Expression»
Of a secret moon, flesh and blood
NOV 02 - On the rim of a water well stands a growling lion.At the bottom of the same well races another lion, fearlessly.When water dries- up the lion at the bottom of the well vanishes.
Since centuries millions of growling lions have leaped into the water well’s dark world to kill the mock shadows of an actual lion.
And every time at that crucial moment a rabbit sitting on the edge of the well has always enjoys a hearty laugh.
When water dries up and the lion vanishes at the bottom the other lion growling on the rim turns around and questions the rabbit
Where is he?
Where is the other king of the forest you talked of?
The rabbit sitting on the edge of the water well shakes like a dry leaf.
In silence he awaits the moment of his own death.
(Bimal Bhokaji, Trans. Mine)
The face of the burning moon is all I can remember.
The streets of Kathmandu look deserted. Is it from winter or violence, I ask myself?
The sky seems blank, like white sheet of my paper. In the times of despair that’s what I try — staring at the blank page of my life. My five-year-old Yugank has taught the formula. Keep staring into the blank screen of life and some shape will for sure emerge.
In the phases of sterility, I can’t help imaging face of a full moon. I move in my garden, in and out, nothing seems to relieve me.
Am I in love again, at this stage of my life?
It’s a soft face that keeps smoldering in my body. For hours I sit, helpless, like a baboon, staring at the blank sheet of a lust of my secret life.
Finally I pick this book up, Humra Quraishi’s, the one who writes columns in The Statesman. I read what Khushwant Singh has to say of her. The way Khushwant Singh writes about why women ask for sex change.
“Though writing is termed a solitary task,” writes Humra Quraishi in ‘Author’s Note’ to her maiden collection of short stories, “It does need the support of friends.”
But even a cursory look at the book tells she had very few friends, especially in the Publishing house that published her first collection. For her collection Bad Time Tales isn’t as bad as the Publisher’s with the shoddy editing, and use (misuse) of ecologically damaging fancy art paper world have you believe.
The very first story in the Collection tells you Quraishi has an intense, haunting agony to share and that her search for her roots in the small towns of Uttar Pradesh where she was raised is intriguing and revealing. The second story brings to your mind the fact that she is professionally a journalist /columnist and this battle of her professional role with her newly found career as a creature role turns out to be vital to the world of her maiden book.
Having read first few pages, I would have put the book aside, dismissing it as a pastime of an elite journalist cum bureaucrat’s wife, had I not read the fourth story of ‘Flesh and Blood’. Though the story begins with a stark note of a news report, it ends up with a poignant retreat to the past and linking up of losses of the persona’s memories. Quraishi evokes a forgotten train journey during her childhood from Lucknow’s Char Bagh to her mother’s hometown, Shahjahanpur. In the train the narrator encounters a child chained to the seat like a slave and takes her back to a chapter of family history where we encounter hidden courtyard of her true self. Quraishi’s linking up of incidents and polishing of language in depicting the situation lures you to read more of her book.
But then this tug of war between a journalist and a creature person of her stories continues uninterrupted, and unfortunately most of the time the former turns out to be the victor. Especially in her short stories about Kashmir and ongoing communal strife, Quraishi fails to raise fresher plains and often ends up offering only a sentimental and pathetic recording of the issues that the media generally presents in a prosaic form.
Stories like “Still Waters’’, “The Shawl”, “Take Some’ deal with communal violence.” “The Shawl” is an O’ Henry, or to be precise, a Manto type of ‘surprise and shock’ the reader story. Other stories in a similar vein deal with the popular issues of Shahtoosh shawl smuggling, manpower export, atrocities of military forces or blind and fickle attitude of bureaucrats’ in fashion of daily newspaper’s features/columns. Sadly, Quraishi has been able to create very, few memorable/tangible characters in this segment of her book.
In a story like “Not Needed Now”, instead of working on the mind of the Afghan woman who flees her nation, deserting her rich royal family and dies as a servant, leaving behind orphans, Quraishi ends the story with a dig into the greed of a manpower exporter who has turned her kids into domestic servants. The typical stunned voice of a reformist/social worker/secure housewife reverberates the creative world of these stories.
The treatment of communal issues also turns out to be melodramatic. Story like “Stranded, Simply Sexually” tries to weave a ghastly tale of communal violence depicting a Muslim couple’s mental make-up. The bleeding uterus and its repeated rape — it all appears highly theatrical, instead of being surreal, as Quraishi would expect it to be. The story turns out to be a naïve reveling in gore, with an objective to shock the readers.
That Quraishi wants to shock her readers turns out to be the major flaw. Whenever she stops doing that her tone becomes lively and she finds her idiom and the hidden meaning comes forth effortlessly. Like in the story “Small Adjustment” which recreates a train journey in the times of communal riots. Here Quraishi digs deeper into her soul’s secret chambers and weaves a chilling tale of communal violence that leaves an unforgettable impact on the reader. Exploring her own roots, Quraishi discovers her true strength and achieves in giving us a feel of how good she can be in unleashing the gloom of the our bad times.
(This writer can be reached at
<yuyutsurd@yahoo.com>)Posted on: 2003-11-01 10:02
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