Painting a wide panorama of WWII, pioneering popular history (Column: Bookends XC)

 (09:18) 

It is a rare feat to pen a chronicle of a historical event which is not only the first introduction for succeeding generations but also the most vivid and enduring. And an Irish-born journalist did it thrice – aided by two of these works becoming well-known films. In the process, he also became a pioneer of “popular history” or one meant for the general reader and complementing the big picture with personal experiences across the board from all sides and a rich amount of detail, instead of analysis.

If your first introduction to the D-Day (the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944) is the 1962 big-screen spectacle with a John Wayne as a US colonel fighting on despite a broken ankle, Richard Burton as a RAF pilot on the edge, and an American paratrooper trapped on a church tower as a firefight rages in the village square below, Cornelius Ryan is responsible.

The same if all you know of Operation Market Garden is from seeing Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, James Caan and Ryan O’ Neal in a desperate fight to grab Dutch bridges while the likes of Maximilian Schell and Hardy Kruger do their best to foil them.

World War II not only saw authors like John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Edgar Rice Burroughs become journalists but also journalists like Australians Alan Moorehead and Chester Wilmot and Soviet Vasily Grossman turn authors. Ryan, one of the latter group, was the most famous.

Born in Dublin in 1920, he moved to London in 1940 and became a war correspondent, flying along over a dozen bombing missions with the US Air Force, before being attached to Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. This did not take part in D-Day, but only came into action after the breakout from Normandy, when it chased German forces right to the German border before lack of supplies led to a halt.

Ryan, however, had himself been in Normandy twice on D-Day (which came a day after he turned 24) – first in a bomber over the beaches and then on a patrol boat back to Normandy after landing in England.

In 1947, he emigrated to the US and worked for Time (for whom he reported on US nuclear bomb tests and the First Arab-Israeli War) and then Collier’s Weekly. At a loose end after this folded in 1956, Ryan, who had proposed a book on D-Day two hours after the invasion began and grew further determined after a Normandy visit in 1949, set to work on earnest. An ad “Personal: Were You There on 6 June 1944?” elicited thousands of responses.

This was followed up with a three-page questionnaire, and on basis of replies, thousands of interviews – of Allied and German soldiers and commanders and French resistance members and civilians – were taken and hundreds of accounts were used to construct a gripping narrative of the hours leading to and of that eventful day in all its panorama of anticipation, danger, heroism and fear.

“The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day” (1959), divided into three parts – “The Wait”, “The Night” and “The Day” – begins on a misty dawn on June 4, 1944, in the coastal village of La Roche-Guyon, which we learn is the most occupied in occupied France with three German soldiers in and around for each of its 543 inhabitants, and then into the office of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who has the task of foiling the anticipated invasion.

It ends in the same village late on June 6, 1944, after a whirlwind journey – to the Allied High Command deliberating on the final nod, British and American paras girding up for a night drop, French resistance on sabotage missions, German officers trying to gauge if the increased activity is the invasion in earnest or a diversion, and finally, the huge Allied armada setting forth and the desperate fight on the beaches.

Ryan’s next was “The Last Battle” (1966) about the Battle of Berlin in 1945, for which he not only interviewed hundreds of Western Allied and German participants but was also given the rare privilege of access to Soviet archives and Soviet generals involved.

But what became as famous as his first was “A Bridge Too Far” (1974) about the gallant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to shorten the war by the largest airborne drop on the Dutch-German border. Ryan, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1970, wrote the book during his illness and died a mere two months after its publication. The film came in 1977.

Ryan, who had written three books earlier including two on Gen Douglas McArthur, left a posthumous account of his struggle with his fatal illness in “A Private Battle” (1979), co-written by his wife on the basis of his notes.

Some journalists never learned to stop working!

(01.11.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Celebrating diversity, humanity and beauty: India’s first modern poet? (Column: Bookends LXXXIX)

(09:48) 

He was a poet both for, and ahead of, his times, pioneering not only the development of a language and form of poetry but also fashioning a modern ethos – one recognising the diversity of his land and its people, of principles of faith transcending outward appearances and rituals, and of the centrality of the individual in existence. And then he had a refined aesthetic sensibility in depicting various facets of the human condition – especially love and beauty – and mysteries of existence, no less than Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam.

“Us ke farogh-e-husn se jhamke hai sab mein nur/Sham-e-Haram ho ya ho diya Somnath ka” is an illuminating and eloquent call to go beyond the apparent, but Mir Taqi ‘Mir’ gives us much more in this vein: “Kis ko kehte hai nahi main jaanta islam-o-kufr/Dair ho ya Kaaba matlab mujhko tere dar se hai”, “Labrez jalwa us ka saara jahan mein yaani/Sari hai voh haqeeqat jaave nazar jahan tak” and then “Kiska Kaaba, kaisa qibla kaun haram hai kya ahram/Kuche ke us ke bashindon ne sab ko yahin se salaam kiya”.

He also sought to inspire humans about their potential and purpose: “Mat sahal hamein jaano phirta hain falak barson/Tab khaak ke parde se insaan nikalta hai”, “Ab aise hai ke sana ke mizaaj upar bahm pahunche/Jo khaatir khwah apne ham huye hote to kya hote” and “Ilahi kaise hote hai jinhein hai bandagi khwaish/Hamen to sharm daman geer hoti hai khuda hote”.

