A book about 'Sharam'

The controversy surrounding the reign and relationship of late Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Commander-In-Chief at the time, Zia-Ul Haq has captured the imagination of the world for a long long time. I had heard vague stories about this conflict as a boy but had never really understood what had ensued before and after the successful coup that Zia undertook, overthrowing Bhutto and becoming the President of Pakistan himself. This was one of the primary points of attraction that led me to read Salman Rushdie’s book, aptly titled, ‘Shame’.

Released in 1983, ‘Shame’ revolves around the lives of similar characters with very identical stories with a good amount of ‘RR’ – Rusdhie Realism – thrown in. The book opens with the life of Omar Khayyam, a boy borne to three sisters who live in a fortress like mansion in Nishapur (interestingly the same place the actual poet Umar Khayyam was born) somewhere on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The sisters have locked themselves away from the world and use a contraption known as ‘The Dumb Waiter’ to correspond with the planet outside for their daily needs – rice, vegetables et al. Growing up in a sequestered wall-fort like this one, Omar is fed with the strong sense of void and a bizarre sense of issues (including vertigo and lack of self confidence) by the 3 sisters – Chunni, Munni and Bunny – out of which no one knows who the real mother is. Despite the boundaries that confine this Mowgli of a fellow, he continues feeding himself all the literature, arts and science he can find in books lying around the dusty closets. He masters several languages and becomes a self-taught scholar but he knows, he just knows, that he will become an anthill if he continues to stay with his mothers. With great effort he finally retaliates and tells them he needs to get out, much to their shock and surprise.

Horrified maternal gasps. Six hands fly to three heads and take up hear-no-see-no-speak-no-evil positions.

They reluctantly let him go out and attend school from where he moves on to pursue medicine and becomes an immunologist. It is when he reaches Karachi, that he befriends the playboy millionaire Iskander Harappa (Isky – Bhutto) who is married to Rani Humayun. Also in this mix is General ‘Old Razor Guts’ – Raja Hyder (Zia) is an army hero who is married to Bilquis Kemal. After a shocking stillbirth (where the baby is strangulated by the umbilical cord), Bilquis bears two daughters – Sufia Zinobia Hyder (also called ‘Shame’) and Naveed Hyder (also called ‘Good News’).

The theme of shame continues as Sufia suffers a brain fever as a child and is clinically labeled as mentally challenged. She, as it turns out, thus becomes the receiving pot of all the shamefulness and shamelessness that the family has to offer, absorbing all of it within her until that sleeping subconscious of Sufia becomes an uncontrollable beast that rips off heads of turkeys and attacks Naveed’s groom on her wedding day. To keep a check on her behavior, Raza takes Omar’s help who ends up falling in love with this woman with a child’s brain.

Elsewhere, an awakening is taking place. On his 40th birthday Isky decides to put past him the flamboyancy of his money throwing years and follows his call for the nation. He forms the ‘Popular Front’ (as in PPP) and is idolized by his daughter Arjumound Harappa (also called ‘Virgin Ironpants’ given her obstinate will to reject men forever).

The story then follows a similar pattern based on actual events. Isky becomes the Prime Minister of the nation and does everything possible to ensure that the diplomats, the ambassadors, the other attaches are kept under his strong thumb. An approach some see as being down right dictatorial. It is in such headiness that Isky promotes Raza as the CIC despite the fact that Raza has several seniors above him. Given Raza’s non-political demeanor, Isky’s calculation is that he will have nothing to worry about. And this is where, as we have seen, Isky goes horribly wrong. Plagued with the fathering of ‘Shame’ in his own house, Raza starts getting annoyed at the way Isky goes about handling the system. Isky’s rude obnoxious attitude and a mouth that can spew out several foul creatures at once soon starts getting on Raza’s army honed nerves. It is then, that he decides to impose Martial Law in the country by leading a coup against Isky. Isky is arrested on the charges of murdering his brother’s son (Little Mir) and is thrown into the most hideous prison cells in the world and tortured in ways unimaginable. After 2 years of this, Isky is sentenced to death by hanging although as it turns out, Rani Humayun and Arjumound do not see rope marks on his neck when they examine the body. It is revealed that one of the army generals had shot Isky in the heart thanks to Isky’s belligerent and never-say-die mind-set. A move that then heralds the beginning of a Pakistan that is headed by the base mantra of faith as Sufia prepares to finally be taken over by the Beast completely.

