While reading this book, it didn’t occur to me until the end that its central character was crazy. Rather, he is a writer struggling with the troubles of this world. is he?
The protagonist calls the mental asylum a university and says that knowledge systems fail to explain the things the asylum has taught him. That’s why, eventually, we sit on the edge of that wall of madness. He says that by going mad he has learned about the world. The difference between being sane and actually being crazy is not something you can explain by saying “most people are like that.” If even one person is mad then you can say bad things about him. But if an entire country, or an entire community, goes mad, we call it power, we call it politics. When a person’s smaller conscious layer is shifted to the other side, as Durkheim says in his theories of suicide, it can lead to both madness and a kind of euphoria.
When the distance between a person and his society reduces to such an extent that he loses all sense of ‘private life’, it will inevitably make him a lunatic and close to suicide. To such an extent that the society will not care about him and will marginalize him. So, what you said – that he is a kind of writer – makes sense: his entire fiction becomes commentary on the world, on human beings. He can be a writer that way.
How did you deal with violence in the book? There are several scenes where the traditional sense of violence is broadened.
Yes, this is existential violence. There is total shock in existence; It becomes violence. The dog in the story has its own violence – when he is frightened, his behavior becomes cruel. These are very scary scenes. When readers first read those parts, many said they felt like crying; The intensity is very intense.
Each of us brings our own style; I accept that. When I wrote those parts, I used new material, new methods. I did not write about the bony eyes of the hero’s lover as if some other emotion had taken over or hatred had come. Because of the way I wrote, there were some small changes – like two veins appearing above the eye – subtle details that reflect construction. And when someone makes a sacrifice, the sacrifice is also a form of oppression, a form of violence. If you have given up or given up, you have severely suppressed yourself. Childbirth, for example, has its own violence. We talk a lot about desire, but desire also has ways of shaking a person. We also want our loved ones to be extensions of ourselves and we use violence to mold them into our images.
The hero is not a theist. If he had been religious, would the book have been different?
Yes. There is a tremendous amount of suffering in the book. Shamsur Rehman Farooqui once wrote a long article on this. He portrayed the character’s entire journey of suffering through an old prophet who appears Quran Hazrat Ayyub (Ayyub) was called. In the story he contracts leprosy. Leprosy reduced social standing; London also had no solution in 1911. Lepers were ostracized; Their marriage was deemed invalid and they were sent away. Everyone kept distance from Hazrat Ayyub. Then when the maggots that were growing in his wounds crawled out, he put them back into the wounds, because they were eating from the sustenance provided by Allah – this is a terrible image. Since he was God-fearing, he was spared the fate of madness, unlike the hero. But these are pictures of Sufis and prophets, not of common men and women. So, yes, I don’t think this novel would have been possible without his suspicions.
How closely have you faced death?
The way it (this book) came about – I didn’t have to force anything, I was sad and restless. I was always hungry since childhood. I felt alone even in crowds – at functions, at parties. I still feel ashamed. 15 years ago I couldn’t even speak properly; Now I don’t know where this expression comes from. I was very nervous. I will avoid questions; Apart from teaching in my class, if anyone encountered me, I would be scared. I used to shrink. I was always alone. Even as a small child, I was not a part of the festivities. Everyone was enjoying while I was standing outside. That nature remains with me. I won’t forget it. I was proud and affectionate as a child. I have many suppressed memories.
Did you have any brothers and sisters?
No, I was an only child. My mother was a writer. He died a year after I was born. I was the only child. My father was a sales tax officer. He loved my mother so much that he said, “I will raise my child as proof of that.” As far as encounters with death are concerned, I don’t even remember my mother’s face. I have experienced the death of many animals – my dog, cat, parrot, rabbit; It has destroyed me. My heart is very sensitive.
How would you respond to readers who call you anti-romantic and disappointing?
Truth is relative. There is no such thing as absolute truth. Everyone has their own truth. But people don’t understand this. I won’t get too philosophical here, but let me tell you something. In Hinduism, there is a deep concept – Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Everyone talks about it, sings its praises, praises it, but only a few believe in it. essence of Satyam Shivam Sundaram That what is true is God, and God is beautiful. In Islam, there is a concept called Jamal-e-Azali. Jamal means beauty, and Azali means eternal – beauty that never fades. That eternal beauty exists in God. Now think about it – if the Creator Himself is the embodiment of eternal beauty, then everything He creates in this world must also be beautiful. People may ask, “How could God create something like a lizard?” But the lizard is also made of the same divine element, even though it may appear ugly or disgusting to us. When you look at creation as a whole, these judgments fall away.
And you also know this – when we look at someone, the image is first formed upside down in our eyes, before our lens fixes it. Our perception turns the world upside down before we can see it. I don’t think my subjects are supernatural.
When I was asked, “Why don’t you sell love stories?” The situation of a country also influences writers. Maybe that’s why my stories gravitate towards darkness and death – towards depictions of hell – because that’s the atmosphere; It is indivisible.
The new generation has responded positively to my work. I am very happy with them. They’ve got it all figured out – probably better than us. I keep saying that feeling is more important than understanding. Ingmar Bergman – His films people don’t understand, yet he says art is not mathematics to be solved; You have to feel it. People often lack that feeling.
Where do you place yourself in the tradition of Urdu literature? Which writers from that tradition have influenced you?
Urdu is a part of me. Along with Urdu, the tradition of Urdu fiction is associated with poetry. Reading Ghalib or Mir is like reading poetry. But Urdu fiction as a tradition is not that old. We have a vast Urdu poetic tradition – if translations had been done earlier, poets like Ghalib would have been seen on par with Goethe. But which great prose writer have we created? Premchand raised such a mountain of social realism; It is over a hundred years old and there is no alternative model of that kind of social realism. Therefore, I am moving away from the Urdu tradition of social realism. In the last 100 years, did we invent alternative narrative models? We didn’t.
I wanted to move away from the straight-line storyline. This tradition – while not in Urdu or Hindi – was present in Sanskrit and drama. There are similar patterns in Buddhism. Straight-line plots maintain the logical sequence without breaking it, whereas real life breaks logic. No art can develop without experiment. 2000 years ago, people painted landscapes; Today we call him an aesthete. During and after the World Wars, aesthetics changed – the Dadaists said that the old aesthetics would not work and invented new visuals. The widespread destruction changed the aesthetics. But in our context, no similar change occurred. There were some abstract stories but they lacked substance; They often felt like a flood of madness without characters.
Existentialism and exploration of the darkness of existence did not take root in our Urdu fiction literature. So, I feel outside that tradition – although I don’t mean that I dislike anyone in Urdu. The writers of his time did important works. But nothing special has happened here in the last 40 years. I can name some legends – Intizar Hussain, Nayyar Masood, Quratulain Haider – our last great players. i admire abdullah hussain sad race Very; He was sometimes dialectical, symbolist, surrealist, although sometimes extreme to such an extent that his influence was diminished. Well used pain becomes almost alive. No river is dead – traditions branch like a river. If any tradition runs straight like a canal then it is artificial. Despite living in tradition, I feel simultaneously included and isolated.
Pranavi Sharma writes on books and culture. She lives in New Delhi.
