I have other grouses against Bapu. He treated his wife Kasturba very shabbily and was indifferent towards his sons. He had other negative qualities, which are too embarrassing to relate. And yet I admire him and claim to be a Gandhian.
Gandhi evolved his values and code of conduct in South Africa. He realized that the most potent weapon to use against an enemy stronger than yourself was passive resistance based on the conviction that truth was on your side; thus was born the concept of satyagraha—truth force. It was to be wielded without any ill will, but with the conviction that the other side would come to see your point of view and lay down arms. However, in order to make satyagraha a potent force, one had to shed fear and, if necessary, suffer humiliation and physical violence. Gandhi was often beaten up and put in jail. There were attempts made on his life and more than once he came close to being killed. He never flinched, and soon the white rulers of South Africa, both the British and the Dutch, came to respect him and acknowledge his extraordinary moral stature. It was this kind of conduct that gave him the image of a saint.
I admire Bapu Gandhi more than any other man. Of all other past prophets we have no knowledge—almost everything about them is myth or miracle. With Gandhi, we know. He was a living example.
Whenever I feel unsure of anything, I try to imagine what Gandhi would have done and that is what I do.
What Religion Means to Me
God is regarded as the Creator of all life on earth, whatever name you give Him—Allah, Brahma, Rabb, Parmeshwar or Wahguru. If believers tell you that God created life, then ask them: if that is so, who created Him? They have no answer. The truth is that life on earth was not created. It evolved, as did every living creature, and was not created by anyone, by whatever name you call Him or Her. It is not God who created us, but we who created God.
I am an agnostic. However, one does not have to believe in God to concede that prayer has power. Most people in distress pray for help when they are in trouble. ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,’ wrote Lord Tennyson. I know of a lady faith healer whose simple formula to fight sickness is to chant ‘Om arogyam’. Apparently it worked for her; she also claims to have healed many people. You may take recourse to passages from sacred texts: most Hindus turn to the Gayatri Mantra, Christians to the Lord’s Prayer or one of the Psalms, Muslims to Aayat-ul-Kursi (the Throne Verse) or the sayings of Prophet Mohammed in the Hadith, Sikhs to their favourite passages from the Granth Sahib. And there is nothing to stop anyone making up his or her own prayer. Bernard Shaw was right in holding that common people do not pray, they beg.
On religious festivals, after performing the expected rituals, people should spend a little time—about half an hour—in silence and ask themselves: ‘What does my religion really mean to me?’ Hindus could do this on Ram Navami or Diwali, Muslims on Eid ul-Fitr, Christians on Christmas, Sikhs on the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak.
I was born and brought up a Sikh. My grandmother, with whom I shared a room till I was eighteen, spent the best part of the day mumbling prayers. At the age of five I was initiated into reading the scriptures. I learnt my daily prayers and could recite them by heart. I went to gurdwaras to pray and joined religious processions. At seventeen, I underwent the amrit chakna, a sort of baptism, which symbolized that I had joined the Khalsa. I began to question the value of rituals and the need to conform to Khalsa traditions while in college. But I went along with them. I took great pains to understand the prayers that I had been reciting. Good kirtan continues to move me, to this day. While at St Stephen’s College I attended Bible classes. I was particularly drawn to the language of the Old Testament—the Psalms, the Book of Job and the Song of Solomon. It was later, while I worked on the translations of the Sikh scriptures, and found many references to the Vedas, Upanishads and the epics, that I decided to study them to better understand the meaning of my own Gurbani. My interest in religion led me to read whatever I could on Jainism, Buddhism and Islam.
It was during my seven years in Lahore and my close association with Manzur Qadir that I began to question many religious assumptions. He was a Muslim but did not offer namaz, either at home or in a mosque, even on Eid. Neither did his uncle Saleem, who was India’s tennis champion for many years and preferred living like a European aristocrat rather than a Muslim nawab. Being Muslim meant little to them. Neither of them bothered to make religion an issue. I did.
When India gained independence, I gained freedom from conformist religion and declared myself agnostic. Oddly enough, and for reasons I cannot fathom, my interest in religions increased. I studied scriptures of all religions, translated many myself and taught Comparative Religions in American universities like Princeton, Swarthmore and Hawaii.
My interest in religion continues. I think that speculating about where we come from and where we go after we die is a waste of time. No one has the foggiest idea. What we should be concerned about is what we do in our lives on earth. An Urdu verse sums it up neatly:
Hikayat-e-hastee sunee
To darmiyaan say sunee;
Na ibtida kee khabr hai
Na intiha maaloom
(What I have heard of life
Is only the middle;
I know not its beginning
I know not its end.)
Although I do not practise religious rituals, I do have a sense of belonging to the Sikh community. Whatever happens to the Sikh people is of concern to me and I speak up or write about it.
I have imbibed what I think are the basics of Sikhism as I see it now.
I regard truth to be the essence of religion.