This can help explain why Mir’s poetry seems as relevant today, was praised by his celebrated successor Mirza Asadullah Khan ‘Ghalib’ (“Rekhta ke tum hi ustad nahi ho ‘Ghalib’/Kehte hai agle zamane mein koi ‘Mir’ bhi tha” – though they differed on a cast-out lover’s fate! Mir says “Yun uthe aah us gali se ham/Jaise koi jahan se uthta ha” and Ghalib holds “Nikalna Khuld se Adam ka sunte aai hai lekin/Bohot be-abru hokar tere kooche se ham nikle”), has been rendered by some great singers, and has a devoted band of scholars – Indian, Pakistani and foreign – studying it.

One of his most famous ghazals “Patta patta boota boota haal hamare jaane hai” was used in both Bollywood and Lollywood (“Ek Nazar” with Amitabh Bachchan-Jaya Bhaduri, 1972, and “Chirag Jalta Raha” with Mohammad Ali and Zeba, 1962) – though with changed lyrics, courtesy Majrooh Sultanpuri and Fazal Ahmed Karim ‘Fazli’ respectively.

Then his ghazal beginning “Faqeerana aaye sada kar chale” became one of the most hauntingly beautiful use of the form in a Bollywood film – remember “Dikhaye diye yun ke bekhud kiya” from “Bazaar” (1982)? The title is actually the sixth or seventh sher and the song makes use of it, the next two and the one before it!

Mir was a prolific poet, with over 1,900 ghazals in his six voluminous diwans which also have a significant number of masnavis, rubais, qasidas and more (Ghalib’s fame rests on 234 ghazals) as well as a collection in Persian.

Then in Persian only there is “Nukat-us-Shura”, a biographical dictionary of contemporary Urdu poets,”Faiz-e-Mir”, containing stories of sufis and faqirs, meant for his son’s education, and “Zikr-e-Mir”, an autobiography – which is not a very reliable account of his life but gives a good feel of turbulent 18th century north India, where the once-mighty Mughal empire was powerless, and invaders – internal and external – looted and massacred with impunity. And there is a collection of rather salacious anecdotes too.

But it in his ghazals that Mir holds his own. Does his “Nazuki us ke lab ki kya kahiye/Pankhudi ik gulab si hai” pale before Shakespeare’s “From fairest creatures we desire increase/That thereby beauty’s rose might never die” (Sonnet 1) or “For nothing this wide universe I call/Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all” (Sonnet 109) or Robert Burns’ “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose”? Was his “Mir janagal tamam bas jaave/Bin padhe hamse rozgar ae kaash” any less than Omar Khayyam’s “Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire/To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,/Would not we shatter it to bits — and then/Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!”

Want to read Mir but don’t know Urdu? The laudable rekhta.org and Columbia University’s Frances W. Pritchett’s magnificent site provide transliterations. Shamsur Rehman Faruqi’s magisterial “Sher-e-Shor Angez” is ruled out but you could seek Khurshidul Islam and Ralph Russell’s “Three Mughal Poets: Mir, Sauda and Mir Hasan”. Mir’s memoirs can be found in English – courtesy C.M. Naim – and for a fictional view, there is Khushwant Singh’s “Delhi”.

(25.10.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Crime, Disaster – and an Author (Column: Bookends LXXXVIII)

 (10:10) 

They can plan and commit the most perfect crimes and, on the other hand, solve the trickiest conundrum or unravel the most twisted conspiracies – on paper! But can mystery writers exhibit their skill they imbue their detectives with in real life too?

Leaving alone detectives-turned-authors – a prime example was Dashiell “The Maltese Falcon” Hammett, who was once a Pinkerton agent – there have been only a few who tried to do so.

Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle probed cases of two men (including half-Parsi London solicitor George Edalji) who he believed were unjustly convicted and succeeded in getting them exonerated. Others seeking to solve some sensational unsolved crimes – Jack the Ripper’s identity for one – were not successful and faced derision for their efforts, be it Edgar Allan Poe, P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell, creator of forensic sleuth Kay Scarpetta.

But have there been cases we don’t know about – where some renowned writers happened to be around when a foul murder took place, were summoned or volunteered to help and solved the crime – but at the cusp of a major incident that ensured their accomplishments would be overshadowed?

Seems a fascinating idea, doesn’t it? And such is the curious pattern of human life, call it coincidence or whatever you like, some prominent writers were present in some of the most unforgettable tragedies of the 20th century’s first half – a celebrated author was aboard the Titanic, the original grand dame of crime was in London when it faced fierce German bombing during the Second World War and another renowned author, though not of mysteries, was in Pearl Harbor that fateful first week of December 1941.

This was all needed by prolific American mystery writer Max Allan Collins (b.1948) to create his “Disaster” series where murders – occurring prior or during some famous disasters – are solved by the likes of Agatha Christie, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leslie Charteris, Jacques Futrelle, S.S. Van Dine and Walter B. Gibson (the last four may seem somewhat unfamiliar to most modern readers but were most famous in their time, and two of them arguably had a hand of sorts in development of iconic characters like James Bond, and Superman and Batman).

It begins with most famous ship disaster of all time – fresh in our memories even after a century – especially due to the James Cameron’s 1997 film, which in a way, was an inspiration for the series.

Wondering if it wouldn’t be interesting to have Titanic passenger Futrelle, creator of Prof. Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen or “The Thinking Machine” who solved crimes by inexorable logic, solve a locked room murder of the sort he wrote about just as an iceberg loomed, led to “The Titanic Murders” (1999), which draws in two otherwise blameless passengers as villains and ends as just the alarm is sounded.

But as the publisher wanted a series, Collins was forced to delve deeper. “The Hindenburg Murders” (2000), postulating a possible cause of the blaze that reduced the airship to ash, stars British-Chinese author Leslie Charteris but with a little artistic licence – the creator of the sophisticated Simon Templar alias Saint who made the leap to radio, comic books, TV (played by Roger Moore) and film – did travel on the airship but not on its last voyage in 1937.

