Published in The Friday Times last week:

A new collection of translated short stories reminds us how Urdu literature needs to connect with a global audience, says Raza Rumi

As I hold the recently published “The Oxford Book of short stories” in my hands, I cannot help bemoan the fact that Urdu literature has been almost invisible from the arena of global literature. Admittedly, translation is difficult; the tediousness of translation daunts many a brave heart. Having said that, there have been a handful of remarkable translators such as Khalid Hassan, Alamgir Hashmi, CM Naim, Aamer Hussain, Umer Memon and Rakhshanda Jalil, to name a few. But a wide corpus of Urdu literature lies forlorn and hidden from global readership, which alas is dominated by English language readers. For this very reason, Amina Azfar has done a remarkable job of compiling a collection of Urdu short stories. Her earlier translations have been competent and quite often lyrical. For instance, Akhtar Hussain Raipuri’s Gard-e-Rahh (the dust of the road) and Sajjad Zaheer’s Roshnai ( the Light ) are noteworthy for their tone.

The book has a nice little foreword by Aamer Hussain, who is correct in stating that Azfar’s collection provides a fine introduction to the genre of the Urdu short story. The stories selected encompass a range of various experiments undertaken by the great Urdu writers. The stark realism of Munshi Premchand is counterpoised by Khaleda Hussain’s two short stories that are allegorical and somewhat postmodern in their sensibility. Iftikhar Arif, the renowned poet-bureaucrat, in his formal introduction quotes Dr Jamil Jalibi, terming the selected short stories “in the category of the very best”. (more…)

	Parveen Shakir with her mentor Qasimi whom she called Ammu
	Young Shakir at a mushaira
	Fifteen years later Shakir remains intensely popular. Her poetry has been reinterpreted and critics who dismissed her as a poetic lightweight have realized that there was much more to Parveen’s poetic vision than just henna-dyed hands

Parveen Shakir (1952-1994) has defined the sensibilities of several generations and beyond. At the relatively young age of 42 years, Parveen Shakir died on an empty Islamabad boulevard, as if this was an essential part of her romantic persona. But she had lived a full life where poetry and tragedy intersected each other and became inseparable from her being.

As a young student in high school, I was introduced to Shakir’s romantic poetry, which was best represented by her first collection of poetry ‘Khushbu’. I had won an essay writing competition in Urdu and a delightful award came in the form of this tender volume of poetry. Since then I have always returned to bits and pieces of Khushbu. It may not be according to the cannons of literary theory, but it is spontaneous, fresh and almost dreamlike. Shakir was bearly 24 years old when Khushbu was published and since its first edition, this book has been a best seller wherever Urdu poetry is read or appreciated.

Khushbu turned Shakir into a celebrity. Aside from mushairas, newspapers and public fora, she was ever-present on the Pakistan television, perhaps as its only saving grace during the rigid years of Zia-ul-Haq’s Martial Law. Shakir had a natural talent for public speaking, reciting poetry and just being herself. I remember one monsoon evening in Murree when we were hooked to her presentation on Pakistan’s Independence Day. There was a distinct tenderness in her voice that was in sharp contrast to the platitudes being churned out. Above all she was beautiful. I remember she would read verses from her own work and from the great masters of Urdu poetry with complete ease and immense refinement. In the short period of time that she lived as a poet, Parveen did rather well and was quite prolific. Her later collections comprised Sad Barg (marsh merrygold), Khud Kalami (conversing with one’self), Inkaar (refusal), Maah-e-Tamaam (full moon) and Kaf-e-Aaina (edge of the mirror).

Her raw romanticism runs through her poetry. For instance, yay haseen shaam apni is a love poem of rare beauty; and has always been a favourite of mine. It is composite, taut and melodic; and here is my translation.

This melting evening of ours

Where everything dissolves

The scent of your clothes

The blossoming sprouts of my dreams

A deferred vision, this is

In a little while,

A star will emerge on the horizon

To gaze at you meaningfully…!

Your heart shall then reminisce

The echo of a memory

The tale of a separation,

Of an unfinished moment

Of un-blossomed dreams, things unsaid

We ought to have met

In times, considerate

In pursuit of attainable dreams

On a different sky

On a different earth

We ought to have met (more…)

As I was commenting on the Pak Tea House, I just recalled Faiz’s wonderful poem Subh-e-Aazaadii, a masterpiece of our times.

I am posting the Urdu version with translations here:

Ye daagh daagh ujaalaa, ye shab-gaziida sahar,

Vo intizaar thaa jis-kaa, ye vo sahar to nahiiN,

Ye vo sahar to nahiiN jis-kii aarzu lekar

Chale the yaar ke mil-ja`egi kahiiN na kahiN

(more…)

A reader – Joe 31 – has rendered a great translation of Faiz’s poem – “Intesab”. I am posting it as a separate blog entry for all those who read and enjoy Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Pakistan’s eminent poet. This poem appears as an introduction to one of his early collections of verse. This timeless poem is relevant even today as it celebrates the resilience and courage of Pakistani proletariat.

