REVIEW OF PATNA BLUES IN THE SCROLL

This Patna novel is not just about differences and disappointments, it’s a tribute to the ’90s

Abdullah Khan’s ‘Patna Blues’ tells of the aspirations, disappointments and desires of a once prosperous Muslim family in Bihar.

A third of the way through Abdullah Khan’s debut novel, Patna Blues, there is mention of a “pandooa”. According to myths popular among Muslims in the villages of north Bihar, where this novel is partly set, a pandooa is a river ghost. Often female, pandooas “are departed souls who have committed suicide by jumping into [a] river. They try to kill whoever they find near [that] river at an odd time like noon or after dusk. They kill so they can have some company too.”

The pandooa that was seen in the village in the novel was a woman “dressed in bridal wear, bedecked with jewellery”, “strolling along the banks of the river.” Apparently, “a newly married Rajput girl from a neighbouring village had jumped into the river” and had turned into a pandooa.

When the novel’s protagonist, Arif Khan, raised in Patna, goes to the riverside along with a cousin to check if the pandooa is real, he notices a handwritten poster on a defunct electric pole. It “warned wayfarers about the threat of the river ghost” and “advised [them] against going to the river alone after dusk.” Arif Khan also notices that “[there] were electric poles everywhere in the village, but no electricity.”

Caste and differences

The novel spans a period of a little more than a decade and for the most part, is set in Patna. It begins sometime in the year 1991, when Arif is about 21 years old. The pandooa episode takes place in the year 1992, right before the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Just like the electric poles that wait without electricity, the characters in Patna Blues too seem destined not to have their wishes turned to reality, even if they deserved to have what they yearn for. A feeling of loss runs through the novel.

While the poles without electricity is just one of several ironies that the novel talks about, what also struck me about the pandooa episode was that the ghost is a Rajput, a person from the Kshatriya caste. Bengali folklore too tells of Brahmodaitya, the benevolent ghost of a Brahmin. Is caste such a dominant force in India that even the spirit of a dead person is not free from it? Or is it a bane or a privilege only for the living?

Caste – and also the differences between people and communities – is another theme that Patna Blues tackles. At the beginning itself, Arif is made aware of his Pathan roots by an elderly relative who says that it was not Arif but Zakir, his younger brother, who, with his tall stature and fair skin, looked like a Pathan. Later in the novel, we read of the difficulties Arif’s parents face while looking for a groom for Nazneen, one of Arif’s younger sisters. They do not agree to her marrying a suitable boy because although the boy’s father is a Pathan, his mother is julaha, the weaver caste that is lower on the caste hierarchy.

Being Muslim

There are several other instances of differences in Patna Blues. Arif’s family is seen as different since they are Muslims in a place that is predominantly Hindu. Arif’s father, a policeman with the Bihar Military Police, has a large family to look after in Patna. He also helps relatives – both close and distant, who live in faraway villages and do not know much about the city – who come to Patna for work and stay in the flat allotted to him. While this puts a lot of strain on family’s resources, be it space or the grains that have to be shared, it does not deter Arif’s father from helping people in need. By the time of his retirement, the family is practically in penury. When he seeks an extension on his stay in his official quarters, he has several roadblocks to encounter as the officers are not willing to help a Muslim. Zakir, an aspiring actor, ends up becoming an extra in Hindi films in Mumbai and has his own share of troubles because of his religious identity.

Patna Blues is built around two instances of differences and society’s reaction to them. Arif, an IAS aspirant, is attracted to an older, married, Hindu woman, Sumitra. They bond over their love for Urdu poetry (a mode of expression that the author too uses in several places instead of prose). Arif is sure that he is in love with Sumitra, but he suppresses his feelings for the older woman thinking of the scandal that would ensue if people came to know of the relationship they shared. There is a difference between the ages of Arif and Sumitra and, of course, between the communities they belong to.

Heartbreak and nostalgia

Arif clears the mains of the UPSC Civil Services Examination twice, but is unable to clear the interview. His obsession with Sumitra, together with the dwindling situation of his family, sees him gradually losing touch with his studies. In the meantime, his friend Mritunjay, with whom he used to prepare for the UPSC exams, becomes an IAS officer and is posted in Bihar itself. At one point, Arif is doubtful if Mritunjay would even recognise him if they crossed paths somewhere. This double disappointment – an incomplete, one-sided love affair and seeing a friend succeed – makes Patna Blues a heartbreaking, engrossing read. It is hard not to shed a tear for this tenacious, tragic hero.

