Family tales and personal takes
Nonika Singh

When relatives take upon themselves to write biographies, do they enrich history with personal accounts or does objectivity take a backseat?

How we love to peep into other people’s lives. And what better way to get to know people than through books. Indeed, no book can truly sum up a man. As Mark Twain said, "Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written."

Yet biographies remain legitimate and accurate sketches of men and women the history must record and the ensuing generations must know.

Arthur Balfour might have felt, "Biography should be written by an acute enemy", the reality can often be to the contrary. Not only are biographies penned by fawning admirers and gushing friends but often by loving family members. Look around and you will find wives, granddaughters, sons, nephews and nieces putting pen to paper and unravelling many layers of people they hold dear. Or do they? The point of contention is — are they able to hold the pen like a weapon or even like a scalpel that digs deep and throws back incisive details, little-known facts, amusing anecdotes that delight and reveal? Or they are swept by emotions and allow their pen to be swayed.

Of course, the answer invariably lies in who is holding the pen. Is he or she qualified enough to write one? For instance, when Pakistan’s eminent art historian Fakir S Aijazuddin, recipient of the Order of British Empire, decided to write one on his forefathers, the famous three Fakir Muslims brothers who occupied positions of eminence in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign, few could question his credentials. After all, he who had published two books on the Sikh Portraits in the Lahore Museum collection and on the Sikh paintings in the Princess Bamba collection displayed in the Lahore is one of the most noted art scholars of Pakistan.

Similarly when Nandita Puri documented the achievements of one of the finest actors of Indian film industry her husband Om Puri or Rahul Singh was commissioned by Roli Books to write In the Name of the Father on the renowned writer Khushwant Singh, both had a journalistic background to boast of and back them. Today, Om Puri estranged from Nandita, feels that the person close to oneself is not suited for the task of a biographer for objectivity is compromised. The reality however is whatever may be the merits or demerits of Nandita’s book Unlikely Hero: Om Puri, she can’t be faulted on the count of subjectivity. Not only did she not shy away from revealing facts, some startling ones too as they were, she didn’t let personal sentiments cloud her writing style. Without doubt, this was no awestruck wife writing. Predictably, her book brought out skeletons only an insider can be privy to.

Needless to say, family members know more than others. Neena Tiwana who wrote Oh Joh Si: Harpal Tiwana Kala Ate Zindagi on her late husband, the theatre thespian Harpal Tiwana, feels she is the best person to word paint her husband’s life for who knew him better than her. But to know is clearly not enough. Nor is sensationalism or the dare to state unsavoury truths, especially if these do not provide rare insights. Even though the biography on Om had a fair seasoning of spicy trivia like his physical intimacy with the maid, the book is far from superlative. Similarly though Rahul may not have had any compunction in talking about his mother’s affair, the book didn’t pass muster with many booklovers and scholars. Despite the juicy titbits, some reviewers felt that he didn’t really come up with anything new on the famous sardar whose life was like an open book. And some dubbed his biography a poor cousin of Khushwant’s own candid cut in his autobiography.

While Rahul’s biography, like his life, might have got overshadowed by his father’s larger-than-life persona — do things become easier when the biographer is removed from the subject by several generations? Aizazuddin doesn’t think so. He states that it is possible to write about contemporary events too with academic detachment. Taking a leaf from the past, he had to be doubly cautious for there was a danger of facts getting mixed up with fables. As he puts it, "I had to present their lives as they lived them, not as their descendants believed."

Indeed, making a family member come alive through word wizardry is certainly not the easiest job on the earth or akin to lazy journalism. Asha Sharma whose book, An American in Gandhi's India: The Biography of Satyanand Stokes, has earned fulsome praise reminds it’s an uphill task. She says, "The only easy part is that as a family member one would have access to information which outsiders may not have. Yet it is much more challenging for a family member to write the biography as the responsibility is much greater." After all her grandfather’s life was a complex story. An American who settled in India and participated in the Indian Freedom Movement, Satyanand Stokes is best remembered today for having introduced apple cultivation to Himachal Pradesh.

But since she wanted to reflect with unfailing accuracy the lesser-known aspects of his personality she had to research diligently.

Even though Rahul had a ready reference by way of his father’s autobiography as well as accessibility of the man who never did hide anything, it took him more than a year to write the book. Are relatives also stumped by what and what not to share? Neena asserts she had no problems in talking about Harpal’s foibles like his anger and devil-may-care attitude for instance. Rahul’s dilemma was not what to and what not to reveal "for what I knew the world too did" but how to give a spin to what had already been told in the autobiography. No wonder even the sceptics gave him marks for adding extra spice.

At the end of the day, of course, these writings are not an exercise in self-aggrandisement but tributes to significant others. Actually most are born out of an inherent urge to record the inspirational lives for the posterity. Asha was compelled to write one for she did feel that her grandfather Satyanand Stokes’ stellar work and contribution to India had gone unnoticed. Neena too felt the story of Harpal who breathed new life into theatre in Punjab was crying to be told. Incidentally, she had no intention to write it herself. Only when she expressed her desire that someone should, family friend and illustrious writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana implored her to wear the mantle of the biographer. Similarly Fakir, astounded by the range and quality of the archival material available on his forefathers, believed that a book should be written. Only he just happened to be the first to do so.

Now that they have picked the gauntlet, none of them is proclaiming that it’s the last word. Neena would only be too glad if an outsider cared to delve into Harpal’s extraordinary life and lent a new meaning and interpretation to it. When Asha’s book came out reviewers marvelled why researchers actually hadn’t? Rahul strongly believes that an outsider would be the best person to chronicle his father’s life. But will that ensure impartiality and excellence? By his own admission most biographies, especially in India even written by dispassionate observers end up becoming hagiographies.

Just as a book can’t be judged by its cover, it can’t be by the name of the author or his or her family connection with the subject. Like all books the test of biographies is in what lies beneath the cover. Only relatives itching to tell family tales must remember what the late Khushwant Singh told Neelima Dalmia Adhar, "Write on your father by all means but with no holds barred." And actually when she did come out with Father Dearest: The Life and Times of R.K. Dalmia, she was brutally honest having no hesitation in bringing out traits that many might find hateful but which she called free spirited. If truth be told and has to be told, it has to be done unflinchingly. How many find that courage more importantly how many find the gumption to live with its consequences may not be the only test but can be one of the important metres on which biographies have to be tested. Too much of undiluted praise only dilutes the flavour of a biography. Few can perfect the art of tightrope walk of being insider-outsider, or objective as a part of the subject.

Up & close with Amrita

As a rule I dislike biographies and autobiographies. They ring false." When Amrita Sher-Gil an eminent Indian painter, sometimes known as India's Freida Kahlo, wrote this in a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1937 , there was no way she could have known that one day her nephew acclaimed artist Vivan Sundaram’s book Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self Portrait in Letters and Writings would be hailed as a work of art. In fact, Vivan has constantly redefined known notions of art even fused the lines between biography and autobiography. Brimming with Amrita's letters, reference points emanating from her correspondence and artworks, it brought Amrita alive in many new ways. While Vivan remains both present and absent in the book, the boundaries between the personal, social and political too were interpolated. Born after she was no more, he was assailed by niggling doubts----"Am I exploiting the situation? Is it a personal indulgence"? Yet he decided to give the full picture of Amrita with provocative moments intact. In the end, of course, it’s as much a tribute of one artist to another as that of a nephew to an aunt.

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