As far as “The Pearl Harbor Murders” (2001) was concerned, Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, was in Honolulu that week Japan attacked while “The Lusitania Murders” (2002), with Willard Huntington Wright ‘S.S. Van Dine’, again takes a slight liberty – he sailed on the luxury liner but not in 1915 when it came in the sights of a U-boat.

“The London Blitz Murders” (2004) actually deals with the spike in crime that took place in the blackout, particularly a string of murders with a sexual motive, where jumps in Agatha Christie Mallowan, after prevailing on celebrated pathologist Sir Bernard Spillsbury to let her accompany him to some crime scenes.

A fitting finale is “The War of the World Murders” (2005), in which William B. Gibson, a one-time disciple of Houdini and creator of “The Shadow, ‘who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men’ “, tasked with solving a crime in the time Orson Welles scares a nation with his dramatic, contemporary radio adaption of H.G. Wells’ Martian invasion.

Collins, best known for his Nathan Heller series of a hard-boiled investigator rubbing shoulders with quite a few of the famous and infamous in pre-WWII US, replicates his magic here too. He builds a fine head of tension by restricting the timeframe to just a few days, while the meticulous research, spotless evocation of the era portrayed – and for good measure, replicating style and ethos of the author being featured, make for a most satisfying read and provide the best example of literary historical crime fiction – in all senses!

(18.10.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Laughter on the pitch and pavillion: Cricket in its humour (Column: Bookends LXXXVII)

(10:00) 

It now figures in fiction for all the wrong reasons now – controversies, conspiracies, crimes and even worse, distracting amorous dalliances, but cricket, in the days when it was still a gentleman’s game and not a money-spinning, over-analysed entertainment spectacle, had an honoured place in English literature, with some great authors and avid players writing about it – some tickling the funny bone mercilessly while at it.

Humour, did you think? What role does it have in a game chiefly requiring superlative skills, agility and power, of an ability for inspired, intricate stroke play, or dispatching thunderbolts at the batsman or beguiling him with spin?

An initial look is not promising. Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt played the game but didn’t write on it, nor did it figure humorously in writings of J.M. “Peter Pan” Barrie and his team ‘Allahakbarries’ (named on a mistaken belief that the religious invocation meant “Heaven help us”) comprising Jerome K. Jerome, A.E.W. Mason, Arthur Conan Doyle, E.W. Hornung (whose gentleman-criminal Raffles was an ace cricketer), H.G. Wells, A.A. “Winnie the Pooh” Milne and P.G. Wodehouse (save maybe “Picadilly Jim”).

Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey actually solves a crime during a game in “Murder Must Advertise” (1933) and Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” quintet has a most unsettling account of its origins. Laughs also don’t figure in more recent works, be it Anuja Chauhan’s “The Zoya Factor” (2008), Joseph O’Neill’s haunting “Netherland” (2008) about a lonely Dutch business executive in post 9/11 New York finding a sense of belonging by joining a cricket club, Tarquin Hall’s “The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken” (2012) or Timeri N. Murari’s “The Taliban Cricket Club” (2012).

“The Goat, the Sofa & Mr Swami” (2010), R. Chandrashekhar’s matchless synthesis of politics, diplomacy, bureaucracy and cricket – which is what the sport is now – does however succeed with its riotous finale in a Delhi stadium.

The first humorous treatment is in Charles Dickens’ rollicking, voluminous debut “The Pickwick Papers” (1836), whose chapter seven sees the Pickwickians at the Dingley Dell Cricket Club vs All-Muggleton game. Also introduced is the game’s first commentator, who – to give him credit – is admirably succinct “Capital game-well played-some strokes admirable.”

Mr Jingle, with his singular speech, has also played in the West Indies: “Warm!-red hot-scorching-glowing. Played a match once-single wicket-friend the colonel – Sir Thomas Blazo – who should get the greatest number of runs – won the toss-first innings-seven o’clock A.M.-six natives to look out-went in; kept in-heat intense-natives all fainted-taken away-fresh half-dozen ordered-fainted also-Blazo bowling-supported by two natives-couldn’t bowl me out-fainted too-cleared away the colonel-wouldn’t give in-faithful attendant-Quanko Samba-last man left-sun so hot, bat in blisters, ball scorched brown-five hundred and seventy runs-rather exhausted-Quanko mustered up last remaining strength-bowled me out-had a bath, and went out to dinner.”

Pune-born Archibald Gordon (A.G.) Macdonell’s neglected classic “England, Their England” (1933) has, also in its chapter seven, a match pitting a London team against locals in a Kentish village, with a titanic contest between a fast bowler and a soft-looking but lusty-hitting author – and what happens when the bowler feels compelled to make a supreme effort but the umpire feels mischievous. It sadly is too long to fit here but if you can’t get the book, Ruskin Bond-edited “The Rupa Laughter Omnibus” has it.

But high levels of sportsmanship were not always seen.

A minor unlikable character in Thomas Hughes’ “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” (where cricket plays a major part), arch-cad Flashman (who got his own series courtesy author George MacDonald Fraser), is once prevailed to play for the alumni at Lords and performs the game’s first hat-trick – dismissing Nicholas Felix, Fuller Pilch (the greatest batsman of his time) and Alfred Mynn by skill, sheer luck, and straight cheating. “I’m not sure that the sincerest tribute I got wasn’t Fuller Pilch’s knitted brow and steady glare as he sat on a bench with his tankard, looking me up and down for a full two minutes and never saying a word,” he records in “Flashman’s Lady” (1977).