Dedicated to these times, and the sorrow of these times.
The pain of today, that is set against the plentiful garden of life.
The forest of dead leaves, that is my land.
The collection of pain that is my land.

Dedicated to the gloomy lives of clerks
Moth eaten hearts and words.
Dedicated to the postmen
Dedicated to the coachmen
Dedicated to the railway workers
Dedicated to the innocent beings in the factories. (more…)

This is a fabulous poem by Fakhar Zaman,currently the Chairman of Pakistan’s Academy of Letters. This poem, has also been quoted by several authors and I am grateful to have found it in Victoria Schofield’s brilliant article entitled CAN DEMOCRACY WORK IN PAKISTAN?*

Nothing describes better the fortitude and bravery of ordinary, disempowered Pakistanis who have suffered through the decades.

How can he who lost his eyesight paint?
How can he who lost his hands sculpt?
How can he who lost his hearing compose music?
How can he whose tongue was cut out sing?
How can he whose hands are tied write poetry?
How can he whose feet are fettered dance?
With muf?ed nose and mouth how can one inhale the scent of flowers?
But all this has really happened:
Without eyes, we painted,
Without hands, we sculpted statues,
Without hearing, we composed music,
Deprived of a tongue, we sang
Handcuffed, we wrote poetry,
With fettered legs, we danced
And the fragrance of flowers pierced our muffled mouths and nostrils.

*Schofield, Victoria(2009)’CAN DEMOCRACY WORK IN PAKISTAN?’,Asian Affairs,40:2,243 — 251

Syed Naveed Abbas has sent this contribution for Jahane Rumi. Shahab was an outstanding writer though his politics remains controversial and his extraordinary claims of piety and sainthood are deeply contested. However, he has inspired generations of writers and readers. RR

MAQDOOR HO TUO KHAK SAY POCHOO KEH AIE LAYEM

TUO NAY WO GANJ HAAE GERA MAYA KYA KEA

(If I was fortunate enough, I would ask the earth, Oh! Miser,

What did you do with those priceless treasures?)  – Ghalib

A careful study of the biographies of great men reveals that they lived for a central idea and their life’s work consisted of delivering that message to humanity. History tells us that when such men met with obstacles in their path, they further intensified their efforts to achieve their objectives. The greater the challenges great men had faced, the more determinedly they held (more…)

 It is not a coincidence that Qurratulain Hyder, grand dame of Urdu literature, is remembered whenever we are faced with crises of state and society. Hyder was not just a fiction writer but a chronicler, for her sense of history remains unparalleled in the annals of South Asian vernacular literature. Her magnum opus “Aag Ka Darya” (AKD) was written and published in the highly contested milieu of the post-partition Indian subcontinent, when the new nation states were re-writing their historical discourses. In Pakistan, AKD was a sensation right from the time when it was published in the late 1950s. The controversy it created remains pertinent despite the passage of five decades.

Hyder’s nuanced and highly sophisticated vision was not easily apparent to officialdom or to state-sponsored literary critics in Pakistan. (more…)

My piece that appeared in The Friday Times (May 29-4 June, 2009 issue). I have argued that the silence of Pakistani writers on terrorism and extremism is finally breaking  

	‘Fallen Indus’, a painting by the author
	‘Ignorance Is Bliss’, a miniature by Saira Wasim

Since the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and the global hysteria about ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’, Pakistan has faced the greatest of existential challenges after its dismemberment in 1971. As a frontline ally of the US in the war on terror, Pakistani society and polity have been engulfed by growing militancy and acts of violence. Whilst there is no single definition of ‘terrorism’, the mainstream media and policymakers – in the service of imperial rhetoric aimed to justify and perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq – have established terrorism as the major threat to domestic and regional peace in South Asia. Acts of premeditated and organised violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have thus assumed a central place in discourse on regional cooperation or its converse: the rivalries between the constructed nation states and their irresponsible power-elites.

 In this milieu, South Asian citizens have been the victims of violence, uncertainty and acrimony that have only led to the exacerbation of poverty, inequality, ascendancy of militarism and the war-mantra. All of this is taking place when globalization is relentlessly seeping into domestic economies, cultures and social systems. Where does this leave the writers and poets of the (more…)

My piece for TFT (May 15 issue)

Raza Rumi reviews 25 years of the Ajoka theatre group and describes how it has evolved into a powerful voice against terrorism and injustice

Madeeha Gauhar, the founder of the Ajoka theatre group, is a woman of conviction and passion. So is her husband and partner, the muse of Ajoka, Shahid Nadeem. Seldom have talent and commitment been so well enmeshed and intertwined with contemporary realities and political struggles. Theirs has been an extraordinary union – a meeting of minds and convergence of political and cultural expression. Small wonder, that the Ajoka couple have successfully refined and expanded the frontiers of street theatre in Pakistan.