‘Shame’ documents a lot of facts with Rushdie’s usual tonic of magic realism. Everything from Sufia’s drastic transformation from being the blushing child-in-a-woman to the ghastly beast with yellow fire in the eyes is portrayed with chilling descriptions. At one point I actually thought of Sufia herself as being a representation of the country. Born normal – attacked by an infliction – left with an adult body but an immature brain – now looked at with suspicion and fear. A beast within a child’s soul. It was in this metaphorical tribute that I found ‘Shame’ most successful at.

What this also did, for my own sake of historical know-how, is forced me to read up whatever there is to know about the Bhutt0-Zia reign. It was interesting to see the palpating synergy Bhutto had in his speeches (videos on YouTube) and the calm composed almost regressive approach that Zia shows in footage. I sometimes found myself wondering, what indeed would have happened had Bhutto not promoted Zia up the order? Would Pakistan become a very different country from what it is now? Or was Bhutto’s approach to things so predictably askew that his downfall was only a matter of time to which Zia became a reason? I guess we will never know.

‘Shame’ is a must read for those who want to know about that critical phase which proved to be the maker/breaker of the country’s future.

..ShaKri..

Read more...

'Moor' than required?

True. I have read quite a bit of Rushdie. In fact from everything he has written I have probably read more than 50% of it. And yes. I have immensely enjoyed the whimsical liberties he takes with his audience – be it in prose or in the stitching together of a scene that – and this has to be said: sometimes turns out less surprising than what you’d have probably expected from him. True: I know I am not reading a spy novel, but still. A dash of tangy twist never hurt anyone, Sir. Also true: Rushdie isn’t the greatest when it comes to unexpected turns like some of the other authors (well, the classics being O Henry and the like) I have come across. But if ever there was an author who could pen down words you’d have never heard of – Rushdie is your man. If not for nothing else, I sincerely urge you to pick up a Rushdie just for the sheer headiness with which he makes one entire paragraph get to print without using a single full stop. A habit I find myself getting used to these days. A dangerous habit, I must confess.

With that little bit about SR, we come to his work ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. This book was originally released in ’95 and took me over a decade to get around to reading it because well, it just did. One of the reasons I am currently catching up with the backlog of Rushdie’s work may have been a result of the exuberant egging on that ‘The Enchantress of Florence’ gave me with its unique combination of simple to understand Moguls and impossible to remember Italiano references!. Since then, I have not only re-read ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ but also I am currently reading his take on Pak and its historical journey post-Independence - ‘Shame’, which I must admit is good reading. You can expect a review on that shortly too. I also intend to re-read ‘Midnight’s Children’ since well, I need the rush of high voltage vocabulary from the mouth of Sinai once more!

‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’ is segmented into 4 parts – ‘A house divided’, ‘Malabar Masala’, ‘Bombay Central’ and, like having a song with the title track in a music album, ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. The plot follows the family line of one Moraes Zogoiby also known as ‘Moor’. He is the fourth and final child of Abraham Zogoiby and Aurora da Gama, whose roots are seeded in the Christian/Jew existent region of good old coconut oiled fish-curry laced Cochin in God’s own country. They are basically a spicy family – literally, since they deal with all sorts of condiments. From cardamom to clove. From whole pepper to cumin. They’ve got it all. And the spice that runs in their blood – O brother. One look at every woman in their family and you will know who runs the ship! Right from white haired Epifania (Moor’s Gread Grand Mummy!), through to her daughter Isabella Souza and then to her tough nut of a daughter Aurora da Gama. Each of these women contain a specific din of confidence and power that, it sometimes seems, is embedded by their hereditary allegiance to all the spices!

