|
|
|
|
 |
 |
   |
First specimen The earliest sample of Punjabi prose is now translated By Moazzam Sheikh Discources by Hazrat Noshah Ganjbakhsh Qadri Translated by Faiza Raana Publisher: Suchet Pages: 68 Price: Rs 200
A glimpse into world literature By Dr Abrar Ahmad Bayn-ul-Aqwami Adab: Intikhab Edited by Mohammad Asim Butt, Tariq Shahid and Afzaal Shahid Publisher: Pakistan Academy of Letters Pages: 960 Price: Rs 750 Khan's memoir is a juxtaposition of the personal and the political By Farrah Fatima Lahore with Love By Fawzia Afzal-Khan Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 2010 Pages: 145 Price: Rs1500
Zia Mohyeddin column
review The earliest sample of Punjabi prose is now translated By Moazzam Sheikh
The absence of the Punjabi language as a medium of
education in the province of Punjab (on the Pakistani side) is a sad reminder
of so To illustrate my point, let me share briefly a conversation I once had with a dear friend, who is a well-respected senior Urdu writer, of Punjabi background, with fluent command of the spoken idiom. He once responded -- to my unease with the prevailing situation of the Punjabi in the land of five rivers -- by saying he saw no need to write in a language that hadn't developed as a literary language, a language in which not much had been written. This was astonishing and heartbreaking -- to hear that from a literary person and native speaker. The other twist was when an Urdu academic friend of mine (whom I respect deeply) insisted that the Punjabiwallas should not have an animus relationship with Urdu; they should be proud of it and claim it as their language. What seemed to be missing from his world of understanding was how one can expect someone to accept someone else's language when their own language is not being given its rightful place in her own home due to, in parts, that very other language. Or to turn the table around -- he never seemed to ask: how many Urdu-speaking people have taken to writing in the language of Damodar and Waris Shah? Or Bullah and the Gurus? Or Shah Husain and Baba Farid? I consider Urdu my mother tongue or my first language because that is the language my parents taught me, even when they spoke to each other in Punjabi. I learned to speak Punjabi as a young boy on the streets of Samanabad, Lahore. There, too, I would speak to one friend in Urdu, to another in the Punjabi. This type of ratatouille of language relationship is a trait common enough in Pakistani urban environment. No logic could explain why parents spoke to one child in Urdu, to another in English, to each other in the Punjabi. By the time I was a teenager I considered Punjabi my real mother tongue, though I loved Urdu too and still do. Twenty-five plus years would pass by before I'd had the opportunity to read anything in the Punjabi and that too while I was living in San Francisco. I was stunned to realise that I could not read it despite the familiarity with the script. I virtually had no knowledge of the novels and short stories written in the language. Never had I ever noticed them in bookstores such as Ferozsons near the Al-Falah cinema. Here in a San Francisco library I did a Worldcat database research and found many Punjabi novels in the possession of academic libraries. I interlibrary-loaned one of the novels by a Pakistani writer. I waited for it impatiently and when it arrived, it was as if someone had thrown cold water over my head. It felt like I was struggling with Greek. Dejected, I returned the book. Another fifteen plus years would pass before I could do a second attempt at reacquainting myself with the prose literature being written in my native tongue. Whether written by writers from across the border or by Pakistanis, to read Punjabi fiction is sources of indescribable pleasure for me now. Moreover, that is why the printing of the Discources by Hazrat Noshah Ganjbakhsh Qadri translated from Punjabi into English by Faiza Raana is such an important event. She states in the introduction that this is the earliest sample of Punjabi prose known. The book contains six discourses. The first discourse (pehla aakha) deals with human need to accept God as the Supreme Being, completely unconstrained by anything at all. Repeatedly, it stresses on the uniqueness of God. It touches on the inevitability of death, the faithful and the faithless; angels, especially Israfeel, the prophet Moses and his conflict with Pharaoh. It talks about God's gift to humans and the Day of Judgment. It ends on Moses' magical, multi-faceted staff. This is the longest discourse. The second discourse engages with human behaviour and how it affects the heart. Qadri expounds on the differences between good and bad deeds and what those lead to. The prose piece contains a short poem -- a five-liner -- as well, about the downside of not pursuing God or God's way. The next discourse is about the benefits of seizing the righteous path -- sirat-ul-mustaqeem/ vaat sachi sidhi -- and there's advice to stay away from the ones who have lost the path. This contains a wonderful quatrain with an amazingly delicious rhyming scheme. The fourth discourse narrates the Quranic episode of the prophet Saleh where he tried to turn the tribe of Samood (Thamud) on the right path. In addition, when they didn't listen and in fact turned on the prophet, God punished the tribe. The fifth discourse touches on a caste of Hindus, then known as karaars (another word for the khatri caste) and hints at the peaceful co-existence. The final discourse states the importance of God's Oneness, indivisibility. Each discourse has three parts: the Punjabi original, translation, and Roman transliteration by Maqsood Saqib. This reviewer has many questions regarding the final appearance of the book. Raana tells us that it is the first specimen, but does not elaborate on how, when and where it was discovered; who performed such a heroic task. If this is the first specimen (written somewhere in the late 1500s), what is the next earliest specimen our language can boast of? What are the reasons for the gaping absence of the Punjabi prose up until modern era? When did the Punjabi prose