Gul Gulshan Gulfam

by Pran Kishore

  The fame of this serial reached even foreign countries in Europe and also the United States where many broadcasting companies telecast it with subtitles, and Kashmiri people, felt for the first time that a beautiful aspect of their social life was portrayed to the world with honesty and empathy. Not only this, the popularly of the series was so impressive, that some hotel owners in Kashmir even changed the names of their hotels, and erected the signboards saying Gul Gulshan Gulfam! Some of those signboards are still there – outside the Harwan Gardens, in the Gulmarg bazaar, on the tuck shop at Sona Marg.

  Despite having attained so much popularity, I still did not find my creative urge satiated, and my desire to write a full-length novel, as originally started, haunted me all the time. However, after the commercial success of Gul Gulshan Gulfam, I got so engrossed in work that I hardly had any respite to pursue such desires. For six long years, I was busy writing the screenplay of Junoon, the longest TV-serial of that time. After Junoon, my time was taken up in writing other popular serials like Ghuttan, Manzil, Saye Devdaar Ke, Baaghi, Noor Jahan and many others. But during all these years of relentless work, the desire to complete the novel Gul Gulshan Gulfam made me impatient. Two years after that hectic period of my life, I managed to lessen the burden of commercial writing and stayed for two successive summers at my Srinagar residence where my long cherished dream of completing this novel in Kashmiri, my mother tongue, was fulfilled.

  The scope of a television series is short-lived and its frame is limited at various levels. Though I had tried my best to present all the characters of the serial in keeping with the cultural traditions of Kashmir, I personally felt that something was lost in the adaptation from the screenplay to the screen and they lacked an authenticity as they did not converse in their native tongue. In the form of the novel, the characters finally embraced their own mother tongue, and they became more solid and natural.

  In stimulating me to write this novel, I am grateful to my brother Late Manohar Kaul and my wife Late Shanta Kaul, both of whom are writers as well. They were my unfailing audience every evening to the portions that I wrote during the day. They not only heard me intently, but also scrutinized every detail with honesty and gave me their counsel. I also express my gratitude to the writer Anita Kaul for going through the first draft and tightening it.

  I am also grateful to Late Abdul Samad Kotroo who narrated many interesting events of his life to me – especially the incidents were directly related with his vocation, the Dal Lake and the actual life of its inhabitants. His insight proved to be of much help to me in giving texture to this novel. I must record here that it was the powerful portrayals by Parikshat Sahni as the protagonist, Malla Khaliq and Radha Seth who played his wife Aziz Dyad, who added new dimensions to the characters, which I have incorporated in the novel.

  Since the TV serial Gul Gulshan Gulfam acquired a historical significance, it is appropriate that I convey my gratitude to all my companions whose work contributed to the success of the serial. The title song: ‘Muskurati subh ki aur gungunati sham ki/Yeh kahani Gul ki hai, Gulshan ki hai, Gulfam ki’ was written by my dear friend Farooq Nazki. The lyrics rendered into music by Krishan Langoo well-known composer, became tremendously popular and eventually won the Best Title Song Award from Radio, Television Producers and Advetisers Association (RAPA Award) that year. The song is a beautiful synthesis of Kashmiri and Hindi:

  Dalaken malaren seemab deeshith,

  Aftab coshilan voshila draav,

  Wan haaren hund aalav boozith,

  Shoka hoth bulbul bagas vanavaan tchav

  (Seeing the mercurial shimmering

  Of the ripples of the Dal,

  The sun rose with a blushed face;

  Hearing the calls of the forest-starlings,

  The bulbul with full fervour entered the garden, singing songs of love)

  This note shall remain incomplete if I fail to express my thanks to my friends, Sunil Mehta and Prem Krishen, the producers of the series, who ignored all the considerations of business and let me have undisturbed freedom in writing the script. I thank Ved Rahi, the director of the series, for having assimilated the true spirit of the script.