Theatre -of folk and nautanki varieties – is embedded in the myriad cultures of South Asia since ancient times. Early carvings and engravings indicate the performative mores of the inhabitants of this region. Over centuries the art forms evolved and absorbed the influences of invaders, new cultures and languages. In the subcontinent, the streams of progressive theatre found a new expression in the twentieth century with the legendary Bombay and Calcutta based groups such as the Indian People’s Theatre Association inspired by the ideologies of the Left. The existence of theatre with meaning continued side by side with the colonial influences that introduced Victorian sensibilities, led to adaptations of Shakespeare, and the localisation of other trends that were shaping in modern Britain and Europe. (more…)

My piece published in The Friday Times

The bombing of Rehman Baba’s shrine is more proof that we are slipping, inch by inch, into an abyss. It is as if the soul of Peshawar, and by extension that of the whole of Pakistan has been scarred by those barbaric bombs and grenades. Among other ironies of the situation, this one stands out: the late Baba was instrumental in disseminating the message of Islam in the Khyber valley and beyond. And today the zealots destroy his shrine for being un-Islamic! A poet of love and tolerance, of amity and forgiveness to be treated in this manner displays how brutal we have become as a society and how fissured our state is. Otherwise a successor of a mighty steel frame, the indigenised state has surely given up to the hordes that are now hell bent on destroying Pakistan.

Rahman Baba was born in 1632 A.D. at Bahadur Kala, a village close to Peshawar. The Pashtuns hold his work in high esteem and his rank in Pashto poetry matches that of Hafiz Shirazi in Persian literature. The simple, down to earth and universal messages of his poetry have been revered by the Pashtuns as well as many adherents of the Sufi creed in South Asia and elsewhere.

In Afghanistan too, Rehman Baba was an icon and his muse was referred to as the ‘heart-beat’ of every Afghan. A friend told me how Saidu Baba, the famed saint of the now destroyed Swat valley, remarked that if the Pashtuns were to pray from a book other than the Holy Quran it would definitely be Rahman Baba’s work. But nothing describes Baba better than what Janes Enveldson had named him: the “Nightingale of Peshawar.” Alas, nightingales do not sing in gardens that have been ruined by long, harsh winters or other cataclysms such as hatred and violence. (more…)

I am posting the synopsis of my paper entitled Silhouetted Silences – contemporary Pakistani literature in the ‘age of terror’, that I presented at the SAARC writers’ festival held in Agra, India (March 13-17, 2009). The full paper needs to be edited and referenced so that will posted a little later.

Round my neck,
from time to time, there was the hallucination
of a noose, and now and then, the weight
of chains binding my feet.
Then one fine day
love came to drag me, bound and manacled,
into the same cavalcade as the others (Faiz)

Since the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and the global hysteria about ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’, Pakistan has faced the greatest of existential challenges after its dismemberment in 1971. As a frontline ally of the US in the war on terror, Pakistani society and polity have been engulfed by growing militancy and acts of violence commonly branded as terrorism. Whilst there is no single definition of ‘terrorism’, the mainstream media and policymakers – in the service of imperial rhetoric aimed to justify and perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq – have established terrorism as the major threat to domestic and regional peace in South Asia. Acts of premeditated and organised violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have thus assumed a central place in discourse on regional cooperation or its converse: the rivalries between the constructed nation states and their irresponsible power-elites.

In this milieu, the South Asian citizens have been the victims of violence, uncertainty and acrimonies that have only led to exacerbation of poverty, inequality, ascendancy of militarism and war-mantra. All of this is taking place when globalization is relentlessly seeping into domestic economies, cultures and social systems. Where does this leave the writers and poets of the region who grapple with the complex, confusing and fast changing social and political realities? Whilst the community of South Asian writers – traditionally the forbearers of intellectual and political movements – is beleaguered by corporate media industry, it has struggled to respond to challenges that events have created. (more…)

End of an era: Ainee Apa 1927 – 2007

Why do we all find ourselves present in this particular context, in this particular place? How have these pictures assembled here in this jigsaw puzzle? Soon, something will happen, pieces will scatter and become part of a newer pattern? This time will pass? (From My Temples, Too)

The death of Qurratulain Hyder marks the end of an era of the finest writing in Urdu. Hyder, also known as Ainee Apa, dominated the world of Urdu literature for over six decades. She started writing as a child and published her first novel, Meray Bhi Sanam Khanay (later trans-created as My Temples, Too), when she was 22 years old. The novel set a new trend in Urdu literature: a voice of modernity, yet one rooted in the traditions of the Indo-Muslim ethos as it struggled to narrate the tragic tale of the birth of two new nations. Even her worst critics, the doyens of the Progressive Writer’s Movement, acknowledged her innate gift for writing. Within three years, her second novel was published and she had unwittingly kick-started the revival of the Urdu novel from the point where Munshi Prem Chand had left it in the early twentieth century.