Adrian Allington’s “The Amazing Test Match Crime” (1939) lampoons not only the game but English society and crime too as Europe’s most notorious gang “The Bad Men” (including an Englishman damned for knowing the rules but not playing by them) scheme to disrupt England’s final test match against Imperia to decide the Ashes but are foiled by an unlikely and unexpected protagonist.

The antagonistic Herecombe and Therecombe village sides play a match that lasts till midnight but only see two balls bowled – and the first where a fielding side appeals against poor light. You can learn what happened in “The Bad-Tempered Cricket Match” in “Herbert Farjeon’s Cricket Bag” (1946).

Don’t dismiss all these as anachronistic curiosities but a testament to a pastime now reduced to a tense occupation by unconscionable commercialisation.

(11.10.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in )

Policing books – from the inside (Column: Bookends LXXXVI)

(09:36) 

In this universe, England is now a republic and the United Kingdom doesn’t exist (next door is the Socialist Republic of Wales), the Crimean War raged until 1985, time travel, cloning and genetic engineering exist (dodos are common household pets and Neanderthals resurrected) but not personal computers or jet aircraft, cheese is exorbitantly costly, a shadowy corporation exerts great influence, and literature, especially classical, is revered – and has an entire police department devoted to its service.

Then we learn there is a dimension within literature where all books are “constructed” and also house the characters who, aware they are in a book, act out their roles when being read but live their own lives the rest of the time. And the line between these two worlds can be crossed – by some.

This is the setting for the seven volume (so far) Thursday Next series, a rollicking meta-fictional, fourth-wall breaking romp through books, genres and tropes – classics, police procedurals, espionage, science fiction, comic fantasy, conspiracy theories, apocalyptic scenarios and even fairy tales – as author Jasper Fforde (b.1961) delves into the workings of imagination and literary inspiration, the relationship between fiction and its audience and the mechanics (and magic) of reading.

“The Eyre Affair” (2001) introduces the doughty, appealing and resourceful Thursday Next, a 36-year-old single, Crimean War veteran, working in 1985 London with SpecOps 27, the Literary Detectives (or ‘LiteraTecs’), the agency responsible for dealing with forged or stolen manuscripts and literary works. Wounded in an attempt to capture mysterious criminal mastermind Acheron Hades, she seeks a transfer to hometown Swindon (on the advice of a future version of herself).

Hades has meanwhile begun to kidnap characters from fiction for ransom – with Jane Eyre his latest victim. Thursday finds a way into the book and in a fiery encounter on Thornfield Hall’s roof, kills Hades while also rewriting the ending to reunite Jane and Rochester (or the version we know). She later also ends the Crimean War, traps her unwanted Goliath Corporation partner in an Edgar Allan Poe poem, and marries her estranged fiancee.

The series really kicks in with “Lost in a Good Book” (2002), where Goliath have eradicated her husband from the timeline to blackmail her into rescuing their trapped operative. Learning to read herself into a book, Thursday finds herself in the 26-floor Great Library, which contains all published English books, and is inducted into the book world’s police – “JurisFiction”, which comprises operatives both fictional such as the Cheshire Cat (now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat due to redrawing of county boundaries), and non-fictional. She does Goliath’s bidding but is double-crossed, while there is Hades’ vengeance-seeking sister, an insidious political conspiracy and a looming end of the world to be dealt with.

Facing multiple threats in her world, Thursday, now pregnant, takes refuge in an unfinished detective novel in “The Well of Lost Plots” (2003), or a 26-level world beneath the Great Library where unpublished or unfinished works exist. There she has to keep her memory of her missing husband alive, train a couple of generics, and unearth what the ‘Book Operating System’s’ latest upgrade will entail for reading.

After two years as JurisFiction chief, she heads back to the real world with her two-year-old son Friday in “Something Rotten” (2004). Tagging along is Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, on a fact-finding mission. But out there, another huge political conspiracy is on, getting her husband back is tricky, her mother is hosting guests like Otto von Bismarck, she ends up being targeted by an assassin and the Minotaur, and the fate of her country and the world depend on her surviving a trip to the Underworld and winning a croquet match (here it is not the genteel sport you were thinking).

The next three, set over a decade in the future, comprise a new arc, slightly edgier and much more confusing with paradoxes of time travel and identity abounding. “First Among Sequels” (2008) deals with her struggle to convince her son, “now a teenage cliche” to take a job, tackle dramatically plunging attention spans that impinge reading and deal with her two book versions. She even doesn’t appear until the end in “One of our Thursdays is Missing” (2011), where the narrator is her book version. “The Woman Who Died a Lot (2012)” sees a recuperating Thursday deal with a new set of problems including a revived Goliath. The story will continue in “Dark Reading Matter” but its current status is unclear.

Don’t dismiss Thursday’s exploits as a book-lover’s wildest dreams come true or a multitude of puns, also read them for a trenchant satire on issues like corporate greed, our celebrity-obsessed, reality show watching culture, devious politics, proliferating bureaucracy and other ills of our world!

(04.10.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Non-conformity Zindabad! The poetic protesters of Pakistan (Column: Bookends LXXXV)

(09:44) 

With intermittent spells of military rule while civilian governments, when in place, ranged from authoritarian and/or inept, Pakistan’s polity has not been very kind towards its people through most of the country’s history. But a resilient spirit of opposition always persisted despite all attempts at repression – and a few intrepid Urdu/Punjabi poets were right in the vanguard.

A hybrid language that developed to let the subcontinent’s disparate peoples communicate with each other while used (in a more refined version) by the elite, Urdu, with its courtly background and wide intelligibility, is well suited for expressing protest – with courtesy! And poets were quick to use it – though they suffered for their effrontery!

