Of autobiographies
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES are always in demand. People love to go through them — they represent a peep in the lives of their favourite poets and writers. However, one thing in some cases may be daunting — the fear of ‘exposure’.
There are no prescribed rules or methods, as in other genres of literature, to write an autobiography. One is free to write whatever he or she may want to write. But a necessary tool is to recollect the past, and an imagination to write or re-write the bygone years.
There are on the bookshelf exclusive volumes of biographies like Shahabnama of Qudratullah Shahab or Yaadoon ki baraat by much admired, also maligned, Josh, besides several others. But brief life accounts by famous or not-so-famous writers are also found in scattered pages of monographs.
Most of the time such writings are ignored or not properly acknowledged. But it is not the number of pages which merit the reader’s attention but the contents which those pages carry.
Writers differ from each other in many ways — education, family background, religious and social beliefs, profession and so on. So do the biographies.
A biography portrays the challenges one has faced in life or any onerous task he or she have had to perform in life. I have with me an autobiography titled Pas manzer by one Syed Mohammad Manzer, a successful entrepreneur. Coming from a small town in UP, he showed his talent and marks of ready wit while he was just a boy.
He belonged to a prosperous family, but he did not avail the parental resources to get rich. Mr Manzer as a young man went to the former East Pakistan and established his own business after doing many small jobs.
Many times he failed and at one time lost his assets but his optimism never failed him. He is very thorough and descriptive in narrating the place of his origin, and the persons who came into his life.
As against the success story of Mr Manzer, there are many stories which require tremendous courage by their writers to describe. I am privileged to know at least three such writers of very modest origin who got education and a standing in life against heavy odds, only through their own efforts.
I will not name the writer recently honoured by the government with an award, who in his early childhood learnt to read by writings on the wall and from the torn pages of the books he could collect from the garbage, as there was no one to support him. He chose not to write an autobiography but his interview got printed in this newspaper.
There are two written accounts. One Mr Nasim, also a penniless village boy, came over to Pakistan just after the partition, worked as a menial in the Railway Workshop, and later joined Pakistan Navy. He started acquiring education late in life and did his MA in perhaps the late 60s.
Another writer, in the introduction to his poetry collection, narrated a similar story. Very inspiring but sadly overlooked by most readers. These courageous persons have nothing to conceal and perhaps they feel that they did nothing in their lives that was glorious.
Anyway, there are such examples wherein many noteworthy persons were deterred to tell the “whole truth”, not for their own sake but for the sake of their own kith and kin. Madam Noor Jahan, we are told, refused to record her biography when her daughters urged her not to divulge the unpalatable. As she refused to settle with the half-truth, the story remained untold.
There is another story but with a difference. M.A. Qureshi, a transport magnate of the 50s and 60s who was remembered in Karachi as the Sir Syed of the times for establishing many educational institutions including the Islamia college, once spoke about his early life to a journalist. He was in Bombay — a street boy washing buses to earn a living.
A hard-working person, he learnt driving, started plying buses, came over to Pakistan and rose to fame through the dent of his entrepreneurship — a noble person he was.
But he was the most dejected man under the sun when his story saw the cold-print. An affluent and well-placed person as now he was, with family connections in higher social circles, how could he face them, he angrily questioned.
Is the society we are living in ready to digest the truth and nothing but the truth?
Bangladesh should be richer by the experience
THE Bangladesh team has arrived and it has stopped raining in Karachi and we are all set for the resumption of Test cricket on home soil. The Bangladesh coach and captain have promised to make a fist of the series though they recognise their limitations.
Having played against Australia in Australia, the Bangladesh should be richer by the experience and expect to put on a better show. Besides the Tests a one-day series will be played in conditions that will be more familiar but given that the Bangladesh record is equally dismal at home, something more than familiar playing conditions will be needed and Dav Whatmore, the coach, has hinted that more discipline will be required in the mental approach.
In the meanwhile, the Pakistan squad has been announced and, in theory, against modest opposition, it does not matter if the selectors do not get it hundred per cent right. The selection appears to fall far short of the mark. I must confess to be dumbfounded by the dropping of Abdul Razzaq.
Let me here state that I do not know Razzaq personally, I have not even seen him except on television. But he is, by common consent of cricket’s experts all over the world, one of the finest all-rounders in the game and all Test playing countries would be happy to have him in their squads and this includes Australia.
Our standards apparently are more exacting. I find it intriguing that there was so much media speculation about his availability, some reports had him not available which were promptly denied by sources close to him. Was something afoot? I have no idea.
The chief selector’s explanation that “Razzaq’s exclusion does not mean his cricket is over and he has been sidelined because the team needs a left-arm pacer against Bangladesh and Khalil is the better choice” has left me mystified, if he has been correctly quoted.
This is a case of comparing oranges with apples. For good measure, a sop was offered that there was a good deal of cricket left in the all-rounder (Abdul Razzaq). What is he supposed to do with this “good deal of cricket left?” Put in a savings account in a bank?
From the start of his career, Razzaq has been messed about. We seem undecided whether he is a batting or a bowling all-rounder. He has been pigeon-holed as a one day player and when he gets a chance in a Test match, he scores a hundred. More confusion.
He has been shuffled up and down in the batting order, as if, he was a yo-yo. Time again he has come to Pakistan’s rescue and as one of the remnants of the old guard has been an outstanding success in the new-look team. Clearly the young man is made of sterner stuff and I hope is not broken-hearted. If we expect consistency from our players, the selectors should also to be expected to be consistent.
Inzamam-ul-Haq, as expected is back, it being deemed he has ‘rested’ enough. But he did not fulfil the pre-condition that was imposed on him that he would have to show his form by playing domestic cricket. Now he goes straight into a Test match trailed by a string of miserable scores in the World Cup.
Razzaq has plenty to show since the World Cup. But bringing Inzamam is absolutely the right thing but then he should not have been dropped in the first place. One certainly hopes that the selection will be less whimsical when it comes to matches against South Africa.
I write this on the last day of the Trent Bridge Test match and it rather looks as if South Africa will go down. Worse than the umpiring in this Test match has been the condition of the wicket. It is a disgrace when the outcome of a Test match should be decided by winning the toss.
Trent Bridge has become a dicey wicket and even before a ball had been bowled, it was being openly said that the bounce would be variable and batting last would be something of a nightmare. That being the case, was the wicket good enough for a Test match, which is serious business? It was not.
A broken-down wicket, which has, cracks the size of dinner plates may have made for exciting cricket but so too would a match in which players wear roller-skates instead of boots. Imagine the savagery of criticism, had such a wicket been provided in any of the sub-continent venues.
As for the umpiring, there were errors galore and none more glaring than the decision Graeme Smith got in the second innings. One did not need a slow motion replay to see that Smith had got an inside edge. The ICC needs to expand its panel. It should make it less elite and add more umpires.
Players are routinely getting injured and too much cricket is blamed for the spate of injuries. The umpires are neither as young or as fit. Yet they travel round the globe and stand for hours and have to concentrate on each and every ball.
The fact that television picks up every decision and bombards the viewers with replays and the sneering comments of the TV experts, each of whom seems to have become an umpire, has added considerable pressure. But the ICC must address the problem as it might also look into the state of pitches at Test matches.
I was delighted that Chishty Mujahid and S.M. Naqi have been given Pride of Performance awards. Chishty has been a colleague of mine in the commentary-box and S.M. Naqi a friend of mine. Both awards are richly deserved.