Book Sunday: The partition and the tangled shrine of Wazir Hussain
Akhilesh's book 'Aks' and Rahi Masoom Raza's novel 'Drop of Dew'
From today, we are starting a new column, Kitabi Sunday, where Vivek Kumar Shukla will continuously discuss new and old books. In the first installment, the discussion is on Akhilesh's memoir 'Aks' and Rahi Masoom Raza's novel 'Os Ki Boond'.
Playing Hide and Seek with Death in the Courtyard of Memory
Aks – Akhilesh
The foundation of the time we live in is filled with countless memories. Akhilesh ji's book 'Aks' is a journey through those memories, which, while personal, are also connected to our collective experience. The narrative of Akhilesh ji's book 'Aks' is about these memories, which are personal in their existence but touch upon emotions that are part of our collective memory. These memories, hovering around the inevitable presence of death, bring the sunlight of that truth right before our eyes, from which we have been avoiding like a human faced with a Yaksha question.
This book is divided into eleven chapters. Starting with the inevitability of death, it embarks on Akhilesh's life journey, where at times he recalls his parents from his childhood, and at other times, he finds himself swinging between pride and shyness while imagining his beloved writers sitting before him in Allahabad. This is not just the story of the author's life journey but also the story of all those who have sat with their full identity at the pauses in his life. The journey begins with the chapter “Memories Break the Pride of Time,” which states that time gives death to another time but ends there. The first chapter evokes regret from the death of his father, wishing he had conversed more with him, embarking on a journey where those who are no longer present shine in the glow of memory.
In the second chapter, while discussing his father and mother and death, Akhilesh inadvertently sketches a picture of a time that is now part of our history: “Father had passed high school, always wore a shirt and wide-legged pajama, walked on foot, and got angry.” As we pass through these lines, it feels like this is not just a portrayal of his father but a collective image of fathers in the Hindi world. While writing about his father, he resorts to understatement, but an image of his father emerges in our minds that resembles the story of Gyanranjan's father. In the dense absence of the father, there is the mother, with whom he had interacted more.
Mother has started to forget conversations, and her complaints about father come as a background. In between, the author realizes one day how significant a part of his existence his father was; the ability to weave stories was a legacy he inherited from his father, of which he was unaware. In this journey, we become eager to know more about his parents, only to find out that they are no longer there, and the absence that was within Akhilesh ji has now settled within us.
“After the absence of mother and father, I certainly did not remain the same as I was. As long as they were both there, I was terrified of their death. After they left, I begin to be disturbed by the awareness of my own death. It seems that mother and father not only hand over life to us, but they also leave us alone to confront death. While they were alive, we did not realize it, but later we feel that we have come closer to death.”
Reading Aks, it repeatedly feels like Akhilesh ji is playing hide and seek with the truth of death. While reading his memoirs with Ravindra Kalia, Kalia ji's laughter and way of living embed themselves in the reader's mind, and those who have never met him begin to know him deeply. Just as we are about to delve deeper into his life, Akhilesh brings us face to face with his death, leaving a void where Kalia ji used to be, filled with the laughter that was marked by the elegance of his language. The same happens in the memoirs of poet Manbahadur Singh and Devi Prasad Tripathi.
It seems we are on a memory journey, each time ending in a death, in an absence. Many times it feels like Akhilesh ji, grappling with the absence of his parents, embarks on that memory journey where “no matter how much we say, time, I am in a race with you, but one day this poetic verse weakens.”
There are numerous reasons to read this book, where on one hand, the city is alive with living people, and on the other hand, those who have become part of the Hindi memory world are becoming part of our lives. Reading Aks makes one realize how many stories our elders have to tell, how many tales they have to share, and we keep postponing listening to them, caught in the whirl of time. “They were the era of our childhood and mother's youth,” this sentence is perhaps one of the most beautiful sentences written about mothers in Hindi, and this book can be read repeatedly just for this one sentence.