Moor is a man with a bizarre disability – he is aging twice as fast as he should. Meaning, if he is 5 years old, his body resembles that of a 10 year old boy. So by the time he is 20, he looks like he is 40…and so on. Or as SR puts it his age is ‘2x’ – you get the point. Needless to say this leads to several interesting subplots with his anatomy and the fact that at some point he looks as old as his own mother. The base for the title comes from the tale of Boabdil (I had to look this fellow up after reading this book), who was apparently the last king of Granada. Aurora, Moor’s mother, is a gifted painter and a very serious influence in the way Moor grows up in a house with 3 elder sisters – Ini, Meeni, Myna…well, of course, and then Moor. Each of the girls meet a fate that, to put it blandly, isn’t the most ideal. Each one of them is a victim of the choices they make, much like the rest of us I suppose.

The book, through its 4 major chapters, traces the origins of the Zogoibys right from the shores of Cochin all the way to the hedonistic cocaine hub called Bombay (this is a story set in the 60s – 80s Bombay so the word ‘Mumbai’ hadn’t quite stuck yet) and then ends in a quiet little pocket of Spain called Benengeli, where Moor eventually meets his fate and takes stock of his life thus far. Moor’s journey is peppered (pun intended!) with some very strong female influences – his mother Aurora, his sisters, his first love and sex partner (his tutor Dilly Hormuz), and the maniacal crazed she ‘thing’ called Uma who seeds, successfully, the fruit of mistrust in Moor which essentially tears the family apart. Hmm…where have I heard that before? As I said, if Rushdie’s books were stripped off of all the verbal gloss, you’d find a pretty straight forward tale almost every time. That’s the one thing I’ve always felt was Rushdie’s most painful Achilles Heel.

The one thing I noticed right away about Moor’s narrator-like approach to the tale was how similar it was to ‘Midnight’s Children’ where Saleem Sinai does the same by recalling his grandparents from Kashmir and then on towards himself. But unlike Saleem’s tale, there is no major progressive connection to the nation’s story in ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. Rushdie is famous for this ‘magic realism’ approach which very easily blends magical contexts into a realistic scenario. Even here, that takes place almost in every page. As the reader follows the roots of Moor and how he came about to exist, we start noticing patterns of the divine, the supernatural, the inexplicable and the prophetic, all stitched into the same fabric that Moor’s reality is shown as being set against. What with his fast slipping age-disability factor (actually I never saw that aspect as a disability at all!) and the constant feminine shadows under whom Moor continues to discover his past, present and future, SR very daftly combines the themes of an India still yawning from its Independence and the dizziness with which Bombay was finally getting the unique definition we all are so proud of today. Right from its ‘Ganapati bappa maurya’ to its reverence to Bollywood with strong inclusions of Nargis (yes! From Mother India!) and her, the then beau, Dutt Sr., SR captures it all in his unique flair.

Alright: things I didn’t find too exciting – the routine deaths. There came a time when I wasn’t sure if I was reading Rushdie or G.D.Roberts’ ‘Shantaram’! What with the, almost, intense underlining of the mafia world in Bombay and its role in Moor’s life, I somehow felt at one point that the story was definitely inspired by a lot of Bollywood masala. Also, the generous injection of sex that always seems to find its way in Rushdie’s books (well maybe with the exception of ‘Haroun…’, I think…) and leaves you feeling a tad surprised at its occurance. Moor, despite his age related disability and a seriously deformed hand (of course which he uses to knock down tough blokes in rings once, and then makes a career of it) seems to be getting regular bedroom action with what one can only imagine are ‘too easy’ girls! Somewhere there, right there, I felt a tad shortchanged with Moor’s characterization given its shockingly ironic reality.

Ah well: ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’, despite everything else, still makes for complex reading just like any other SR book. If you are looking for an appetite that needs catering in the form of Herculean metaphorical references dished out with a mélange of word soups and whimsically placed scenes, then this book is a good one. Some of his sentences, seriously, just go on and on! For a humble and ‘A-B-A-C’ reader like me it becomes a tad too hard to grasp what it was I just read. But then, as I always say, with SR, the struggle is the glory.

So here is to another struggle and another glory. A little less ‘Bollywood action’ next time, Sir? Maybe, just maybe, a few shorter sentences? And something genuinely subtle and thought provoking, albeit, with your usual dash of ‘magic realism’? Yes? Please? Pretty please? OK then. Thanks.

..ShaKri..

Read more...