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Circle and Other Stories Intizar Husain translated by Rakhshanda Jalil. Rupa & Co. Pages 134. Rs 195.
How many of us go back to our village or small town and settle there? But the fact that we can do so, is reassuring. When you live with the realisation that it is lost to you irretrievably and you can never ever get back, the nostalgia becomes a deep yearning and an obsession, which hurts and keeps hurting. This is the predicament of Intizar Husain, who left his hometown in India and migrated to Pakistan in 1947. The Muslims who migrated to Pakistan were called Mohajirs, an honourable label that was applied to the migrants who had accompanied Prophet Mohammed. Soon, they were made to realise that they were unwanted outsiders and the term Mohajir itself came to sound like a pejorative (The leader of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, Altaf Hussain, who is a double exile, living in London, visited India recently to attend an international conference). Where the exiles are happy and successful in an alien land, the yearning moderates into nostalgia with the passing years. There is an occasional sigh and no more. Intizar Husain, being doubly disadvantaged as a Mohajir and a Shia in a predominantly Sunni land, could find no sort of a substitute for his lost home and continues to haunt it like a ghost. Many of the stories in this volume are thus an engagement with his memories, in which he remains trapped like a fly in amber. He begins the story Circle (the first in this collection) by saying: "It is as though someone is urging me to rake the`85 fifty-year-old ashes." The realisation that the land of his birth and childhood is lost to him forever and he will be an alien if he goes back comes out in another story. He is back home in his dream, which turns into a nightmare when the realisation suddenly hits him that he has no passport or visa. The existential angst of his situation brings to mind that memorable play of Sartre No Exit. There are multiple quests: for that place in space and time that was home; for the life that is lost in living; the existential predicament of a man who needs a reason to laugh (Needlessly, from original Urdu title Besabab); the true source of wisdom, (Jabala's Son). The last one rings a variation on the ancient tale and locates it in nature and its denizens and not in man, the vain and foolish creature, who fancies himself, to be the acme of creation. In Sleep, the sense of loss and betrayal after the defeat of Pakistan in 1971 is forcefully brought out. Doubts as to whether "they" exploited "them" or were exploited by "them" are articulated and widely used terms of abuse such as "democratic bastards" and "Indian agents" figure in the narrative without the name Bangladesh being mentioned even once. The protagonists are composites of autobiographical elements, shared memories of fellow exiles and bitter reflections of Pakistanis after the loss of East Pakistan. The stories reflect the compulsive need of the writer to transform experience and memory into "something rich and strange". Rakhshanda Jalil, while bringing out the challenges faced by her in making this translation, avers that she has stuck to the "word", letting the "spirit" take care of itself. She strikes a note of despair: "The indomitable spirit of Intizar Husain's writing soars above the translation intact and unharmed." She is being much too modest about her achievement. Of course, no translation can ever be a real substitute for the original. As someone has wisely observed, a translation can at best be like the reverse side of a piece of brocade. Some cynic has said that a translation is like a woman: One that is faithful is not beautiful; one that is beautiful is not faithful. In performing this labour of love, Ms Jalil has succeeded in taking care of the word as well as the spirit of the original and the translation is both faithful and beautiful. The Glossary would be
quite helpful to the general reader, who may not be familiar with the
cultural mores of the Muslims of the subcontinent. However, there are
some inexplicable omissions. Words such as Imam and Imam Zaman,
especially in the context of the Shia beliefs, should have found a
place. |
YOU
may leave the land of your nativity, but it never leaves you; your
childhood memories remain a part of your being. Yet, many of us do move
away to towns and cities and sometimes to foreign shores. When a bout of
nostalgia or some social occasion drags us there, often our cherished
memories receive a jolt. The peaceful countryside has vanished to be
replaced by an unplanned urban sprawl, and the attendant stench and
squalor serve as an effective antidote to our nostalgia and we are only
too glad to get out.