As Guru Nanak said:
Suchchon orey sab ko
Ooper Suchh Aachaar
(Truth above all
Above truth truthful conduct.)
I do my best not to lie. It is easier sticking to the truth than telling lies because lying requires cunning to cover up lies you have told before. Truth does not require brains.
Earn your own living and share some of it with others, said Guru Nanak:
Khat ghaal kichh hathhon dey
Nanak raah pachchaney sey
(‘He who earns with his own hands and
with his own hands gives some of it away,’
says Nanak, ‘has found the true way.’)
I try not to hurt others’ feelings. If I have done so, I try to cleanse my conscience by tendering an apology.
I have also imbibed the motto: ‘Chardi Kala’—‘Ever remain in buoyant spirits, never say die.’ It is worth pondering over. It is worth trying out.
Urdu Poetry, My Passion
I have an abiding passion for Urdu poetry and have been translating it almost all my life. My novel Delhi has Urdu verse in it. I have translated Iqbal’s ‘Shikwa’ and ‘Jawab-e-Shikwa’ and have collaborated on two collections of Urdu poetry.
Unfortunately, Urdu is a language that’s dying in the land where it was born and where it flourished. The number of students who take it as a subject in schools and colleges is dwindling. Apart from Kashmir, where it is taught from the primary to the postgraduate levels, in the rest of the country it is a second or third language. Knowledge of Urdu doesn’t ensure getting jobs, while knowledge of English, Hindi or other regional languages does. Those who write Urdu in the Arabic script refuse to admit that it can be easily read in Devanagri or Roman script, and Hindi purists refuse to include Urdu poetry in school and college textbooks. As a result, Urdu is dying here while it continues to be nurtured and flourish in Pakistan, where it is the national language, preferred to the more commonly spoken Punjabi and Sindhi.
Urdu (which literally means ‘camp’) has a mixed linguistic heritage, which is why it is such a rich language. It evolved as a mixture of Turkish, Arabic and Persian, spoken by the Muslim soldiers of the invaders’ armies, and Sanskrit, Hindi, Braj and Dakhani of the Indian soldiers in the Mughal military encampments. It was also known as Rekhta in Mir and Ghalib’s time. The educated eli
te, who preferred to write and speak in Persian, looked upon the language with some disdain. It was the same with poets right up to the time of Iqbal. They all wrote in Persian until they realized that Urdu was more popular with the masses and gave them a much larger audience.
While most Urdu poets were and are Muslims, to whom wine is haram, they write more about the joys of drinking than on almost any other subject. Urdu poetry is full of references to the maikhana and the saqi though both seem to be figments of the poets’ imaginations. Much of Urdu love poetry was addressed to courtesans, whose mehfils the poets patronized. A lot of it was also addressed to rosy-cheeked, round-bottomed boys who often acted as wine servers. Other stock images from Arabic and Persian art and literature dominate Urdu verse: the nightingale’s lament for the rose; moths incinerating themselves on flames; Majnu’s quest for his beloved Laila. Along with overwhelming romance, there is an obsession with the decline of youth, and death. But apart from themes of despair, there is also plenty of wit and humour.
The most popular form of Urdu poetry is the ghazal, and Hindi films—music composers and playback singers—have had a great role to play in popularizing Urdu verse. Above all, it is they who have made Urdu known to millions who do not even know that the language is written from right to left.
Ghalib, the Greatest of them all
The greatest Urdu poet, and one to whom I turn again and again, is Ghalib. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was born in Agra on 27 December 1797. His father and forefathers were Seljuk Turk soldiers of fortune who sought employment in the armies of princes. His father married into a distinguished and prosperous Agra family but died when Ghalib was just five. Ghalib spent most of his childhood in his maternal grandparents’ home and received education in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, logic and philosophy. He started writing in Urdu at a very young age and in Persian when he was eleven. He grew into a handsome youth, married in his teens and had several children, none of whom survived.
Unlike his ancestors, Ghalib decided to live by the pen rather than the sword. Since the royal court was in Delhi, he moved there to seek the patronage of Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, himself a poet of some calibre, and the umrah (nobility) who frequented the palace. Ghalib also sought favours from the British in Calcutta and Queen Victoria in London. Poets could not survive on poetry alone, he pointed out, so rulers owed it to them to keep them in comfort. In a letter to the queen, Ghalib wrote that the kings of Persia ‘would fill a poet’s mouth with pearls, or weigh them in gold, grant them villages in fief or open the doors of their treasuries to … him’. Ironic that a man who so greatly enriched Persian and Urdu literature remained a beggar all his life.
Ghalib was a nonconformist and a bon viveur. Though he revered Allah and the Prophet, he never said his five daily prayers, never fasted during Ramzan, never went on pilgrimage to Mecca. He patronized houses of pleasure, consorted with courtesans and was inordinately fond of liquor. He preferred French wines or rum but also liked Scotch, which he imbibed every evening while he composed poetry. When someone warned him that the prayers of persons who drank wine were never granted, he said: ‘My friend, if a man has wine, what else does he need to pray for?’