  This novel, when published in the original, created a stir in the literary circles. Several critics classified it as an epic in Kashmiri literature and there was a demand that it should be translated into English, so that its message would reach readers all over the world, so that they get a feel of the life of these simple boatmen and so that they feel that Kashmir is not only Heaven on Earth but also a real abode of love. So with this desire I was motivated to get the novel translated into English. The search for getting a competent person to take up this work was rather difficult as I wanted him to be a person who was conversant and fluent with both the languages. I was lucky that Professor Shafi Shauq agreed to undertake this mammoth task as he is a renowned litterateur in both the languages. He has kept the local flavour intact. This made my editing easy and I thank him for his work.

  I am indebted to Neerja, my daughter, an author herself, for carefully going through the revision and for her inputs. It was she who got in touch with Shri Anuj Bahari of Redink, my agent. This note of mine would be incomplete without expressing my sincere thanks to him for introducing my work to the esteemed publishers at HarperCollins India, who were gracious enough to publish it.

  Translator’s Note

  Shafi Shauq

  Gul Gulshan Gulfam is the first novel of an epic dimension in the Kashmiri language. Although Kashmiri literature is distinguished for its antiquity and richness of form, the genre of the novel, for various reasons, remained impoverished. In its history of about sixty years, the Kashmiri novel has less than a score titles to its claim. Over the years, however, novels from around the world were translated into the Kashmiri and their availability enriched the understanding of the form.

  Gul Gulshan Gulfam is undeniably the quintessential mahaakaaviya (prose epic) of contemporary Kashmir. In following the lives of characters belonging to three successive generations of post-independence Kashmir, and paying proportionate attention to the actions and moral choices of each individual living under specific and sometimes limiting socio-economic and cultural conditions, Gul Gulshan Gulfam emerges as a novel at the cusp of Indian economic liberalization and about the Kashmiri identity in flux.

  What is also unique about this novel is the fact that it was born out a TV script. Before getting published, Gul Gulshan Gulfam was tremendously popular as a television serial and the characters had almost become a part of people’s everyday lives in the early 90s when it was broadcasted on Doordarshan. This trajectory – from being conceived as a script, being produced episodically in a studio over a period with the participation of the director, actors, lights, setting, etc., then being edited and aired on TV across the country, and in retrospect, being transformed into the form of a novel sheds light on the evolution of the genre. Only Pran Kishore, with his lifelong immersion in the world of theatre, could have written this mahaakaaviya and retained its visual element which is crucial to the story.

  Giving the story the shape of a complete, comprehensive written text involves being conversed in the rigours of a syntactic mechanism that can render the data gained through observation and intuition into linguistic media and create multi-layered semantic suggestions to carry the narrative, with its complexities of interconnecting plot arcs and an ensemble cast of characters, forward. And though often ignored, post-writing revision involves a different kind of energy from the writer. It is an undeniable feature of literature that its value is commensurate with the amount of labour involved in producing it. And this in turn, in an ideal world, is directly proportional to the amount of labour required from the reader to comprehend and appreciate the text. The novel Gul Gulshan Gulfam adequately meets this critical standard.

  The tourism industry of Kashmir sets the novel in motion. The characters and events are set against the socio-cultural background that emerged in Srinagar because of
an absence of dependable and self-sustaining economy and its parallel dependence on tourism. Many classes of other vocations, like craftsmen, boatmen, waazas (professional cooks) and vendors are intimately associated with this business. It is a culture that has been absorbed by residents who have witnessed unparalleled catastrophes and political upheavals. The want of a sustainable economy, particularly in modern times, makes the urban population vulnerable to accepting the hazards of the tourism industry, as is evidence in cities around the world. To survive as an individual entrepreneur or carry on small-scale family business in the competitive world of tourism could very well imply being able to measure the market value of everything available at one’s disposal: labour, housing property, fine arts and crafts, personal peace, ethical mores, conversation, and in certain respects, one’s conscience and identity. The values, of course, are determined by an overpowering capitalist motive: to sell and accumulate personal wealth for the uncertain future. The nucleus of this bargain-centric culture is the Dal Lake and its environs, including the Jhelum and the Mughal Gardens, where the story takes place. The picturesque Dal Lake, with its age-old lake culture – which is not just part of the setting for the novel but also assumes characteristics of its own – seems to be somnolently waiting for the good days to return. The houseboats of Malla Khaliq – Gul, Gulshan and Gulfam are stare out emptily over the insulating Zabarwan cliffs.

