The day I met Salman Rushdie. That was one of the autumn days in september or October.1982 or 1983. I, like most muslims, a sucker for any positive news that has to do with Islam, muslims, and Pakistan, ( in that order) was thrilled, overjoyed, and walked with a little extra bounce in my feet when I learned that a muslim of Indian origin and Pakistani connectedness has been awarded the most coveted prize for literature..called the Booker Prize. Now let me confess with no shame or guilt that I had never before heard the name of this prize. I was also not aware that the people who had initiated this prize and the money that goes with it , (the TATE & LYLE group), also had a connection with me, albeit very flimsy and far-fetched, but still there was something to feel the kind of tingling intimacy which one feels when one is recognized that he too comes from the city which has the tallest-free-standing-structure in the world. Such vicarious phallus-pride in not the sole domain of a Torontonian PhD who drives a cab. So it was with me. Tate-&-Lyle the great colonisers-purveyors of tea , sugar and everything that ever grew in the plantations, for Her Majesty the Queen..and later also to the grand children of the slaves who had forgotten slavery of their ancestors but were now gladly enslaved to the new-breakfasts. The book written on Steam, by someone from Tate & Lyle , had reawakened the engineer in me which had been lullabied to drowsiness if not slumber by the unappreciated low-paid and unimaginative faculty at the Engineering University. That certainly went in my favour because it was during those four years that I spent most of my time studying philosophy, art, and religion and anything & everything that clashed with them. Al Hamdu-Lillah I returned unscathed yet still quite an enriched person compared to the gold-medalists who went-abroad and returned with safe and secure jobs ( with Pensions!). A life , I have always despised, and will forever from then on look down upon those who dread homelessness. I court it, but it eludes me! I feel like the cursed Flying-Dutchman. In short it was I , me, who failed the University!..or what else should I say, because with my best truancy record..they still passed me; albeit with crawling colours! Ah! Tate-&-Lyle . Now because of Tate-&-Lyle Steam..a most thorough work..and in my opinion the final word on the subject had made me comfortable with the word & concept of entropy, I entered the fascinating, highly-charged, and immensely gratifying career of a Sugar manufacturing Engineer. Did I just say career? Well so did I think then..but my wanderlust again reared its beautiful face and begged me to leave before routine set in. So it was in that autumn of 1982-1983 that I felt an eerie closeness to the name Salman Rushdie. My mind, agile as it is in matters near & dear to me, immediately made another connection. My father had mentioned to me, when I was a young boy, that his elder brother, my taya ,had appeared in the ICS exam when two other muslims, who had done well, also appeared. They were some-some-Rushdie & Mussarat Husain Zuberi..stalwarts of the ICS clan. That Rushdie is Salman’s father. Now because it was quite rare to have muslims achieve such heights ( & beat the bloody hindus at their own game ..english education) , the muslims all over India & Pakistan celebrated such events as if a portion of Lal-Quilaa was recaptured. I, like most muslims, a sucker for any positive news that has to do with Islam, muslims, and Pakistan, ( in that order) was thrilled, overjoyed, and walked with a little extra bounce in ....you get the picture So when I read in the papers that Salman Rushdie, the most recent avataar of Mahmud Ghazni has arrived to slay the kaffirs not this time through the Khyber Pass but via the Booker-Pass.....an Allah-O-Akbar resonated throughout my goose-bumped body and like a meteor sank, sat, and comfortably ensconced itself up in an alcove of my medulla-oblongata . The paper also announced the day Salman Rushdie would be reading at the International Authors festival at the waterfront in Toronto. I purchased the ticket ( steep for me those days) and waited till the day arrived. That evening, as is my style, I arrived an hour or so before the event and busied myself loitering around the premises. This was a day of good fortunes smiling upon me..for I chanced to spot a really really beautiful face with a reader/writer kind of sweet-sorrow gleam on her visage. Harper cries it’s time , it’s time..