Around this tragedy are built the strands of caste and class differences and the mundane affairs of a lower middle-class household in Patna in the 1990s, all set against the backdrop of landmark events that took place during that time.

To readers in Bihar and Jharkhand – especially those who have grown up in the 1990s – Patna Blues is sure to open up a treasure trove of memories. From the description of winter in north Bihar to the mention of Gandhi Maidan, Patna Medical College Hospital, and Mona and Elphinstone cinema halls and even the film magazine, Priya, reading the novel is like snuggling up in one’s warm memories. Abdullah Khan’s debut novel, apart from being a story of differences and disappointments, is a lovingly written tribute to the final decade of the last century.

Patna Blues, Abdullah Khan, Juggernaut.

READ THIS REVIEW ON SCROLL.IN WEBSITE

Ek Ghazal

ग़ज़ल

ज़िंदा अपने सोये हुए जज़्बात किया कर

जुबां है तेरे पास हक़ की बात किया कर

यूँ तो मिलते रहते हो सारी दुनिया से तुम

खुद से भी तो कभी मुलाकात किया कर

अकेले इंक़लाब नहीं आता ऐ मेहनतकशों  

जो भी करना है मिलके सब साथ किया कर

हो कशीदगी कम और चलन प्यार का बढ़े

तू मुल्क में पैदा कुछ ऐसे हालात किया कर

अहले दौलत पर तेरी मेहरबानियां है बहुत

मुफ़लिसों को भी तो कुछ इनायात किया कर

कैसे जीते हैं लोग बस्तियों में ये जानना है अगर

तो निकल महल से और सड़कों पे रात किया कर

EK GHAZAL

ग़ज़ल

प्यार बहुत कुछ, पर जान से बढ़ के थोड़े है

है दौलत ज़रूरी, पर ईमान से बढ़ के थोड़े है

तख़्त-ओ-ताज, लाल-ओ -जवाहिर चाहिए मुझे

ये सब लेकिन तेरी  मुस्कान से बढ़ के थोड़े है

सुना है बड़ा शानो शौक़त है साहब-ए -मसनद का

मगर उनका जलवा , खुदा की शान से बढ़के थोड़े है

काशी, काबा या हो कलीसा, सब अपनी जगह हैं

इनकी क़ीमत मगर किसी इंसान से बढ़के थोड़े है

माना की  हवा से बातें करती हैं उसके महल की मीनारें

लेकिन उसकी बुलन्दी इस आसमान से बढ़के थोड़े है

वैसे तो  पढ़ा है मैंने खुसरो,ज़ौक़ और ग़ालिब को  भी

लेकिन उनकी तहरीरें ‘अब्द’ के दीवान से बढ़के थोड़े है

My Review of INDIA SINCE 1947 in The Friday Times

On the eve of the Indian independence, many doomsayers foretold that the entity called India would not survive too long. They believed that owing to its religious, ethnic and linguistic diversities, it would fragment into many mini-nations. Contrary to their predictions, India not only survived but also emerged as an economic power to reckon with. But the big question is whether India has been able to achieve what the founding fathers of the nation had envisaged for it in 1947. If you throw this question to different set of Indians, the answers would be dissimilar. Some people will tell you about a shining India vis-a-vis its impressive growth rate while others would draw your attention towards a dark underbelly of underdevelopment and deprivation. 'India Since 1947: looking Back at a Modern Nation' tries to find answers to such questions and explores how 'the Idea of India' has fared during the last 66 years.

Edited by Atul Kumar Thakur, this anthology has many renowned writers, economists, environmentalists, bureaucrats, politicians and journalists chiming in with their own unique perspectives on India.

Ram Chandra Guha, the eminent historian, opens the book with a highly readable essay on bilingual intellectuals; writers and thinkers who were/are equally at home with English as well as at least one of the Indian languages. The best examples are Mahatma Gandhi who wrote in Hindi, Gujarati and English with equal ease and Rabindranath Tagore whose translations of his own work 'Gitanjali' fetched him a Nobel Prize. While listing the causes of the decline in the numbers of 'linguidextrous' intellectuals, he writes, ''The decline of the bilingual intellectual in contemporary India is thus a product of a combination of many factors: public policy - which emphasised the mother tongue alone; elite preference- which denied or diminished the mother tongue altogether; social change- as in new patterns of marriage; and economic change- as in the material gains to be had from a command of English.'