Urdu’s first satirist Jafar Zatalli’s ridicule of Aurangzeb’s inept successors led to one of them, Emperor Farrukhsiyar, condemning him to death in 1713. His fate didn’t deter his literary successors.

In modern times, “Shair-e-Mashriq” Allama Iqbal, in “Shikwa” (1909), addressed his protest to the highest authority conceivable (“Shikwa Allah se khakam badahan hai mujh ko”) and Faiz Ahmed “Faiz” displayed quite an anti-authoritarian stance – e.g. ‘Ham Dekhenge’ (and Iqbal Bano’s live, spirited rendition in 1985 at the height of Zia-ul-Haq’s reign).

When Iskandar Mirza and Ayub Khan’s military coup ended Pakistan’s first turbulent spell of democracy, the new dispensation came under attack – by poets too. In 1959, a year after Ayub assumed sole power, a poet in a ‘mushaira’ being broadcast live from Rawalpindi declaimed: “Kahin gas ka dhuan hai/Kahin golion ki baarish/Shab-e-ahd-e-kam nigahen/Tujhe kis tarah sarahein”.

The programme was abruptly taken off, the director transferred and the poet jailed. It would be the first, but certainly not the last prison term for Habib Ahmad “Jalib” (1928-93).

He attacked Ayub’s 1962 constitution in “Dastoor” with its uncompromising refrain: “Aise dastoor ko/Subh-e-be-noor ko/Main nahi maanta, Main nahi jaanta” (reprised in subsequent stanzas: “Zulm ki baat ko/Jahl ki raat ko/Main nahi maanta, Main nahi jaanta”, “Is khule jhoot ko/Zehn ki loot ko/Main nahi maanta, Main nahi jaanta” and finally “Tum nahi charaagar/Koi maane magar/Main nahi maanta, Main nahi jaanta”)

The prevalent crony capitalism inspired: “Bees gharane hai abaad!/Aur croroon hai nashaad!/Sadr-e-Ayub zindabad!”

In Yahya Khan’s time, Jalib, addressing his portrait at a mushaira, said: “Tujhse pehle wo jo ek shaks yahaan takht-nasheen tha/Usko bhi apna khuda hone ka itna hi yaqeen tha”. A latter work bemoaned: “Dakuan da je saath na dende pind da pahredar/Aj pairaan zanjeer na hondi jeet na hondi haar/Paggan apne gal wich pa lo turo pet de bhar/Chadh jaye, te mushkil lehndi bootan di sarkar.”

In Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s time, the peremptory summons to a prominent actress to perform for the Shah of Iran at the prime minister’s Sindh mansion led to the iconic: “Larkane chalo/Warna thaane chalo/Apne hoton ki laali lutane chalo/Warna thaane chalo/Jism ki lauh se shame jalane chalo/Warna thane chalo/Gaane chalo/Warna thaane chalo.”

Zia-ul-Haq was pilloried in “Zulmat ko Zia” (literally darkness to light): “Is zulm-o-sitam ko lutf-o-karam/Is dukh ko dawa kya likhna/Zulmat ko zia, sar sar ko saba/Bande ko khuda kya likhna”.

Jalib’s Punjabi counterpart was Chiragh Deen “Ustaad Daman” (1911-84), a legend of pre- and post-1947 Lahore whose creed was: “Istage te hoyi te asi Sikandar honde han/Istage ton thale uthriye te asi Qalandar honde han/Jab ‘Daman’ ulajh jaaye hukumat se/Te asi chup-chap andar honden han”.

He made his first trip to jail, when at a mushaira early into the Ayub era, he recited: “Sadde mulk diyan maujan hi maujan/Jithe dekho faujan hi faujan”.

Further trouble came when Daman questioned Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto: “Ae ki kari jaanaa, ki kari jaanaa/Kadi Shimle jaanaa hai, te kabhi Murree jaanaa/Ae ki kari jaanaa, tada tar jaanaa hai, tada toos jaanaa hai/Jithe jaanna hai, ban ke tu jaloos jaanna hai/Kadi Cheen jaanaa, kadi Roos jaanna hai/Kadi ban ke Amriki jasoos jaanaa/Oye ki kari jaanaa/Laae khes jaanna, khichi dari jaanaa hai/Qaum da tu kaddi phloos jaanna hai” (as recited by new “Khabar Naak” host Naeem Bokhari in a recent episode). A police raid on his house led to “bombs” being found and it was jail again.

Daman also provided the best requiem for 1947. “Bhanve mouhon na kahiye, par vicho vich/Khoye tusi vi o khoye asi ve aan” and ending: “Lali akhiyan di payi das di ae/Roye tusi ve o, roye asi ve aan”. Its recital during his India visit reduced Pandit Nehru to tears.

The point is lost if we treat them as Pakistani poets only and forget the larger message of politicians and their hubris is not confined to their country but has wider application in the region and especially now!

(27.09.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in )

A one-woman UN peace-maintaining force (Column: Bookends LXXXIV)

By Vikas Datta (09:26) 

Negotiating with unsavoury warlords with bloody hands, foiling unconscionable machinations of big business bosses who have no qualms at countenancing genocides, preventing assassinations at a peace conference and other personally hazardous and morally distasteful tasks come naturally to this feisty international troubleshooter. What is difficult is protecting her job in her organization primarily responsible for global security but more of a nest of intrigue, jealousy and vested interests, and tarnished by its failures to avert massacres in Africa and Europe in the 1990s.