pick up in pace? Are there any letters written among the Punjabi poets (sufi or un-sufi) in the Punjabi language? Or even if they were written in Farsi or Sanskrit, do they talk about literary works in prose? A note on the role of the British in shaping the tragic fate the Punjabi language would have shed some light. Finally, a note on the quality of translation. It is awkward at many places and lacks the creativity that we know Raana is capable of when writing her own fiction. A few examples will suffice to make my point. The fourth discourse begins with, "Folks, HAZRAT SALEH tried to dissuade SMOOD his people from wrongdoing." Sentences like this could have used more editorial help. The word wrongdoing is a bad choice for kufr. Elsewhere, expressions such as "bore malice" and "Hyming angels" sound weak. The purpose of transliteration also seems pointless, as does the translation. It would have been a better choice to stick to the original and translate the discourses into Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi, Pashto and Balochi, and instead of the Roman transliteration. Gurmukhi would have served a much better purpose. Hopefully this can still be done.
alifms@jps.net
A glimpse into world literature By Dr Abrar Ahmad Bayn-ul-Aqwami Adab: Intikhab Translations play a crucial role in the growth and
progress of literature in a specific language. An era rich in translation has
to be rich in Urdu literature has tremendously benefited from this phenomenon I vividly remember how easily available were the Russian classics at exceptionally affordable price during our school and early college days. At such an early age, we got familiar with Russian literati like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky and Chekhov. In fact, we have had a tradition of translations since very early years. The ones who have contributed significantly include Mohammad Salim ur Rehman, Meera Ji, Rashee, Sajjad Baqir Rizvi, Mohammad Hasan Askari, Shafiq ur Rehman and relatively recently Mohammad Omar Memon, Ajmal Kamal, Asif Farrukhi, Shahid Hameed, Afzaal Ahmad Syed, Zeenat Hassam and many others. Almost every Urdu literary journal reserves a special section for translations from world literature, thus keeping updated our serious students of literature. Our writers, at a point in time, remained tenaciously stuck with traditional themes and genres. It is an incontestable fact that free verse got introduced and became popular due to our exposure to western literature and so did prose poem. These two forms are now the most practiced ones in Urdu. Similarly, the short story appeared in Urdu and even novel got transformed in content and mood radically due to translations. The dire need of more and more translations cannot be over-emphasised. Pakistan Academy of letters (PAL) in 1995 conducted an international writers' conference and published six books of Adabiyat edited by Khalid Iqbal Yasir as international Adab numbers. Recently a selection of world literature from the same is published in a book titled Bayn-ul-Aqwami Adab: Intekhab -- again on the eve of another international writers' conference held from March 14-16 in Islamabad. The selection was done by Mohammad Asim Butt, Afzaal Shahid and Tariq Shahid, who have picked up material with care and competence. Fakhar Zaman, the editor in chief, in his preface writes that no anthology can be declared perfect, but extreme hard work has gone into this collection which includes creative writings from around a hundred countries. The editors have done a wise thing to include smaller pieces in order to accommodate maximum number of authors without compromising on quality or relevance of a particular author or country. The book contains two sections: fiction and poetry. Fiction includes stories by such authors like Joyce, Borges, Plath, Chekhov, Hemingway, Kafka, Sartre and others -- a sheer delight for an avid reader. In all these stories something common, though vaguely defined, runs throughout in spite of the difference of locale, society and the issues around which these stories are constructed. Poetry is a different mode of expression, addressing a specific aspect of human existence. One finds a sort of uniform similarity in poems of all languages. Viewed as a whole, the display of poetic talent is as prolific as it is subtly varied in the wide range of its colouring. All the pieces are united by many intermediary shades. At places, it comprises an intellectual and critical thought, stressing the need for objectivity, while at other places the poets seem favouring the idealistic tendency with a desire for emotions, the cult of beauty and a dreamy tendency. This diffused romanticism and crude objectivity are mingled in certain poets. The overwhelming theme remains humane and cosmopolitan in appeal. The great names included in the section are: T.S. Eliot, Garcia Lorca, Derek Wallcot, Rasool Hamzatov, Anna Akhmatova, Mayakovysky, Farosh Farukhzad, Nazir Hikmat, Mahmood Darwaish, Amrita Preetam, Nazeer Qabani and Shiv Kumar Batalvi. Mao and Nelson Mandella's poems are also included. While translating poetry, in particular, the manner in which this exercise is performed is important. Urdu authors are almost always obsessed by meter; therefore the translator must have a total command over two languages. The original text is first translated into English (in case of other languages) and then it is converted into Urdu. This process in itself dilutes the intensity and truth of the original experience and expression. Moreover, our translators take this further; they compose the piece into traditional meter, consequently dragging the original text another step away. It is therefore not irrelevant to suggest that the avoidable must be avoided. The prose poetic form is the most suited genre for poetic translations -- and should be put to use abundantly. Bayn-ul-Aqwami Adab: Intekhab is an exceptionally valuable book and gives us an almost complete glimpse of world literature and can be comfortably declared as one of the best-ever anthologies of foreign literature for which PAL deserves our gratitude and sincere applause.
