It’s Time To Invite The Dead To Populate Our Novels

Sometimes, to grapple with the present we have to engage with the past. I don’t mean a rehash. (Woh to ho raha hai.) What I have in mind is a close scrutiny of tradition, an exploration of myths, a deep dive into historical archives. Why? you ask. 

Because, for one, in India, the past is forever intruding upon the present. And yet, it is a syncopated vision of the past with its tropes of glory, communal harmony, ahimsa… Bapu spun us a story to which we could all cohere — how, after all, do you defeat a Raj whose toolkit was entirely dependant on dividing us? (Besides, ahimsa was such a pish posh way to illustrate to the world that Western civilisation would be a good idea, eh!) The historical truth however is that despite Gandhi’s successful experiment we are a people whose history is mired in cataclysmic violence. What we are also very good with is historical amnesia. Not our fault entirely: mass violence is numbing. Which is where the novelist steps in. (Reason two, if you’re keeping count.)

The task of the novelist is to transform general loss into a specific loss, to give us characters and their stories we can care about. I am at work on a novel set in the months leading up to the independence of India in 1947. Set in two parallel threads, in the two great cities of colonial India, Lahore and Delhi, this is a behind the scenes look at the negotiations, the give and take and the political skullduggery that gave India its freedom via the price of division. Consequently, it is also an intimate look at the friendships destroyed, the loves lost and the carnage that occurred in the sticky hot months of India’s hottest summer ever. Hopefully, the narrative will allow readers to make up their minds about topical assumptions of Nehru’s contributions and the Sardar-Pandit rivalry. (Reason three, and counting.) 

The past is never dead, Faulkner said, it’s not even past. (Who knew Faulkner was a closet Desi!) Khair, general elections 2019 have just got over, the journey ahead is long, and I invite my fellow writers, and readers: Why not reckon with that past, and invite the dead to populate our novels? I have been wining and dining and sharing multiple cuppa chais with Dickie, Jawahar and Vallabh, and it’s been one helluva ride! (Reason four, and ending. For now.)

The Pakistanis Are Coming!

'Get out, the Pakistanis are coming!’ 

A fine headline to be greeted with this morning, on October 2, the day of Gandhi Jayanti. Made me check my calendar to confirm it wasn’t 30th January. 

To all those bandying their jingoism the past few days, jung mubarak, you’re welcome to your war. How comforting it must be to thump your chests as you listen to Ornob and approve ‘surgical strikes’. Us folks who live on the border - 553 Kms of Ferozepur, Fazilka, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Pathankot - teetering forever on Radcliffe’s line, are fleeing; leaving behind, yet again, our homes, our land, our crops, our selves.

But, I digress. Happee budday, Bapu! (that’s how we say it in Punjab). If you don’t feel like partying with the chest thumpers, join us as we hastily evacuate and scramble away from the border, sweat lining our sweaters in the autumnal chill, a thousand questions on our minds. Who will harvest the rice? Feed the buffalos? Where will we find shelter? How far before we can rest? Will Pakistan also do surgical strikes? Or will its tanks roll across the border like in ’71? Will we have a home to return to? We have no plan - we were ordered to ‘Evacuate at once!’ - but once we find shelter, in a gurdwaras perhaps, we can swap stories. 

You can tell us about the Purana Qila of Delhi, the same Old Fort where in 1947 you found Muslim refugees huddling from the tyranny of their Hindu brothers, much as the Pandavas had sought refuge from the Kauravas as the Mahabharata says. And I can tell you about fleeing from home astride my father’s shoulders, ducking into bushes as sirens sounded, crying when my embroidered jutti slipped off my foot and my father paused in flight as he searched for that one shoe even as the PAF fighter planes threatened to incinerate us any moment … 

When the war passed and we returned home to ‘normalcy’, we exchanged stories with friends and neighbors as we recalled our flights. We have so many stories, Bapu, the night will pass before you can blink an eye. For a people used to evacuating upon a crisp command, stories are all we can carry. And in an amnesiac nation (not a single memorial to Partition), stories are all we have.