They have several agents from covert supranational groupings tasked to keep the world safe – in recent times, the incongruous combination (at Cold War’s height) of American Napoleon Solo and Soviet Ilya Kuryakin in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E”, “Our Man Flint” of the Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage (ZOWIE), and others, leave alone those tackling supernatural threats or eldritch abominations as in “Dr. Who”. But none was from the preeminent international organisation under its own name, possibly because the United Nations frowned on its use for commercial purpose, like in these popular 1960s TV series and films.

But in the new century, the field is right open for the spirited Yael Azoulay, who negotiates secret, dirty deals for Secretary General Fareed Hussein (an Indian finally in the post). Their task is not made easier by the need to accommodate the national and special interests of members (especially P5 powers), and of the new, uncontrollable elements – big business and its most worrying manifestation, the military-industrial complex, which has a vested stake in conflict and instability.

Venturing into this largely unexplored genre is British journalist-turned-author Adam LeBor (b. 1961), who began his media career with “assignments that ranged from seeking London’s best dry Martini to investigating Nazi war criminals who found sanctuary in Britain” before becoming a foreign correspondent in 1991.

Covering post-Communist Hungary and the brutal ethnic wars that ripped apart Yugoslavia inspired both his first book: “A Heart Turned East: Among the Muslims” (1997), an unjustifiably neglected account of European and American Muslims, and first novel “The Budapest Protocol” (2009), a chilling intrigue set in the Hungarian capital from World War II’s closing days to the present.
LeBor has written over half a dozen more non-fictional works including “Hitler’s Secret Bankers” (1997) on Swiss complicity with Nazi Germany, a biography of Yugoslav/Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic (2004), “City of Oranges” (2007), about Arab and Jewish families in Israel’s Jaffa town, while most recent was “Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World” (2013), on the Bank for International Settlements. It was however his “Complicity with Evil: The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide” (2006) on its failure in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur and how these still cast a malevolent shadow on the present that forms the basis for the Yael Azoulay series.

In her mid-30, Yael is a UN employee of 12 years standing who has “brokered ceasefires in East Timor and Darfur, charmed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and sweet-talked Shia insurgents in Iraq”. She debuts in “The Geneva Option” (2013), where she is sent to eastern Congo to persuade a Hutu warlord to surrender for lenient treatment but too late realizes what is behind her mission. By then she is out of a job, has several intelligence and law enforcement agencies – and her past ghosts – on her trail, as the narrative weaves between New York, Africa, and Switzerland to a nail-biting finish.

Short story “The Istanbul Exchange” (2013) takes her to the historic city to convince an Afghan warlord to surrender to the Americans, but our intrepid heroine soon finds herself in a murky world of secret rendition and arms trafficking to Syrian rebels.

In her second full outing “The Washington Stratagem” (2015), Yael (a former Mossad agent as we learn) struggles to foil an insidious conspiracy and more demons from her own past to commercialise the UN and destabilise the Middle East and save – again – her job (and of her boss). Unlike the first, not all questions are answered – for which we will have to wait for “The Reykjavik Assignment”, expected later this year.

Peopled mostly by duplicitous diplomats, unscrupulous businessmen, self-serving journalists (the rather vapid Sami of the New York Times and the beguiling, more promising Najwa of Al Jazeera), LeBor’s works are stirring, high-adrenalin adventures, only made mildly distracting by delving into a character’s background right when they appear. His cynical view of a hamstrung, blundering UN or murderous business is scarcely reassuring, but not entirely without foundation. But it is comforting that there are also those who work hard to set right things – if we don’t look too closely into their methods!

(20.09.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

The Dervish Wars and the Empire Strikes Back – in an African city (Column: Bookends LXXXIII)

By Vikas Datta (09:53) 

It is not even two centuries old but this city, nestled in the embrace of two tributaries of the Nile and a crossroads between Arab and Black Africa, became more notorious as an arena for a clash of civilisations and the British Empire’s most devastating loss of face – an episode extensively recounted by several protagonists, inspiring authors from Rudyard Kipling to Wilbur Smith, drawing in Winston Churchill and Flashman and rendered on celluloid by Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier.

The call for Jihad – the first modern manifestation – by the messianic Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah “Mahdi” (1844-85) against Sudan’s Turco-Egyptian rulers (and their British backers) and the long war (1881-1898) that ensued ensured Khartoum became one of the most-known African cities as far as popular culture is concerned.

The city, whose name derives either from the Arabic for hosepipe (given the early settlement’s shape) or safflower (a vegetable oil source in Egypt), came up in 1821 as a post for Egyptian troops of the Khedive. It however came in the limelight in 1885, when the Mahdi’s forces, having overrun most of Sudan abandoned by the British-Egyptian forces, captured the city after a lengthy siege and slaughtered the garrison including its commander, Gen. Charles George ‘Chinese’ Gordon. A British rescue force was still far off. For the next decade or so, Sudan was abandoned till the ‘Scramble for Africa’ and ensuring retribution, led to a better planned British campaign for reconquest, and then joint Anglo-Egyptian rule.

It is this part of Khartoum’s history most in focus, both in fiction and non-fiction – right from when the events described were fresh in public memory till now.

“Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan” (1891) by Gen. Sir Francis Wingate, who oversaw intelligence from Sudan, was an authoritative account. After helping the escape of Father Joseph Ohrwalder, a Roman Catholic missionary and Rudolf Carl von Slatin, an Austrian officer coming to Africa for business but ending up governor-general of Darfur, Wingate (later governor-general of Sudan and high commissioner to Egypt) also translated into English their memoirs – “Ten Years in the Mahdi’s Camp” (1892) and “Fire and Sword in the Sudan” (1896) respectively.

“The River War: An Account Of The Reconquest Of The Sudan” (1902) by then army officer-cum-journalist Churchill, who overcame the opposition to his presence by expedition commander Lord Kitchener, speaks for itself.