*. and bewitched I sauntered over to her. (*from Macbeth..the witches’ brew) She was GWENDOLYN MaCEWEN . I had never heard her name before. She told me that she was from Toronto and was also one of the authors invited to read at the festival. She did recited some part of her other poems between our amiable chat but THE POEM she wanted me to hear along with others. She however agreed to give me an autographed copy of a really large wall hanging of that poem which I promised I will not read until after I have heard her recite. That poem graced my den for a long long time till the day came when........well that’s another story. Little did I know that she was one of the really great poets amidst the barren & insipid landscape of western literature. I must say that Canada is really very nonchalant and passe about her achievers especially when the boorish USA toots its horn to deafening decibels. I was really sad to learn that she died a few years later (1987) when she was only 46. What I found intriguing was that people had put up a shrine for her in downtown Toronto and then the City too had become one of her admirers..and had made it official. I grabbed a seat in one of the 3rd or 4th rows respectably behind those where the authors sat. Salman , in kind of dimmed light, was reading. I was having somewhat of a difficulty following his British accent but continued to politely enjoy and appreciate when others laughed or chuckled. When it was all over, I rushed to buy all of his other books. Midnight’s Children I had already bought and finished but I did not know when I had bought Shame. So either I’m mixing up 182 or 1983 or he must have brought Shame with him before it was released the following year. A little chat ensued , with people hovering around us. He apologetically told me , while signing the books, not to pay attention to GRimus..his very first book. Even if he had not said that I just could not bring myself to read it. Most likely that book was his attempt to become a gora writer before it must have dawned upon him that even if one tries to deny one’s roots, the roots with arms like an octopus have a long long reach..and they are themselves not as rooted as one imagines them to be. Their best work in underground. So when I winked at him and asked him where we can meet he hinted that I should wait for him at the adjoining bar. What we discussed, or let me be frank what he talked about was a long drivel about things of which I had no clue. Several foreign-ish author/poet types interrupted us, and one poet especially wanted me to have a spin around the city. I have no qualms in mentioning here that although I cannot claim that I know not what liquor tastes like but I am not very fond of it and especially avoid it in situations where everyone tries to measure you up by this & this criteria alone. Here, at such moments, some dragon awakens in me and urges me to resist only because someone expects you to do it.......I compare it to cajoling and prodding someone to go for the Jummaa prayers. Shame, in my opinion, is his best work to date (2007) . ..but by this time I had become accustomed to his style and frankly when compared to great novels which , in the same genre, appeared later on like A fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry or The The Kite Runner by the afghani writer, all his works in nought except that one must acknowledge him as the trail-blazer. Satanic Verses, when it appeared, I did not even bother. I learned about it being of some significance after the Fatwaa. I read the commentaries , glanced through the book and just could not bring myself to read it. It might not be out of place to mention here that I am considered an avid reader on a plethora of subjects & am not averse to read taboo stuff from all quarters. Salman Rushdie lacks depth in his writings..He is more of a stand-up comic who could not make it to stage so he turned his talent onto a paper-stage. Just like , more or less, Jinnah whose desire to become a Shakespearian stage-actor sublimated into his court-room theatrics. ___________________________________________________ P .S: I do not have the strength left to read what I have written. My key-board and fingers sometimes play hide & seek and the mouse pointer sometimes flirts on-screen. So here I hit the send button and may you find this tolerable. Salman did study Islamiyyat at oxford so one could say that he did go to a Madressa--run by the Farangi. Col. Majid Malik and his wife Amina , both dead now . .Amina, I think died 3/4 years ago..and I think is his sister. One of Faiz’s book is dedicated to Bhai Majeed Malik & Amina behan ( Dust-i-Saba?). Nigam daughter of Amina pre-deceased her mother a couple of years earlier. I gleaned good info from those who frequented the house in Karachi. Very western aristocratic and a very fine blend of east and west..but decidedly not belonging anywhere. Just like in Darllymple’s book there are english-Nabobs so there were these Desi-Laat-saahibs ( Laat is slang for Lord) addenda: The family characterized in Quetta, in the book SHAME is, I think, a composite of his sisters and/or Begum Khurshid Mirza and her sister Rasheed Jehaan ( the one who metamorphised the sleepy , afeemee Faiz ( Saadat Hassan Manto’s word) into the radical communist Faiz.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 03:07:56 +0000
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