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Setu Prakashan 2022
A Drop of Dew Falling on the Ink of History
Os Ki Boond – Rahi Masoom Raza
“The tricolor is flying at my home, and everyone at home is worried whether to say that elder brother is in Delhi or was in Delhi? Is this question not as big a truth as the big truth that yesterday Pakistan was formed and today India has become independent?”
This question, written on the pages of Wahshat Ansari's diary, still stands before us as we navigate through Rahi Masoom Raza's book Os Ki Boond. The partition of Hindustan is our shared history, but is it merely a historical event? Os Ki Boond, starting from the threshold of partition, explores those questions from later times that are still relevant today. What were the questions of the Muslims who remained here after the partition of Hindustan, who did not make hijrat a philosophy? In free Hindustan, they were saying that Muslims in Hindustan should also have the right to live. The partition that happened at the borders should not happen in homes, nor in relationships.
Os Ki Boond is the story of that partition which began at the borders but did not stop there; it reached homes, crossing cities and neighborhoods. This story could also be about Wazir Hussain, who had two sons. One was the school he lovingly built, which changed its name from Apan Muslim Anglo Vernacular High School to Muslim Anglo Hindustani Higher Secondary School.
The other son was Ali Baqar Khan, who was against the formation of Pakistan but went to Pakistan. This story also includes the temple that is in the courtyard of Wazir Hussain's mansion, whose priest's salary continued to come from their home. One day, worship in the temple stops because Ram Avtar does not want the worship to make the partition sharper, the marks of which are still fresh. Wazir Hussain retrieves the conch thrown into Ram Avtar's well and is killed by the police while trying to start the worship. The questions that Rahi was asking in 1988, are they not the truth of our time today? Back then, Wazir Hussain was being killed; today, someone like Ikhlaq or the missing Najeeb is being targeted.
This story is as much about Wazir Hussain as it is about Deendayal. Deendayal, who knows that changing 'Chacha' to 'Chacha' is not just a matter of language but also a question of altering identity. Deendayal, who grew up with Wazir Hussain, was frustrated with Muslims during those days. The color of his frustration was saffron, while the color of Wazir Hussain's fear was green. They were friends but faced each other; for Deendayal, religion was paramount, but friendship was equally important, as half of him also died on the day of Wazir Hussain's death. Amidst all this is Shahla, Wazir Hussain's granddaughter, who is asking the justice system of Hindustan whether she has the right to build her grandfather's mausoleum on her land or not? Who knew that years later this question would arise again, but this time in the form of Babri, and today the question remains the same: does any Shahla have the right to build Babri or not?
Shahla, whom Wahshat denied the right to go to any Hindu lawyer, the partition has reached justice; that day, Shahla went to give kurtas to Wahshat Ansari, but Wahshat Ansari came back after giving a ten-rupee note to the lawyer for their consultation. The weight of a ten-rupee note is so heavy on her soul that she cannot even breathe freely. From the court of free Hindustan, she is repeatedly asking whether she does not even have the right to build her late grandfather Wazir Hussain's mausoleum.
This book features a character named Shahrnaz. Shahrnaz, who one afternoon left Ghazipur and was treated like butter by film financiers and businessmen in Bombay. Her story would have ended in the afternoon of Ghazipur if Himmat Jaunpuri had not recorded her tale in a letter to his mother. The dew drop is the story of Hindustan, which was partitioned in 1947, and that partition has not ceased even until 2026. Cities, neighborhoods, animals, justice—all have been divided, and the question that Wahshat Ansari wrote in his diary one afternoon remains unchanged -
“ ... The cow and the man. Who is greater? So why, when riots occur, do the Shankaracharyas of the entire country not say to stop killing humans? This is where the question arises that the Shudras emerged from Brahma's feet. Brahma's body has perished. So then, where have I, Wahshat Ansari, emerged from? Is there another Brahma?”
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Rajkamal Prakashan 1988
Vivek Kumar Shukla
लेखक हिन्दी साहित्य के अध्येता हैं, एक उपन्यास प्रकाशित। फ़िलहाल डेनमार्क की ओर्हुस यूनिवर्सिटी में पढ़ाते हैं।