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MJ Akbar
needs no introduction—he’s not just the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Asian Age as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Deccan Chronicle (earlier in the 1970s and 1980s he had launched Sunday and The Telegraph) but the author of several books—The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity, Nehru: The Making of a Nation, Kashmir: Behind the Vale, India: The Siege Within, Riot After Riot and a collection of his articles, Byline. This latest book, Blood Brothers: A Family Saga, published by Roli Books, was recently launched in Delhi. It runs, as the very title suggests, along an autobiographical pattern. Set in Akbar’s native Telinipara, it weaves the socio-economic fabric with the political context of the times. The very last sentence of this volume holds out much, “I was seventeen. Life had begun.” Probably this very line foretells that there’s more coming from him, for as and when life actually ‘begins’ there’s so much more to narrate, offload and expand upon, especially in these politically surcharged times. Excerpts from a telephone interview with M.J. Akbar, by
Humra Quraishi Why did you think in terms of writing this volume which can be termed autobiographical? The events are true. Truth is untidy, fiction clarifies the truth ..The story has been with me for almost all my life. But three or four years back I began thinking in terms of writing it… How
long did it take you to write it? Were these restless
years till you actually completed this book? These are long pregnancies. The gestation period is very long. Until the child comes out there’s that unspoken fear whether all will be fine No, I wasn’t restless. How important was it for you to write and narrate this story. This book is important for me not because it is an individual’s story but also because it dwells on what the country has gone through, the ebbs and flows between the two communities, Hindus and Muslims. The very last sentence in this book is “I was seventeen. Life had begun.” It more than indicates that with life ‘beginning’ there wil be more coming from you, along this strain. That’s an echo, and an echo ends. It’s a metaphor. Let’s talk about this book… about the present. You describe your native Telinipara. Has it changed in recent years in terms of the political and communal build-ups the country has witnessed in recent years. Till the last three or four years back, when my parents were alive I’d been regularly visiting Telinipara ... yes, there ‘d been changes with an apparent ghettoisation. People from the two communities were not living together as described in the book though after the exhaustion and anger of the Babri Masjid destruction there’s been relative peace but that trust seemed lost. Suppose the setting of this book was, say, in a town of Gujarat, what difference would you have seen? Every state has seen ‘Gujarat’..the issue is of the intensity of life outside the riots ..can it be worse than what my parents went through? Seeing what has been happening in the recent years are you hopeful that sense would prevail and there’d be lesser
turbulence? I hope so. I never let the present defeat the future. Also I’m not pessimistic and refused to get judgmental. After all, we—people from the two communities—are of the same blood, blood brothers. How did your family’s history trickle down from the days of your paternal grandfather? Family stories are told very gently. They are narrated all very gently, over the years. |