  The underlying motive of the novel Gul Gulshan Gulfam is to represent the strengths and the weaknesses of this industry of antiquity through life-like characters. This approach is taken to not simple criticize the system through a story but also to realistically portray with empathy the compulsions and contradictions that various characters go through to fit in or evolve with a quick-changing socio-economic environment. The same dimensions of the novel, nevertheless, has a different import for readers who feel suffocated in the tourist-centric culture of the city (and in turn the story) where every individual seems to have turned into a middleman, and all interactions reduced to economic exchanges. The simulacrum of the city in the novel thus functions differently to the different kinds of readings.

  At the centre of the drama is Malla Khaliq, who with help from his lifelong friend, Narayan Joo, the travel agent, depends on making a paltry business of renting out three houseboats Gul, Gulshan and Gulfam to tourists. Taking full advantage of the third person omniscient point of view, Pran Kishore succeeds in depicting the psyches of a host of characters, but it is Malla Khaliq that the narrative voice is closest to. In his immediate actions and responses, both in states of joy and despondence, Malla Khaliq represents the consciousness of a fast-changing locality. He, like a true patriarch, has unwavering faith in his own aplomb and believes that he is the only one who can preserve a certain set of values and principles from the onslaught, and defeat the forces of disintegration. But in states of deep desperation, he becomes a captive of his own dread. He is frightened, his anxiety takes a physical form, he his fears project outwards onto his family through his quick temper. When nothing works, he resorts to prayers.

  Narayan Joo acts as a foil to Malla Khaliq, and is also the voice of reason, cultural refinement and equanimity. His role as a benefactor and advisor to the vicissitudes of the lives of others is to show how reason and honesty can restore harmony when everything is out of control. He has suffered personal loss in the death of his wife, yet he symbolizes cohesion, analysis and understanding. In the end, he is rewarded with filial gratitude from his son and all the comforts of life.

  A modern epic, the novel encompasses characters belonging to three generations of post-independence Kashmir: the family-centered characters, who hold onto traditions and are nostalgic for an old world order, like Malla Khaliq, Aziz Dyad, Narayan Joo, Naba Kantroo, and Rahim Shoga; the mercenary characters caught up in the swings of the market, like Ghulam Mohammad, Ghulam Qadir, Gul Beg, Parvez and Jane; and finally, a new generation of youth looking for wholesome education and fair opportunities, like Razaq, Vijay Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Parveen, Bilal, Nisar, and Mukhtar. Among all these characters, Malla Khaliq stands tall as a concretion of a firmly rooted and immutable conscience. Qadir, Razaq, Parveen and Vijay Kumar move from one stratum to another and from one state of mind to another. While living in a maze of various economic, political, and social forces, they act towards an illusory freedom that they believe can be acquired with calculation, and are convinced of the efficacy of their actions.

  The arrival of a European tourist, going by the name Jane, who rents out the houseboat Gulshan sets off a chain reaction and upsets the lives of Malla Khaliq and his family. Seduced by Jane’s charms and promises of monetary gains, Qadir, the profligate son of Malla Khaliq gets caught in the net of smugglers. His association with the hippies, whom Jane introduces him to, drives him deeper and deeper into the quagmire of unlawful activities. On one hand, Qadir and Jane desperately try to evade the police and go into hiding. And on the other hand, Malla Khaliq, Narayan Joo, Bhonsley, Prahlad Singh and Vijay Kumar, attempt to curb the nefarious designs of the criminals operating in and around the Dal. This long hide-and-seek takes a toll on Malla Khaliq’s family, particularly Qadir’s wife Zeb and their son Bilal. Qadir is finally apprehended by the Mumbai police and Malla Khaliq leaves Srinagar to get to him. Narayan Joo’s son Vijay Kumar uses his clout in Mumbai in getting Qadir released on bail. Being remorseful about his illicit dealings and many misdeeds, Qadir is not able to face his benevolent father and loving wife Zeb. With a resolve to return to his family only after washing away all his sins through living a life of hard labour, Qadir disappears again. He goes to Goa and from there to Daman where he helps an ailing hotelier named De Souza, in rebuilding his business. Knowing nothing about Qadir’s past, De Souza gets his only daughter Reeny married to Qadir and before his death, bequeaths his property to them.

