is something new with us, has brought with it new excitement for us. So anybody who gets the opportunity of going abroad feels tempted to write a travelogue so as to inform his people that he had the privilege of seeing a foreign land and had thus undergone a new experience.
