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Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Rabisankar Bal

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225 pages

English

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Dozakhnama: Conversations in Hell is an extraordinary novel, a biography of Manto and Ghaliband a history of Indian culture rolled into one. Exhumed from dust, Manto's unpublished novel surfaces in Lucknow. Is it real or is it a fake? In this dastan, Manto and Ghalib converse, entwining their lives in shared dreams. The result is an intellectual journey that takes us into the people and events that shape us as a culture. As one writer describes it, 'I discovered Rabisankar Bal like a torch in the darkness of the history of this subcontinent. This is the real story of two centuries of our own country.'Rabisankar Bal's audacious novel, told by reflections in a mirror and forged in the fires of hell, is both an oral tale and a shield against oblivion. An echo of distant screams. Inscribed by the devil's quill, Dozakhnama is an outstanding performance of subterranean memory.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	28 décembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184003802
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Rabisankar Bal
Translated by
Arunava Sinha
Published by Random House India in 2012
Copyright Rabisankar Bal 2012 Translation copyright Arunava Sinha 2012
Rabisankar Bal and Arunava Sinha assert their moral right to be identified as the author and translator of this work.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Sankha Ghosh for permission to reproduce on pages 505-06 Babar s Prayer by Sankha Ghosh, first published in Bengali in Babarer Prarthana , Dey s Publishing, 1976, and to Jibananda Das s estate for permission to reproduce on page 487 1946-47 by Jibananda Das, first published in Bengali in Sreshtha Kabita , Navana, 1954.
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, U.P.
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184003802
To the memory of Syed Mustafa Siraj, the author of Unreal People
1
y life has often been assailed by events that cannot be explained. I have given up after repeated attempts to understand or explain them. It seems to me that there can be no deeper meaning than the fact that they arrived uninvited in my life. Wandering aimlessly on the streets, if you happen to spot someone whom you do not expect to see except in a dream or in a picture, if you actually come face to face with them for a moment, what will you conclude? Will you not feel as though a door has been opened intriguingly for you?
Just such a wondrous door had opened for me on my last visit to Lucknow. I m an ordinary pen-pushing labourer at a newspaper, who was in Lucknow to research a piece on the courtesans, the tawaifs, of the city. The first person I met there was Parveen Talhar, a senior government officer. She made the history of Lucknow come alive, as though it were taking place before her eyes. You will no longer find the tawaifs you read about in Shair s old book about Lucknow or in the novel Umrao Jaan , she told me. Indeed I didn t. So I noted down in my diary all the stories that different people told me, which were no less colourful. I for one cannot consider stories that have been passed down through generations in a lesser light than history.
Winding through the tales told by the people I had met, I ended up in old Lucknow, at the house of Farid mian in dusty Wazirganj. Despite the strong sun, it was so wrapped in shadows that you could almost call it a forgotten neighbourhood. From a distance I saw the house, the enormous mahal, named Adabistan, home of the Urdu writer Naiyer Masud. I really wanted to meet this writer who had been hounded by destiny, but how was I to pour out my rapture over his stories without knowing Urdu? I could have told him in Hindi or English, but would it be possible to fathom the mystery of Naiyer Masud s dialogue unless I spoke to him in Urdu? All this was my imagination. No writer matches the image his writing suggests.
Farid mian sat back on his ankles with folded knees, as though he were reading the namaz. He stayed in the same pose through our entire conversation. After telling me several stories about tawaifs, he asked, Do you write stories?
- Sort of.
- So did I, once.
- Don t you write anymore?
- No.
- Why not?
- Writing these stories, these qissas, makes you very lonely, janab. Life becomes hell for those whom Allah commands to write stories.
- But why?
- You live only with shadow people.
- So you have given up writing?
- Yes, janab. My life was turning into Karbala. You know Karbala, don t you?
- The story of Muharram
- Yes. But what is Karbala? Is it just about Muharram? Karbala is what happens when this life becomes an expanse of death. That is the destiny of the writer of stories, janab.
- Why?
- You re always surrounded by shadow people, they talk to you, they drive you to madness. Hasn t it ever happened to you?
- It has.
- Hasn t your wife asked, why did you write this story?
- She has.
- My wife has asked me too, more than once. What do I tell her? She ll laugh at whatever I say, she ll tell me, you ve gone mad, aap paagal ho gaye hain, mian.
- And so you gave up writing stories?
