IN our times, a literary function classified as ‘an evening with a writer’ is nothing unusual. Every writer has at least one evening, if not more, to his credit where accolades are showered on his writings and personality through articles and research papers. What was, however, unusual in the case of an evening with Mohammad Saeed Sheikh, a known novelist, was the way it was conceived by the Academy of Letters of Lahore. Qazi Javaid, who is in charge of the academy, handed over to Saeed Sheikh a sheet of papers bearing a long list of questions put to him. This reminded me of the way question papers are handed over to the students appearing in a test. But with them it’s a written test. Here was an oral test. The writer was expected to solve the paper orally. And I was pleasantly surprised to find Saeed Sheikh explaining in a convincing way his point of view while responding to the questions put to him. He took up the queries one by one and responded to them to the satisfaction of the audience. The writer passed the test with distinction.
I had my reasons for getting surprised. I have seen distinguished writers faltering in such situations. In fact, a writer talking about himself needs to have a lot of confidence. He should be cocksure of his greatness as a writer.
Saeed Sheikh is primarily known to us as a novelist. He stands distinguished among his contemporaries for his realistic portrayal of life in the rural Punjab. But here the immediate point of reference was his latest work published by Sang-i-Meel under the title D.C Nama, a work different from his fictional pieces. Here the novelist has receded into the background. A bureaucrat-turned-devotee of a saint is seen recording his experiences with reference to a town where he has been posted as deputy commissioner. The town is Pakpattan, which rose to prominence mainly because of its association with the great mystic Baba Farid Ganj Shakar than anything else.
Saeed Sheikh has worked as a civil servant in Punjab. In the course of his service he was promoted to the rank of deputy commissioner and in that capacity was posted to Pakpattan. Every civil servant dreams of this kind of a promotion and when the dream comes true, he experiences a great sense of achievement. But Saeed Sheikh tells us that he had for long been yearning to have the honour of entering the revered city. So, he was happy at his promotion less for worldly reasons and more for the fact that he would have an opportunity to live and serve the city where Baba Farid rests.
Devotees of the mystics are a class unto themselves. They see and interpret things in their own peculiar way. Every event happening to them or around them gets under the spell of their devotion a touch of supernatural and assumes miraculous proportions. The narration of their experiences can hardly be appreciated with a rational approach. It demands a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader or the listener. D.C Nama too makes such a demand of its readers. I submitted to this demand and was able to appreciate what he has narrated with respect to his devotion to the great saint. He appears to be a genuine devotee in contradiction to those who visit the dargah just to acquire worldly gains. So I had moments when I felt like living the experience he had. But, unfortunately, those moments did not last for long. A natural question in this regard would be, why?
The reason is that the writer is not the kind of a devotee, who at least temporarily, if not permanently, cuts himself off from worldly alignments. Here the devotee is overshadowed by the D.C. After all, he has come here with certain administrative duties entrusted to him. So, in this account we soon see the devotee receding into the background and the administrator coming to the fore. He now begins telling us his experiences during his service, which are essentially different from his experiences as a devotee. And now we feel free to doubt and raise questions.
Saeed Sheikh is seen on this stage telling us about the situations he had to deal with as deputy commissioner. Now Pakpattan Sharif of Baba Farid recedes into the background and instead a society suffering from so many social evils emerges before our eyes. Saeed Sheikh narrates events that may well fit in any of his novels. They may be factual as he insists. But, not to forget, he is a novelist. And how can a novelist, who has been writing about the social problems of the rural Punjab, resist the temptation of turning events brimming with fictional possibilities into well-shaped stories?
To be brief, the book is not simply a D.C Nama, nor is it just an account of a devotee. The civil servant, the novelist, the devotee all three equally contribute to this tale, which make a living portrait of a society that is deeply religious, yet plagued by social evils.
IN our times, a literary function classified as ‘an evening with a writer’ is nothing unusual. Every writer has at least one evening, if not more, to his credit where accolades are showered on his writings and personality through articles and research papers. What was, however, unusual in the case of an evening with Mohammad Saeed Sheikh, a known novelist, was the way it was conceived by the Academy of Letters of Lahore. Qazi Javaid, who is in charge of the academy, handed over to Saeed Sheikh a sheet of papers bearing a long list of questions put to him. This reminded me of the way question papers are handed over to the students appearing in a test. But with them it’s a written test. Here was an oral test. The writer was expected to solve the paper orally. And I was pleasantly surprised to find Saeed Sheikh explaining in a convincing way his point of view while responding to the questions put to him. He took up the queries one by one and responded to them to the satisfaction of the audience. The writer passed the test with distinction.