In his essay 'India: Where Democracy has Gone Wrong', Prem Shanker Jha ponders over the issue of genesis of corruption in India. 'The origins of corruption', he says, 'can be traced in two deep flaws in the constitution India adopted in 1950. The first is the omission of a system for meeting the cost of running a democracy i.e. the entire process of selecting and then electing the people representatives. The second is the failure to enact provisions that would convert a bureaucracy that had been schooled over a century into believing that their function was to rule the people into its servants.' This reviewer can't agree more. Undoubtedly, the political sleaze and the bureaucratic arrogance have been the biggest hurdles in the progress of India.

Politicians (with the exception of the leftists), businessmen and the purveyors of crony capitalism have always praised the 'meteoric rise' of Indian economy after the liberalisation policies of 1990s. Growth rate and direct foreign investments have now become the only criteria to measure development. The worsening conditions of the poorest segments of Indian society are not part of any discussion about India's growth story. If you utter even a single word about the inclusive growth, you are either branded anti-development or are bracketed with the Ultra-Maoists. This inequitable economic growth, however, bothers Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze. In their essay 'Putting Growth in its Place', they strongly advocate for a development model where each and every Indian partakes of the fruit of the progress. Right now, 'An exaggerated concentration on the lives of the minority of the better-off, fed strongly by media interest, gives an unreal picture of rosiness of what is happening to Indians in general, and stifles public dialogue of other issues. Imaginative democratic practice, we have argued, is essential for broadening and enhancing India's development achievements.' 

The rise of Naxalism or Maoism is a side effect of such sloppy development models which widen the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. In 'India: Underlined in Red' Atul Kumar Thakur delineates the factors that breed extreme ideologies like Naxalism in India. Though, he is unequivocal in denouncing violence to achieve a political end, he accepts that in some clusters the Naxalite movement has altered the social and political power structures and has empowered the oppressed classes. An incisive and perfectly balanced essay, it is written surprisingly by a 29-year old.

Beyond the politics and the economy, there is a delightful article by India's best cultural historian Pran Nevile about K L Saigal and his legacy. It is a well-known fact that India's three greatest singers of the post-independence era, Rafi, Mukesh and Kishore had started their musical careers by imitating the great Saigal. But the reviewer wishes that the editor had included more on the contemporary music scene in India since Saigal sahib was a pre 1947 phenomenon. South Indian singing legends like Yesu Das or Ghantasala come to mind. 

There are four articles out of a total of thirty that disappoint us, because they are either hurriedly written pieces or rely more on polemics than in-depth analysis of serious issues. 

Ultimately, this is a great collection of essays about post-Independence India, outlining policies or ideas that worked in India as well as what went wrong during the last six and half decades of its post-colonial existence. It is not only useful for Indian policy makers but can also be helpful to leaders of other South Asian countries that share a history with India.

TO READ AT THE FRIDAY TIMES WEBSITE CLICK HERE

  

My Review of The Selector of Souls

Murder in the womb

ABDULLAH KHAN

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The dark gloomy corners of our country, rife with female foeticide, are illuminated in this insightful novel. ABDULLAH KHAN

The eye-catching blue cover of this intriguingly titled novel makes you take notice of it. The book reminds you of Kishwar Desai’s Witness the Night because it also has female foeticide as its theme. But unlike Kishwar’s book, there are many more issues on which the book focuses; we continually hear the reverberations of historical tragedies like the partition and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. There is also a subtle reference to the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in 1990s.

The opening scene is, undoubtedly, the strongest part of the book. The author describes the brutal killing of an infant girl by her maternal grandmother, Damini, who wants to save her daughter from future distress for having so many daughters. Damini also finds justifications in religious scriptures for her heinous crime.

The cruelties shown by the father when he refuses to name his newly born third daughter and the mother who doesn’t breast-feed her child are as disconcerting as the final act of Damini.

Damini is one of two major characters of this novel. The other one is Anu, a woman stuck in a bad marriage. Anu has accepted Christianity but also follows the religion of her ancestors, i.e. Hinduism, and doesn’t find any contradiction between these two religions. Her only daughter, who is an outcome of marital rape, has been sent to Canada where she lives with Anu’s kind hearted and caring cousin. Here, in India, Anu decides to dedicate her life to social service and lands in Gurkot, a small village in the northern part of India, to work in a health clinic.

