The Walled City postcard

November 07, 2014 03:54 pm | Updated April 08, 2016 12:41 pm IST

08dmcWRITEANGLE

08dmcWRITEANGLE

Late December last year, I was in luck. I was on my way to meet renowned cultural theorist Homi Bhabha near Santa Cruz in Mumbai when I happened to see seasoned journalist-publisher-politician Shahid Siddiqui at the airport. I thought here was my chance to pick his brains on the changing political climate of the nation and new contours of his political career.

Shahid Sahab though surprised me by talking of his upcoming novel. For years I had known and respected him for his fiercely argued columns, for his no-holds-barred political writing, but had not in the least suspected him of writing a novel, that too in English. That is precisely what he had done! I was stumped.

What’s more, he had wrapped up the novel in about six months, juggling his writing with his work as an editor and publisher, not to speak of his political commitments.

In the brief chat, he talked passionately about his book, about being an early riser who is through with most of the writing in the morning. He could barely wait to have the novel in his hands. Turns out he has had to wait for around 11 months to have that feel — “The Golden Pigeon” will now be formally launched on November 19, 6 p.m. at the India International Centre. I could sense back then that Shahid Sahab was both enthusiastic and even a shade nervous. We could not carry on with our discussion for long, I went my way to Bhabha’s place, he went his.

Our paths did not cross for some time after that. Then one day, he surprised me yet again. This time by mailing me the manuscript of “The Golden Pigeon”, the novel he had talked about with such keenness, and inviting me to the book launch. After a few polite words about attending the book launch, I got down to doing what many readers in the coming days should do: read Shahid Siddiqui’s novel. It is a fine effort, an engrossing story related with transparent honesty.

A few pages of the manuscript and I was reminded of Shyam Benegal’s Junoon . The 1978 film was based on Ruskin Bond’s “A Flight of the Pigeons”. For a few moments, I thought of Shashi Kapoor and Nafisa Ali. My mind went back to Shabana Azmi’s character. Soon though, I realised my mind — like the pigeons — had taken too long a flight of nostalgia, and came back to finish “The Golden Pigeon”. And I dived deep into the world of Hina Begum and Aziziuddin, Bundu and Qudsia Begum. Through them I discovered the Walled City anew. No, not the city where Imam Bukhari makes noise and the media turns it into news. But the good old Walled City with its kuchas and katras, sarais and havelis.

After an early introduction to the crimes of the Partition which saw families torn apart, the author gives us nuggets of the city you and I thought had ceased to exist after Mirza Ghalib breathed his last.

If at the beginning, Shahid Sahab talks of ideological polarities, a little later, he reveals the cultural throb of the city. Early enough in the book, he writes, “‘Lahore is as much the land of our ancestors as Delhi ever was. It was also built by Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. You will not miss your beloved Delhi. Lahore is a carbon copy of Shahjahanabad,” argued Azizuddin Khan. “But they speak Punjabi in Lahore, not Urdu, and how can you compare Dilli to Lahore.” Hina was scandalized. ‘Lahore is the city of Noor Jahan, the conspirator princess from Persia, not the city of the Mughals. Our ancestors loved Delhi and Agra…’.”

If it might seem to be a revelation for those who thought all Muslims of Old Delhi favoured Pakistan, there is a more pleasant insight into Shahjahanabad a little later in the book. Talking of Ballimaran, where once lived Ghalib, and the likes of Gulzar and Sahir Ludhianvi listened to Josh Malihabadi and Hasrat Mohani at chai addas, and an artist with a flowing white beard made sketches which he gave to children for free (yet to be discovered as M.F. Husain by the world), the author paints the lanes and bylanes with words. All this appears easy nostalgia but he takes the lid off the place when he talks of circumcision of boys at an advanced age by barbers, of boys who looked up to the sky for a golden pigeon and found their foreskin removed in a trice. This little operation changed their world, physiological and otherwise.

With such little niceties, the author comes up with a story that constantly shows us those sides of the Partition we tend to miss: how the Hindu lalas’ havelis in Lahore were taken over by local Muslims, how Muslim houses in Delhi went to Hindus after 1947 and so on; the politics of M. A. Jinnah on one side, and Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad on the other.

Throughout the book, I waited for the destination, and only half way through did I discover that the joy is in the journey itself. It has as many hues as Shahid Sahab’s political rainbow.

All but through with the book in soft copy, I wait for my hard copy. Meanwhile, I called up Shahid Siddiqui, the man who had set in motion this process of reading. Like last time, he had another surprise for me. “I am doing another book, this time it is about sufi Islam versus the version followed by some bigots,” he informed me, adding he was all for the sufi version.

As with “The Golden Pigeon”, I wait for the book. Hopefully, like his first novel, I will get to read the book through his manuscript before it hits the market!

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