Mixed forms By Farrah Fatima Lahore with Love Dr Fawzia Afzal-Khan is the Professor of English and
Director of Women and Gender Studies at Montclair State University,
Montclair, New This book, though very easy to read, depicts complexity as the author uses mix forms. Both poetry and history provide forms to present real-life stories of women who represent the genteel English education and reflect the vestiges of colonialism as well as the early promise of Pakistan. The smooth switch from narrative to poetry and vice versa present the intense emotions of the author as she recollects the memories of her friends: Hajira, the artiste who gives up art for a selfish husband and ends up her life disillusioned and broken, Saira a medical student marries at 18, has three children, lives through her husband's affairs and has a nervous breakdown; Madina, aggressive and foul-mouthed, abuses her husband and competes with Afzal-Khan in the theatre and romance. Samina, whose body is found on a bench in the garden of a hospital, a suspected "honor killing" by her brothers. Juxtaposed against the author's adolescence experiences are the images of her country, notably the civil war that resulted in East Pakistan's becoming of Bangladesh and the massacre of thousands of innocent people at the hands of Pakistani army. The city of Lahore dominates the memoir as the author moves back and forth between her adopted homeland USA and her motherland Pakistan. Lahore becomes a metaphor for the turbulent political life of the country of her origin as well as the wishes, dreams, disillusionment and struggle for selfhood for women in a typical patriarchal society. The writer presents the grim realities of our lives and the paradoxes that embed deep in the fabric of our Pakistani society in a very open and casual manner. The plight of her friends leaves her impaired and deeply moved yet she fondly conjures their spirits from the inner recesses of her memory at the same time expresses her deep concerns at the quandary her beloved motherland has landed in. No doubt, this book is an effort on part of the writer to shatter stereotypes. She writes, "I have crisscrossed these borders between East and West all my life, in the hopes of shattering stereotypes of the other on both sides-to show that "bad" and "good" are relative terms, indeed spurious ones, as are "East" and "West", embedded in politics and hence subject to change. And change we must, especially at this critical juncture in our world's history." This memoir is a dedication to the women in author's life who wanted change, a world different to the one they saw with all of its injustices around them.
Zia Mohyeddin column On a short visit to Colombo to attend a charity event, I had the good fortune to be the guest of Omar Noman, the economist with an impeccable taste. A collector of almost anything from antique door stoppers to aborigine blow-pipes, he has the good sense not to clutter every room with his precious artefacts. I have had some experience of visiting homes where the host has put on display his vast and varied collection of what he considered to be object d'art in every nook and cranny. In India, some years ago, I was invited to dinner by a philanthropist whose house was chock a block with cabinets full of glass figurines, porcelain dolls and other curios. The walls were lined with paintings, murals, tapestries, and Rajasthani masks; almost every available space on the floor was occupied by angels strumming a harp, stuffed parakeets, African and Mexican wooden sculpture. You had to be careful not to knock over an object as you walked past. It was an awesome collection made wearisome because the philanthropist chose to describe the history and pedigree of each and every item. Noman's house has clean lines and minimalism of modern architecture. His few but precious antiques and artefacts have transformed the interior of the house into spaces of timeless elegance. Contemporary Sri Lankan architecture was transformed by the late Geoffrey Bawa. Bawa, who died only a few years ago, is the most renowned architects of Sri Lanka. He was amongst the most influential architect in Southeast Asia in the last decades of the 20th century. His subtle fusion of minimalism and tropical architecture didn't end with the built form but extended into the inner spaces. Combining architecture and interior designing, Bawa proved that it was possible to create minimalist spaces which are both warm and inviting. Bawa was the principal force behind what is now globally known as "tropical modernism." In the book called Bawa, a coffee table tome, which Noman keeps on a window sill in his airy reception-cum-sitting-cum-dining room, there are many beautiful illustrations of artful inclusion of antiques and artefacts, often used to enhance the architectural elements within the space of a foyer, a living room or a study. I learn from the 'Bawa' book that antiques, whether discerningly acquired or inherited over generations have always been part of Sri Lankan interiors. In the post-colonial era of 1960's and 1970's when modern meant often relegating antiques to cold