  Qadir, with a complete disregard for his kindred, is driven by his selfish impulses and is forced to leave home. Other characters like Narayan Joo’s son, Vijay Kumar, also lives away from Srinagar, aspiring to become successful in a wider world. However, his son, Dilip, returns to the Valley and decided to settle there after gaining a degree in hotel management from a Swiss university. There is also Razaq, a destitute boy, who starts his life as a servant in the houseboats of Malla Khaliq, but then decides to take up his education. He falls in love with his master’s daughter Parveen, runs away in dejection when she is married into a rich family, and finally re-surfaces as a police officer and marries Parveen who is divorced from her lecherous husband, Parvez. The movement of the various men, old and young, reflect how economic and social forces determine mobility and migration, and how individuals make moral choices to go or not go against the grain.

  Like the other works of Pran Kishore, Gul Gulshan Gulfam revolves around a tidy narrative structure so that all other components are proportionate in shape and size the main arc. For every dramatic flare-up that takes place, the author starts with a lull in the foreground, which then snowballs into bigger events by cause and effect. Pran Kishore uses his authorial voice deftly, alternating between stylized modes of omniscience and determinacy of the public uses of language to manage the plot in consonance with the Aristotelian notion of a six-segment pyramidal form. However, unlike the Greek concept of tragedy of necessity, Gul Gulshan Gulfam, based on free exercise of choice, is a tragedy of possibility. Qadir’s hubris is his delusion of prosperity and his faith in his efforts – legal or illegal. His peripeteia is his willful complicity with Gul Beg and Jane. His fall and suffering finally lead him to the recognition of his tragic errors, his anagnorosis. When the compassion from his father thaws his frozen feelings, the omniscience narration depicts his subjective condition. He confesses all his sins and follies to his loving wife Zeb when he is home again.

  Pran Kishore is meticulous in creating the mise-en-scene of particular events and the total environment of the novel. The narrative is therefore embedded with cultural referents – qahwa (the Kashmiri concoction of full tea leaf, cinnam
on and cardamom) and samovar (a copper kettle used to boiling qahwa tea leaves), the mention of almonds, saffron, apples, pomegranates, dry morels, jejyier (a hookah), phiran (a loose outer garment), kangri (a brazier with a cover and top of wickers), nadiry (lotus stalks) and other items of routine life in Kashmir abounding in the novel are not there without a purpose. Within the limited purlieus of the Dal Lake, the novelist weaves a rich tapestry of Kashmiri culture. He also uses dialogues very consciously, selecting words, accents, variations of speech-rhythms to depict the different dialects for different characters. Though they are all Kashmiri, language of the characters varies from profession to profession. While translating, the variation of dialects and syntax was challenging and I have tried my best to achieve a balance. Translating this epic novel has been pleasant and rewarding, especially since I am deeply involved in the life that has so effectively been presented in the novel.

  About the Book

  It’s the nineties, and Kashmir is in turmoil. The tourism industry has taken a big hit, and the youth are disillusioned, with no jobs or hopes for the future. In this climate, Malla Khaliq waits day after day for guests to arrive at his three beloved houseboats – Gul, Gulshan and Gulfam – on the Dal lake, and struggles to keep his three sons together. While Noor Mohammed loves his father and tries to keep the faith despite evidence that business is on the decline, Ghulam Ahmed and Ghulam Qadir have plans that might place them in the path of danger. Meanwhile, as Khaliq prepares for his much-pampered daughter Parveen’s wedding, the sudden arrival of a mysterious British girl sets in motion events that threaten to disturb the precarious equilibrium of his household.

  Gul Gulshan Gulfam paints a portrait of a Kashmir in transition, and of a man who is trying to salvage the memories and values of his youth. Once a popular television series, this novelization vividly recreates the streets of Srinagar and the once-living economy of the Dal lake. This is a deeply affecting story about relationships, migration, ambitions and dreams of preserving one’s homeland.