- All I could offer you was a cup of tea, janab. I cannot afford a meal, a dawat, for you. That s all a writer of stories is capable of.
He sat in silence for a long time. I drenched myself in the sounds of the pigeons wafting in from the inner courtyard. Suddenly his voice percolated through the greyness of the pigeons cries. There s a story that s troubling me greatly, janab.
- What story?
Without answering, he rose to his feet slowly, and then said, Can you wait for a few minutes?
- Of course.
- Then let me show you the story.
- Did you write it?
- No. Farid mian smiled. -Wait a bit. This too is an amazing story, janab.
He sauntered off into the inner chambers. There was a mermaid above the door leading inside. Suddenly someone ran into the room. A dark, hirsute creature, who said, kneeling by my side, Don t you know mian went mad once?
- I do.
- Well then?
- I m here to talk to him.
- For what?
- Who are you?
- I am his servant, huzoor, his naukar. Mian will go mad again.
- Why?
- He will start talking to himself again.
- Why?
- Whenever anyone talks about stories
When he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, the dark man ran away, saying, Go away now, huzoor. My eyes began to roam over the mermaid s body again. A little later Farid mian parted the curtain and entered. It seemed to me that he was bathed in a glow of satisfaction. Just a short while earlier he had appeared rather restless. He was clutching to his chest a bundle wrapped in blue velvet. He resumed his position as though he was reading the namaz, putting the bundle down on the floor as though it were a newborn baby. Then he looked at me and smiled.
- What I will show you now will make you think you re dreaming.
What dream would Farid mian show me? I have dreamt my way through fifty years of my life. And I also know that this life of ours, describing which as real life makes most people happy, is itself someone else s dream. I feel that I am but a picture, which became visible for only a moment before disappearing again. Someone had once dreamt of a butterfly. When he awoke, he wondered whether it was actually the butterfly that had dreamt of him.
Unwrapping the velvet cover brought an ancient manuscript to life under the light. Parts of it were termite-eaten. As I looked at it, I was reminded of a poem:
But I came from the other side of the river If you don t believe me ask The unpublished novel. Ask the silverfish That have picked at its flesh Ask the brown cockroach eggs, ask the Rivers cut into the body of the manuscript By termite-all those rivers that die Even before they can reach the sea.
Who wrote this poem? I couldn t for the life of me remember. It must have been someone not famous enough to be memorable. Maybe it was a poet who only etched our wounds in poetry before disappearing effortlessly one day.
Farid mian picked up the manuscript as though he were caressing a baby. Offering it to me, he said, Take a look.
I took the manuscript from him the way people accept flowers from the priest for their prayers. There was a rustling sound. Were the pages crumbling even at this slightest of touches? Putting the manuscript down on the sheet, I turned its pages. It was in Urdu, a language I didn t know. I stopped after a few pages, entranced by the beauty of the script. All I knew was that I was now holding several lost moments in time. Eventually I asked Farid mian, Whose manuscript is this?
- Saadat Hasan Manto s. Have you heard of him?
I leaned over the manuscript, hearing my own trembling voice, Saadat Hasan Manto.
- Stories used to seek him out.
- How did you get this?
- My father gave it to me shortly before his death. He did not tell me how he got it.
- What has Manto written?
- A dastan. What you people call a novel. But you know what, a dastan is not exactly a novel. In a dastan the story never ends, whereas a novel has a beginning and an end.
- But Manto never wrote novels.
- Just this one.
- Why wasn t it published, then?
- No one believes it, you see. I have told many people. Some of them have compared scripts to say, this isn t exactly Manto sahib s handwriting. But the novel matches his life perfectly. Will you see if it can be published?
- Me?
- You work for a newspaper, after all. Why don t you try? Must Manto sahib s work be destroyed this way by termite?
I ran my fingers over the manuscript. Was this really Saadat Hasan Manto s unpublished manuscript before me? I couldn t believe it. But I couldn t take my hand away either. This was the writer who had asked these words to be engraved on his tombstone-who is the greater storyteller: God or Manto?
- Have you read it?
- Of course. I ve lost count how many times.
- What has Manto sahib written?
- He s written about Mirza Ghalib. Manto sahib used to dream of writing a novel about Mirza. They had made a film about Ghalib in Bombay. Manto sahib had written the script. Did you know this?
- No.
- Manto sahib was a film scriptwriter in Bombay at the time. The film he wrote about Ghalib was a hit. But sadly, he had gone away to Pakistan by the time it was made. Suraiya Begum acted as Mirza Ghalib s lover. The film even won a national award. It was the first Hindi film to win a national award, you know. Manto sahib could not forget Mirza all his life. Mirza s