storage, Bawa's impeccable mix of modern architecture with antique furniture inspired an alternate form of interiors. In Noman's rented house, this inspiration is carried through. The large ground floor area has beautiful Indian divans and comfortable modern settees all covered in a woven white fabric which enhances the effect of the rich dark brown teakwood arms. The room has French windows which are always left open to allow the occasional cool breeze that wafts in just after it has stopped raining. There is no doubt that if you place in a modern setting just one piece of antique furniture it will give character to the room merely by way of contrast. Within the heart of Colombo lies a complex called Barefoot. Amidst lush vegetation, the centre courtyard is an open-air café. You walk through it to enter a large emporium which has an enormous array of tasteful reproductions: furniture form the Portuguese, Dutch and British periods of influence as well as a wide range of sculpture. Many antique items have been given a new life through their innovative and creative re-use in modern settings. I was much struck by (reproduced) wooden rice boxes called pettagama once used to store paddy away from mice, and copper pots. It was fascinating to learn that originally these pots were used to boil fishing nets to remove the stench of fish. Twenty years ago Omar Noman was in New York working for a foundation when the Noble Prize winner Amartya Sen (known as the Mother Teresa of Economics), whose work has helped to re-prioritize policies of the United Nations, took him under his wing. Later he recommended Noman to be a part of the United Nations, aid work on welfare economics. Welfare economics seeks to evaluate economic policies in terms of their effect on the well-being of a community. Noman has been with the United Nations ever since. Six years ago he visited Pakistan and was courageous enough to tell our erstwhile prime minister that the country was not generating any new sources of income, that the remittances from Pakistanis living abroad should not be considered to be a sustaining source for a developing country and that the prime minister's pronouncement about Pakistan's economic prosperity were a mere rhetoric. This incensed the prime minister so much that he approached the United Nations Secretary General and asked for Noman's dismissal on the grounds that he was anti-Pakistan. The prime minister had to eat crow because the UN did not oblige him. Had he been recruited from the Pakistan quota, he would have been sacked, Noman told me. Omar Noman whose book on "Vulnerable Democracies, Hunger and Inequality" is about to be published is a man of Catholic tastes. He reads every thing from philosophy to finance. The bookshelf in my bedroom had an assortment of books ranging from economics to ecology, fiction, to religion. Tucked amongst these was Noman's own book on Pakistani cricket. Noman has a passion for the game and he frequently organises charity matches in which he manages to rope in such luminaries as Jayasuria, Sangakara and Jayawerdene. A stylish left-hand batsman, he used to bat one down but now opens the batting for his team of diplomats, academics and some borrowed professional stars. He has passed his love for cricket to his children who live in England. His house in Oxford is large enough to accommodate a cricket pitch and a net. Noman's knowledge of cricket is astonishing. He has never missed a World Cup final no matter which part of the world it is held in. He strongly believes that the myth created about Bradman, as the greatest batsman the world has ever known, needs to be exploded. He thinks he might do it himself now that he is about to finish his stint and return to Oxford. Apart from spending his time on the UN's "Abolish Poverty" programme Noman is busy working for "Restoring Childhood", a charity he founded in Sri Lanka to help their war-affected children. At a sit-down dinner to celebrate the charity held at Colombo's landmark hotel, Mount Lavinia, distinguished speakers paid glowing tributes to Noman for initiating many worthy causes and for arranging numerous events which had enriched Colombo's cultural climate. The city, they all felt, would be poorer without him. People like him make us believe that we are not all zombies.
|
|
many things gone wrong in our short history. While India fixed the problem
and encouraged the development of native languages, the Pakistani ruling
elite has showed tremendous lack of intelligence when it comes to education,
especially mass education. Due to our dismal rate of literacy, it is not
uncommon to run into educated people who express ideas as if education had
barely touched them. Arguments against the Punjabi language often take two
sad and comical shapes. 
creative works. That is what Mohammad Hassan Askari once observed.
Jersey, USA. Her book Lahore with Love: Growing Up with Girlfriends
Pakistani-Style is a memoir of her childhood that is at once poignantly
personal and richly political. It is a witness to violence against women,
strictures of a patriarchal society, narrow-minded religion, and a
dictatorial government. 