In fiction, the first was Rudyard Kipling’s “The Light That Failed” partly set in Sudan, while prolific British author and Empire champion George Alfred Henty, known for popular adventure fiction for younger readers, penned “The Dash For Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition” (1892) and “With Kitchener in the Soudan, A Story of Atbara and Omdurman” (1903).

Then there is A.E.W. Mason’s “The Four Feathers” (1902) about a young officer’s attempt to expiate, in the Sudan, his cowardice that left him disgraced before family and friends, and Nobel Prize-winning Polish author Henryk (“Quo Vadis”) Sienkiewicz’s “Desert and Wilderness” (1912) about two European children sucked up in the war.

Modern works include Wilbur Smith’s “The Triumph of the Sun” (2005), part of his Courtney family series, John Ferry’s “After Omdurman” (2008), written in the early 20th century style, John Wilcox’s “The Siege of Khartoum” (2010), sixth of the Simon Fonthill series, and British-Sudanese author Jamal Mahjoub’s “In the Hour of the Signs” (1996). George McDonald Fraser’s “hero” Sir Harry Flashman is also inveigled into accompanying Gordon to Sudan (in “The Road to Charing Cross” in “Flashman and the Tiger”, 1999) but it never got developed further.

Why is this colonial episode so important? Look at it differently – A western intervention leads to regime change but an Islamic backlash turns the liberators into occupiers. A prime minister flounders, alliances fall apart, and a general makes policy in the field. The media accuse Western soldiers of barbarity and a region slides into chaos… Sounds familiar? A compelling account of the legacy can be found in Dominic Green’s “Armies of God: Islam and Empire on the Nile, 1869-1899” (2007).

But there are other views of Khartoum in other times too – Sudanese-Egyptian writer Leila Aboulela’s third book “Lyrics Alley” (2010), based on her uncle’s life and set in the hopeful days before and immediately after independence, is about a wealthy business family facing the conflict of tradition and modernity, commerce and art – and looking after paralysed heir Nur. A range of characters – patriarch Mahmoud, his wives – tribal Waheeba and cosmoplitan Nabilah, other family members Fatma, Sorraya, Batool and Zeinab add colour.

Khartoum also saw an infamous terror attack on diplomats by the Black September group in 1973 and was Osama Bin Laden’s base 1991-96 before the Taliban invited him to Afghanistan. These haven’t inspired any books yet – but who knows what might turn up?

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

Pakistan’s Mrs. Malaprop – courtesy Moni Mohsin (Column: Bookends LXXXII)

By Vikas Datta (08:31) 

Stock characters, based on a nearly universally understood stereotypical personalities, actions or manner of speech, can suddenly emerge in the most unlikely of places and being too well known for any original use, find their merit in satire. Like this Mrs. Malaprop incarnated in modern-day Lahore, whose exploits and sentiments are a skewering indictment of her class not only in her country, but are as easily transferable to a similar segment in its eastern neighbour, or with some changes, across the globe.

Pakistani journalist-turned-author Moni Mohsin (b.1963) is the progenitor of the well-off, but shallow and vacuous “Butterfly” who only wants a good time and expects everyone recognises her. We can imagine her indignant squeal at being asked to introduce herself: “What? What do you mean, ‘who am I?’ If you don’t know me than all I can say, baba, you must be some loser from outer space. Everyone knows me. All of Lahore, all of Karachi, all of Isloo – oho, baba, Islamabad – half of Dubai, half of London and all of Khan Market and all the nice, nice bearers in Imperial Hotel also…”

Derived from Mohsin’s newspaper column, “The Diary of a Social Butterfly” (2008) introduces Butterfly who lives in Lahore in “a big, fat kothi with a big, fat garden in Gulberg, which is where all the khandani, khaata-peeta types live”, is married to Janoo from a landed family but “very bore” for liking “bore things like reading-sheading” and who can be very “sarhial” (literally burnt, figuratively spoil-sport) at times – for her. They have a teenaged son Kulchoo, whose voice is getting “horse”.

Proud that her “bagground is not landed”, she went to Kinnaird College, “where all the rich illegible girls go while they are waiting to be snapped up” and is “very sophisty, smart and socialist”. So are her friends Mulloo, Flopsy, Furry and Twinkle, most of whose husbands are “bank defaulters but they are all very religious and upright otherwise”.

But Butterfly is not only a Pakistani version of Mrs. Malaprop, who ambled onstage in 1775 in Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s “The Rivals” and had her misuse of words to comic effect (“He is the very pine-apple of politeness!”; “…she’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile”) immortalised as “malapropisms”.

In her mix of English, mangled English, and anglicised Urdu, Butterfly also offers a satirical view of Pakistan in the first dozen-odd years of the 21st century through an upper crust woman’s prism – though the brand of satire is the Horatian gentle, mild mockery, not the Juvenalian abrasive method.

It is achieved partly, by starting every monthly entry (from January 2001 to December 2007) with a serious national development, juxtapositioned with Butterfly’s activities – eg. February 2001: “Restoration of assemblies in March likely/Butterfly attends six parties in two days”. This is normally the practice till the ending when the assassination of Benazir Bhutto leaves our blithe spirit depressed too.

Butterfly flits back in “Tender Hooks” (2011) which has a different structure – daily entries and a specific plot – finding a suitable bride for her divorced cousin Jonkers after being emotionally blackmailed into the task by her maternal aunt. But Butterfly is not at her best with strains in her own marriage while her cousin has his own ideas. The headings of this account, beginning in end September 2009, give a flavour of what Pakistan is going through, without the parallel activity of our heroine, who ultimately proves that she does have a conscience and a good heart.

