KARACHI: A book titled Smoke without fire by retired Brig A.R. Siddiqui was launched at the Arts Council on Tuesday evening.

Dr Pirzada Qasim, who presided over the launch, drew a very comprehensive sketch of the author, detailing the elements that contributed to his character building which resulted in his becoming a writer of repute. He said Brig Siddiqui was one of the oldest living journalists in the country, who began his career with Dawn. He also worked for the Civil and Military Gazette and Defence Journal. The marked feature of his writing was that when he set out to pen a story, he always had its background clear in his head. His analytical approach was coupled with his ability to never lose sight of ground realities, which was why the conclusions that he came up with were valuable.

Dr Qasim said although he [Qasim] was only a child when he left Delhi, the way Brig Siddiqui had painted the picture of Delhi in the book made him relive the memories of the city. It was a Delhi which was rooted in culture, where discussions in the households would usually centre on, among other things, the teachers that one had at educational institutions. Brig Siddiqui had written about that Delhi and its attributes with spontaneity and realism, he said. The writer had read some very important writers at a young age (Oscar Wilde, Russell, Kahlil Gibran, Maupassant, etc) as part of his early training and at the same time went to a madressah, where he learned the essentials of concepts like wahdatul wujood and wahdatul shahood, enriching him as a person in diverse ways, he said.

One of the key subjects in the book was Dawn, the newspaper which began from Delhi, and Brig Siddiqui was part of it from its early days. So one issue that reared its head when partition of the subcontinent happened was whether Dawn could continue from Delhi, he said, adding that Sardar Patel played a dirty role when he told rioters to burn the offices of Dawn in Delhi.

Brig Siddiqui said his book had 12 chapters: six were about pre-mutiny days and six focused on pre-partition Delhi. The reason for including the pre-mutiny period was that its effect on the city lasted till the 19th century; the new world did not influence old Delhi, he claimed. He said there was a difference between being nostalgic and remembering things. “I loved Delhi and still love it, but I can’t live there,” he remarked. “1947 mein Dilli khatm ho gaee.” (Delhi was no more after 1947) he said, adding there’s an expression of lament (dukh ka izhar) at the end of the book.

Dr Syed Jaffer Ahmed spoke on the literary and historic worth of Smoke without fire. With regard to its literary worth, he said, the language which Brig Siddiqui used was crisp and even the most difficult things were written in a readily understandable manner. His recollections of his childhood memories in it were deep and the way he described the Delhi characters and its neighbourhoods had turned them, for the reader, into living characters and neighbourhoods.

As far as history went, Dr Ahmed said, Brig Siddiqui employed oral history as the primary source in the book. Social reactions, political goings-on and what were the Muslims of India in general and Delhi in particular thinking at the time were plausibly recorded.

Journalist Ghazi Salahuddin said when Pakistan came into being Brig Siddiqui was 23 years of age; now he’s 90 years old, so it’s remarkable that he’d authored the book when he’d experienced everything in life. The “living memories” in the book lasted till the partition of India, therefore, today we could have a dialogue with those memories and revisit partition, he argued.

Prof Sahar Ansari, who efficiently conducted the event, said it’s an extraordinary book written with fearlessness and truthfulness, encompassing the author’s life from his childhood days to 1947. He commented that it’s penned in the form of memoirs, and memoirs were also a kind of oral history.

The publisher of the book, Jamshed Mirza, also spoke.

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2015

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