In this village, Anu aka Sister Anu comes across Damini, whom she has met once in Delhi. Damini joins Anu in her work. As a health worker Damini is involved in helping willing parents in sex selection of children. And here too she finds excuses to justify her ethically wrong actions. For her, killing a foetus is less brutal than killing an infant girl.

Through these two perfectly imagined characters, Shauna Singh Baldwin offers commentaries on the socio-political issues of contemporary India and you are made to see the dark gloomy corners of this largest democracy of the world that exist beyond the hype of “shining India”.

Culturally insightful and beautifully written, the novel covers many social and political matters that affected India during the last 65 years but, of course, the focus is on female foeticide and the status of women in Indian society.

The negative aspect of this book is its length as the pace of narrative is marred by the unnecessary use of expositions and too much cultural detail. The dialogues are also stretched beyond the desirable limits.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-literaryreview/murder-in-the-womb/article4278330.ece

A GHAZAL

ایک غزل 

اشاروں سے تم نے کچھ تو کہا ہے

یا اٹھلانے کی یہ تیری  ادا ہے

نگاہیں تو  میری سب کہہ رہی تھی

 تم نے نہ سمجھا  تو کس کی خطا ہے

جو میں بے وفا ہوں یہ تم کہہ رہے ہو

  کہ تم بے وفا ہو یہ سب کو پتہ ہے

جو تیرے لب پہ ہے  وہ ٹھیک ہے

 یہ بھی بتا دو جو دل میں چھپا ہے

  قاتل ہے منشف اور مظلوم ملذم

یہ  کیسی عدالت یہ کیسی سزا ہے

نمرود فرون سب کےسب  مٹ گئے

سونچا ہے کیا  تو کی  کوئ  خدا ہے

عبدللہ خان ---

एक ग़ज़ल 

इशारों से तुमने कुछ तो कहा है 

या इठलाने  की ये  तेरी  अदा है

निगाहें  तो मेरी   सब कह रही थी 

तुमने न समझा  तो किसकी खता  है 

जो  मैं बेवफा हूँ ये तुम कह रहे हो

 कि  तुम बेवफा हो ये सबको  पता है

जो तेरे लब पे है  वो  ठीक है  

ये भी बता दो जो  दिल में छुपा है

 क़ातिल है  मुन्शिफ़  और मज़लूम  मुल्ज़िम  

ये  कैसी अदालत  ये कैसी सज़ा  है

निमरूद फ़िरौन  सब के सब  मिट गए 

सोंचा है क्या  की तू कोई  खुदा है  

---अब्दुल्लाह खान 

My Review of Julie O' Yang's debut Novel

HISTORICALLY INSIGHTFUL

In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese imperial Army captured the city of Nanking (Nanjing), the then capital of the Republic of China, and carried out a massacre in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians including women and children were slaughtered and thousands of women and girls were raped. This shameful episode from the history, known as Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, makes the backdrop of Julie O’ Yang’s debut novel Butterfly.

The eponymous protagonist of this heartachingly beautiful novel, Butterfly, is a married Chinese woman and calligrapher who has lost her teenage son in the Nanking Massacre. Years later, still trying to overcome her great loss, she happens to meet a mysterious young man almost of her dead son’s age and starts a torrid love affair with him. But, then she discovers a horrible secret about the young man and faces the biggest dilemma of her life.

The book is not just a love story with darker shades but also is a treatise on the futility and brutality of wars between nations and a critique on the idea of nation state. Historically insightful with political undertones, the novel has fully fleshed out multi-layered and credible characters. Written beautifully and structured intelligently, you get hooked to the story right from the first page. The denouement is also equally fascinating.

Highly recommended!

You can buy this book from HERE

To know more about JULIE O' YANG please click here

CLICK HERE TO READ AN EXCERPT FROM BUTTERFLY

My Interview of Nayantara Sahgal

Indira and India

ABDULLAH KHAN

The HinduNayantara Sahgal. Photo: V Sreenivasa Murthy

TOPICS

books and literaturenon-fiction

We have “ruling families” all over the country, so why single out Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, asks Nayantara Sahgal.

Just released 'Indira Gandhi: Tryst With Power' by Nayantara Sahgal is an in-depth study of Indira Gandhi‘s style of functioning and political leadership which, according to the author, “marked a drastic break with the democratic tradition of her family and Indian politics.” As a member of the Nehru-Gandhi extended family, Nayantara Sahgal had observed her cousin Indira at close quarters and had access to the kinds of documents which an outsider can’t think of laying their hands on. That is why this beautifully written book gives its readers an opportunity to have a peek in to the mind of enigmatic Indira Gandhi. In this interview, Sahgal talks about Indira, India and dynastic succession in politics.