“The Return of the Butterfly” (2014) goes back to the original format – eg. March 2008: “Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif agree to form coalition government/Butterfly discovers Janoo’s favourite colour”). This shows her at the most hilariously dense – her husband wants a ‘green’ car and she proposes others before her son suggests the most environmentally viable way would be to retain the old car but use it less – leaving her aghast. “Father tau was already crack, now son is also following in his footsteps. It’s all to do with hereditary and jeans, I’m told… Some people inherit lands, some inherit Swiss bank accounts, some inherit kothis, others inherit factories and firms and political parties…. and what does my son inherit from his father? A cracked head.”

The Butterfly series, published by Random House India, are a wickedly comic satire but should not be let go at that only. It is satire’s unerring attribute that its target is far wider from what it appears to be. But do we have the courage to ascertain how much it concerns us?

(06.09.2015 – Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

A poet from Deoband and his epigrams in verse (Column: Bookends LXXXI)

By Vikas Datta (09:29) 

Homer tells us that Odysseus, on returning home, wreaked havoc on the suitors and their servitors who had occupied his home in his absence and the only one he spared was a poet – for being divinely inspired. From bards to balladeers to lyricists, poets have always been respected for crafting the most enduring and popular record of the human condition. And they offer some of the best – subtle but impactful – observations on society and politics – like this towering Urdu poet from Deoband.

The world of Urdu poetry is a glittering galaxy and one has to be a sufficiently bright star to stand out, but Dr. Mohammad Nawaz Khan ‘Nawaz Deobandi’ manages with his stirring poetry, akin to epigrams in verse, and transcending the individualistic approach characterising most of traditional Urdu verse. But, then, he also cannot be slotted in the “tarraqi-pasand” (Progressive) school, having blazed out his own trail – based on humanistic considerations rather than ideological.

Though he has just two published compilations, those who attend prominent mushairas will be familiar with the tall, burly, full-bearded bespectacled poet with a baritone that can range from soothing to thundering. I myself came to know of him at the Red Fort mushaira earlier this century – and one of his couplets remained in my mind, particularly because I could not write it down in time. In those days, the internet was not that boundless receptacle of information it has become now, and it took me many years before I found the full couplet, which reads: “Yeh jala diya voh bujha diya, yeh to kaam hai kis aur ka/Na hawa ke koi khilaaf hai na hawa kisi ke khilaaf hai”.

That is an underlying characteristic of Nawaz Deobandi’s poetry – simple language but with some imaginative, vivid imagery and sometimes apparent paradoxes to express profound truths and depth of thought. Take some of his best-known couplets: “Badshahon ka intezar kare/Itni fursat kahan faqeeron ko” or “Ek jugnu bhi diyon se saath roshan tha magar/Jab andhera ho gaya log pechane use”, or for that matter, “Sitam bhi roz ho kuche mein, qatle-e-aam bhi ho/Mazaa to tab hai tadapne ka intezam bhi ho”.

He just needs a baker’s dozen of words to render unforgettably life’s basic lesson: “Gungunata ja raha tha ek faqeer/Dhoop rehti hai na chhaon der tak” and takes a few more to offer some valuable advice on living (and dying): “Zindagi aisi jiyo tum, dushmano ko rashk ho/Maut ho aise ki duniya der tak maatam kare”.

His poetry offers a perceptive look on our times – whether it be the loss of innocence: “Neend aati hai sun kar inhe akhbaar ki khabren/Bachhe mere pariyon ki kahani nahi sunte”, on (self) advertising: “Usi ka maal to bikta hai is zamane mein/Jo apne neem ke patton ko zafran kahe”, on growing social rifts: “Shahron mein aise to haalat nahi the pehle/Ranjish thi yeh fasaadat nahi the pehle”, on gratitude: “Jin par loota chuka tha duniya ki daulaton/Un warison ne mujh ko kafan nap kar diya”, on ‘trust’: “Raz pahunche hamare ghairon tak/Mashwara kar liya tha apnon se” and much more modern human conditions.

He does not avoid the subject of love but deals with it in his own style: “Main mareez-e-ishq hoon, charahgar, to hain dard-e-ishq se bekhabar/Yehi tadap hi iska ilaaj hai, yeh tadap na ho to shifa na ho”.

But Nawaz Deobandi is at his best when his shers display some deft wordplay – apparently easy but more difficult to do than it looks. Take this particular one from a ghazal he says was based on “dialogues” – “Aa bhi jaao ke ham bulate hai/Tum bulate ham jo na aate to”.

Then, by juggling the word order, he gets: “Dekh kar socha to paya faasla hi faasla/Soch kar dekha to tum mere bahut nazdeek thi” and the superlative: “Ban jaye agar baat to sab kehte hai kya kya/Aur baat bigarh jaaye to kya kya nahi kehte”. Skillful use of synonyms results in this valuable lesson: “Agar bikhne pe aa jao to ghat jaate hai daam aksar/Na bikhne ka iraada ho to qeemat aur badhti hai”.

But most powerful is his intense nazm which begins: “Darham barham dono sochen/Mil julkar ham dono sochen/Zakhm ka marham dono sochen/Sochen, par ham dono sochen” and ends with the powerful: “Tipu ke arman jale hai/Bapu ke ahsan jale hai/Gita aur Quran jale hai/Hadd yeh hai insaan jale hai” and “Har tirath-sthan jalege/Saara Hindustan jalega/Tab sochenge?/Socho! Aakhir kab sochenge?”

And that is the most important message of his poetry – Think, by – but not only for – yourself!

(Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)