Her genius found a panoramic range of expression in Aag Ka Darya, which for its canvas, historical consciousness and characterisation, surpasses most novels written in any language. This novel deals with the plight of the human condition in the Indo-Pakistani setting from the fourth century BC to the 1950s. Starting with a translation of a TS Eliot poem, it traces multiple eras, with characters disappearing and reappearing in different guises, pitted against the broad strokes of history and time.

It was an epoch-making event in Urdu literature, but ran into trouble in Pakistan, as the novel highlighted the thousand year old composite Indo-Muslim culture of pre-Partition India, something which was not in line with the official version of history being constructed in Pakistan. Ideologically driven right-wing critics considered it a threat to their nationalism. (more…)

Conversations with novelist, filmmaker, feline aficionado, and femme fatale, Feryal Ali Gauhar, as she prepares to launch her second novel

Who doesn’t know Feryal Ali Gauhar? A novel at the top of The New York Times international bestseller list, years of television appearances and a highly publicised marriage to Jamal Shah that became fodder for countless gab sessions, have caricatured and made famous her persona. Had I not known her personally, I too may have fallen for the half-imagined tales littering the drawing rooms of socialites in this land of the pure. But I have had the pleasure of Feryal’s acquaintance for years, and not a moment of our friendship has resembled the images painted by petty gossip and lazy misinformation.

Feryal is a celebrated actor, filmmaker, journalist, activist, development worker and above all, a renowned novelist. Our recent meeting in her Zaman Park, Lahore residence took place after a long interlude. That afternoon, with the winter sun at our backs, we sat in her garden and talked with abandon while several of her cats and pet dogs meandered in and out of the plant-life; silent witnesses to our conversation and its occasional unfettered laughter.

Feryal is the youngest child of dynamic, accomplished parents. Her late mother, Khadija Gauhar, was a leading intellectual in Lahore who came to the city from South Africa after marrying her father, Sayyid was a military man from the NWFP who later retired from the army and took to farming. Her elder sister, Madiha Gauhar, is a talented theatre personality who founded theAjoka theatre group and has managed it for over two decades. Feryal was initially associated with Ajoka as its first female actor. The sisters also have an older brother, Aamir, an industrial engineer who operates a business in alternative energy products.

As a young woman Feryal attended the Lahore American School. Her experiences there included a reaction to the school’s requirement that all students, regardless of nationality, pledge allegiance to the United States. In response to this practice, the eight year old Feryal insisted that the Pakistani national anthem be played for the entire school as well. Later, Feryal was the first Pakistani and first female to head the school’s Student’s Council. She was an honour role student and captain of several sports teams. Several scions of leading feudal families at Aitchison College at that time remember Feryal leading her team into the school grounds to play soccer. What they especially remember is the soccer team uniform which revealed a rather shapely pair of legs. “Some have never forgotten that sight,” she chuckles. (more…)

While responding to the comments on my ATP post on Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi , I rambled a little on the literary feuds among the Urdu stalwarts. However, this post has two parts: first, a little more on the literary cross currents; and second our collective treatment of literary and cultural giants.

As Adil Najam pointed out in his comment, Qasmi was criticized by those on the left as being right wing. Interestingly, the conservatives also criticized him for his outspoken views on the abuse of religion and Zia’s dictatorship.

But Qasmi remained a humanist till his last and never allowed ideology to taint his creativity. This aspect of his long literary career has been astutely analyzed by Sarwat Ali has rightly titled him Un-Progressively Progressive in his obituary published in the News on Sunday, and he aptly describes the Qasmi predicament:

When Pakistan was created the question of the identity of the new nation became the trickiest one to handle, especially in its cultural context. Muhammad Hasan Askari took the issue by the horns and called for a specific entity known as Pakistani literature. Of course, this prescriptive drive was not received well in the camp of the artists and writers. On the other extreme were those who did not see the need of manufacturing a specific identity but liked to see it grow and evolve with an evolving sensibility. This was taken as denial by the more hardline writers, and a war of words ensued which pushed the central issue into the background and brought forth the battle lines on ideological and political affiliations of the writers. (more…)