Tryst with Power is different from the other biographies of Indira Gandhi because it gives an insight into her inner life. Please tell us how this book was conceptualised. Do you think it would have been possible for anybody else to write such an intimate biography?

It is not a biography but a study of her political style. It interested me because her style was a definite departure from that of her two predecessors and from the way the Congress party had functioned until then. The book started as a paper I was asked to contribute to a conference on "Leadership in South Asia" at SOAS (School of Oriental & African Studies), London University, in 1974. When my conclusion that we were heading toward authoritarian rule proved to be correct, I expanded it into a book. As a close relative I was able to give it a personal dimension.

What do you think about Indira Gandhi’s decision to intervene in the Bangladesh liberation war? Who benefited from its outcome, India, Indira Gandhi or both?

It was an act of statesmanship and great courage to support East Bengal’s fight to restore its elected government. The whole region benefited by the result, Bangladesh most of all.

How do you look at the stunning defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977 and then her miraculous rise, like a proverbial phoenix, three years later?

Indians rejected authoritarian rule in 1977 when they defeated the Congress. Equally they showed their good sense in re-electing Indira Gandhi and the Congress party three years later, because the quarrelling coalition of the Janata Party had let them down so badly, failing to punish those who had been responsible for the Emergency’s excesses.

TO READ MORE CLICK HERE

A Review in Hindu Literary Review

Mystical musings

ABDULLAH KHAN

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Special ArrangementRumi: A New Translation; Farrukh Dhondy.

TOPICS

books and literaturepoetry

This book offers a great excuse to revisit the poetry of Rumi.

Rumi: A New Translation; Farrukh Dhondy, Harper Perennial, Rs.299.

Reynold A. Nicholson, renowned English Orientalist and Islamic scholar, once said of Sufi mystic and poet Mevalana Jalaluddin Rumi: “The influence of his example, his thought and his language is powerfully felt through all the succeeding centuries; every Sufi after him capable of reading Persian has acknowledged his unchallenged leadership. To the West, now slowly realising the magnitude of his genius ... he is fully able to prove a source of inspiration and delight not surpassed by any other poet in the world’s literature.”

Nicholson made this statement many decades ago but it still holds true. While Rumi has been widely read for the last eight centuries in countries where Persian is spoken, he has now become popular in Europe and the U.S. When it comes to rendering Rumi’s works into English, prominent names include Reynold A. Nicholson, Arthur John Arberry, Coleman Barks and Nadel Khalili. Both Nicholson and Arberry were British scholars and translated Rumi’s poetry either literally or semi-literally. But, the person who made Rumi a household name in the U.S., Coleman Barks, doesn’t know Persian and his translations are not actually translations but reinterpretations of English translations. That is why many critics point out that Barks’ translations (despite their popularity among general readers) are superficial. Another translator Nadel Khalili was a native of Iran and familiar with the essence of Rumi’s mystical musings. But Khallili could not replicate the rhyme schemes of Rumi.

When Farrukh Dhondy, the well known novelist and screenplay writer, embarked on a mission to render Rumi’s poetry in English, he kept three things in his mind. One, the English version should have the fragrance of the original verses. Two, the translation of a poem should be a poem. Three, he would stick to Rumi’s rhyme schemes. The result of his labour is delightful.

Dhondy’s translations reflect that he understands the cultural and philosophical context of Rumi’s poetry. Though, like Barks, he is not a scholar of Persian language but understands Urdu, a language which borrows heavily from Persian vocabulary. And that might have helped him to decipher the real Rumi. This offering is a beautiful excuse for us to revisit Rumi.

A PIECE OF MY WRITING IN BROOKLYN RAIL

The Alchemy of Identities by Abdullah Khan

In 1996, a day after India’s fantastic win over Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup Quarterfinal, I was sitting in the offices of a leading English daily in Patna, the capital of the northern Indian state of Bihar. At that time, I used to be a freelance contributor to this national paper’s local edition. The paper’s features team and I were, of course, discussing cricket. Everybody was trying to guess which strategy the Indian team would adopt against a resurgent Sri Lankan team in the semi-finals. READ MORE
http://brooklynrail.org/2009/09/express/the-alchemy-of-identities

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