The fragmented world, we live in, seems to be perennially riddled with suspicion, mistrust and vacuity and simultaneously it also has a rich skein of ‘Spectacle’ running through the whole society. We tend to revel in grabbing other’s intense attention and even an ordinary citizen wants to be a celebrity. To attain his cherished goal, he conveniently shares his repressed passion, anguish and predicament that seldom one experiences first hand. One can hardly differentiate between private and public and the author of ‘Fall of Public Man’ rightly observes that popular culture has reduced autobiography to a popular kind of mushy and commercial writing.
Autobiography has become the dominant narrative of our time as it is supposed to uncover a poignant tale of intimate relationship. The author sees the past in a renewed light and unwittingly distorts it. He does not tell how things happened but narrates how he would like things to happen. Now, who is considered as an authentic and genuine person? It is not who strives for maintaining a high degree of sobriety and righteousness, conversely it is who instantly discloses all his secrets. The autobiography occupies the central position in literary discourse and autobiographies of writers, political leaders, players and showbiz stars appear frequently. Seldom does an autobiography lay bare the myriad emotional myths that scaffold the social spaces of living. Eminent Urdu short story writer Abid Suhail’s recently published autobiography “Jo Yaad Raha” skilfully defies the fallibility of memory and distils the essence of what a sprightly 80-year-old saw and perceived in exhilarating prose.
The author who also worked for a number of prominent English dailies fashions a parallel autobiography of identity, ideology, culture, desire and repressed feelings with unusual equanimity through the prism of a sensitive writer. For him emotional dislocation, alienation, bewilderment, loneliness and forbearance are all what that shape up his whole life. Abid Suhail’s thorough grounding in human psyche enables him to offer very interesting variations concerning love relationship.
Running into almost 700 pages, the autobiography meticulously zeroes in on what the author has not been able to erase from his memory. Unfailingly surviving on uncertainty and crisis, the author does turn his attention to somewhat cynical view of human nature though quite unexpectedly muffled sounds of pain are not audible. At the outset Abid Suhail confesses that he was born in the slave India and soon India got freedom. “Now I have been living with prejudice, discrimination, terrorism and it is age where no difference is made among criminals, culprits and innocent they seem to sail in the same boat without an anchor. I am yet to decide whether I am culprit, criminal or innocent.”
The whole book anchors on this identity and also masks a growing rage against the power that be. Through an impressionistic yet skilful narration, Abid Suhail creatively conjures up misty atmospheric details of his birth place Orai, and later on Bhopal and Lucknow are wistfully revisited and tells how innocence turned into awakening cognisance of social reality. Normally biographers are obsessed with betrayal or at least its looming possibilities but Abid Suhail explores new possibilities of friendship and mutual cooperation where religious or ideological identity hardly have any bearing. Many moving instances of companionship force the author to lose himself in reveries.
Not much has been written on M.C. Chalapathi Rao, one of the best editors India has ever produced, and Abid Suhail who worked under him, has supplemented what has been left out. MC’s professional competence and his awe-inspiring acquaintance with idioms and words have been made the object of the single pristine look. The autobiography narrates many anecdotes related to Hayat Ullah Ansari, Ram Lal, Naiyar Masood, Ratan Singh, Usman Ghani, Hasan Wasif Usmani and Rasheed Hasan Khan in crystalline prose. Curiously, lovers are often portrayed with complete detachment and their stories look both puzzling and ominous. One has to appreciate the strong cadence in which he manages to narrate big revelatory moments of his life.
There is almost no trace of narcissism in the admirable multifold narrative, though melancholic terrain occasionally provokes some rolling of the eyes. Abid Suhail, a trained philosopher, does rope in solipsistic questioning to transcend theoretical discourse and he aptly creates small psychological spaces to negotiate the realities of life.