When a Hindu friend brought him a bottle, Ghalib thanked him in verse:
Long had I wandered door to door
Seeking a flask of wine or two—no more
Mahesh Das brought me that immortal draught
Sikander spent his days seeking for.
Ghalib gained a reputation as a man of ready wit and clever repartee. Hali mentions a dialogue between Ghalib and the king, who was very particular about fasting during Ramzan: ‘Mirza, how many days’ fast did you keep?’ asked the king. Ghalib, who had not fasted at all, gave a reply with a double meaning: ‘My lord and my guide, I failed to keep one.’ After the 1857 mutiny had been put down, the British drove most Muslims out of Delhi. Ghalib, who had no sympathy for the mutineers, stayed inside his home while it lasted. Once the British had taken control of Delhi, he was summoned by a Colonel Burn and asked, ‘You a Muslim?’ Ghalib replied, ‘Half. I don’t eat pork but I drink wine.’
Next to alcohol, Ghalib loved mangoes. During the season he’d eat up to a dozen every day. Hali recounts an incident when the poet was strolling with the emperor in the palace orchard and kept staring at the mango trees laden with fruit. The king asked, ‘Mirza, what are you looking at so attentively?’ Ghalib said, ‘My lord and my guide, some ancient poet has written: “Upon the top of every fruit is written, clearly and legibly, this is the property of A, the son of B, the son of C.” And I am looking to see whether any of these bears my name and those of my father and grandfather.’ The king had a basketful of his finest mangoes sent to him the same day.
Throughout his life Ghalib lived a hand-to-mouth existence, ever short of cash, ever living on credit. He was also a gambler and once spent three months in jail for running a gambling den.
It’s strange that Ghalib initially thought that deep emotions could not be expressed in Urdu and preferred to pen them in Persian. Fortunately, he changed his mind in time and left a veritable treasure house of gems. They lose much of their lustre in translation. The meaning comes across but the music of the words is lost.
Ghalib tried to forecast the year of his demise but went woefully wrong in his guess. He died in 1869. He was closer to the truth when he wrote:
Life gallops on at a reckless pace
I know not where it will stop
The reins are not in my hands
My feet not in the stirrups.
The Business of Writing
The world of writers and publishers has changed beyond recognition. The pioneers among Indians writing in English—Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao—either had patrons who helped them find publishers or organizations which sponsored their works. They made some noise in literary circles but not much money. The institution of literary agents was little known. The only one I had heard of in my days was Curtis Brown. It was said that if they took up your work, they would find you a good publisher and take their cut on royalties due to you. I for one never went through a literary agent. Neither did I have any problems finding a good publisher. I was happy with the 8 to 10 per cent royalty they gave me on the sales of my books. Today a literary agent has become a powerful factor in publishing: the best of writers use them because it is they who get publishing houses to cough up huge sums as advance royalties. The whole business resembles a whorehouse. Publishers can be compared to brothel keepers; literary agents to bharooahs (pimps) who find eligible girls and fix rates of payment; writers can be likened to women in the profession. Newcomers are naya maal (virgins) who draw the biggest fees for being deflowered. Advance royalties being paid these days run up to Rs 50 lakh, sometimes even before a word of the projected work has been written. Advances offered to authors in India are often higher than those offered in America or England or in any other European country. But they are offered only for works in English, not for works in our regional languages.
These days publishing houses take great care to package their books with catchy, saleable titles, and beautiful jackets carrying a line or two by a celebrity author vouching for the excellence of its contents. It has become a racket. It’s no better than those who sell their wares in Kolkata’s Sonagachi, Mumbai’s Kamathipura and Hyderabad’s Mehboob ki Mehendi.
It was during British times that some Indians took to writing literary works in English. Among the pioneers, Raja Rao could be witty, until he assumed the role of a guru imparting ancient wisdom to his disciples. R.K. Narayan stuck faithfully to his Malgudi tales and became the icon of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The new Indian writers are much more at ease with the English language. The Jhumpa Lahiris and the Arundhati Roys of today are much better writers than the R.K. Narayans and the Raja Raos of the past.
No sooner does an Indian writer, hitherto unknown, win a prestigious international literary award like the Booker or the Nobel, than he or she soars skywards like the mythic
al flying horse Pegasus and is seen by earthlings as an astral phenomenon, an awesome manifestation of the divine. Every time it neighs, they construe it as a message from the divine. Even if it drops a turd, it is regarded as manna sent by the gods.
We saw this happen to V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy. We’ve seen it happen more recently to Aravind Adiga. No one had heard of him till his novel The White Tiger won the Booker. Hot on the heels of the award came his collection of short stories Between the Assassinations. It is worth remembering that Adiga wrote the stories first but couldn’t find a publisher till after he had written his novel. In many ways, his stories were a precursor to The White Tiger: similar characters reappear in different forms and incidents are repeated with minor differences. They actually make better reading than the Booker Prize–winning novel.
What it takes to be a Writer
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