The Mirror of Beauty I Shamsur Rahman Faruqi Penguin Books I India I 2013 I Price: 1,796 rupees Striking a discordant note Any new work by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, be it a scholarly essay, literary criticism, fiction, poetry or translation, is always eagerly awaited by avid and informed lovers of Urdu literature and scholarship across the world. Here is a person whose erudition sits lightly upon him even as his output is breathtakingly prodigious and multifarious. 146 Comfortable in many languages, which include, of course, several vernaculars of the Subcontinent in addition to Arabic, Persian and English, he writes mostly in English and Urdu and commands a wide and admiring audience across geographical and linguistic divides. Such cross-cultural expertise and ease, such meticulous scholarship and copious inventiveness are a rarity in this world. The publication of his novel Kai Chand Thay Sar-e-Asmaan in 2006 caused quite a stir in the Urdu literary establishment. It was seen to be a tour de force that gave the Urdu novel a fresh life. In blending a cultural narrative form of storytelling best exemplified by the dastaan, with a historical framework and perspective that propels both characterisation and unfolding action to produce a kind of hybrid form closer to, but also in many ways different from, the traditional historical novel as FURTHER READING The Herald Annual, January 2014 [ By Waqas Khwaja ] Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang, 2013 Introduced to court as the emperor’s concubine at 16, Cixi becomes the woman who rules China, as it udergoes an age of transition. known in the West, the novel demonstrated possibilities of experimentation and formal excellence that many had not associated with Urdu novel writing. New to Urdu, perhaps, but the hybrid form is not without its antecedents — the most familiar to the Subcontinent being the kind of narratives William Dalrymple has produced in White Mughals as well as The Last Mughal Emperor. In these, he resurrects, from a specific historical period, actual characters, situations, and stories of social and cultural interest in everyday life that the academic discipline of history ignores as not in themselves being important to the grand political events and movements of the time, and reconceives them but with full and well-researched cognizance of the historical period itself, in the imaginative form and mode of novelistic fiction. Now a version of Kai Chand Thay Sar-e-Asman rendered into English by the author himself has been published and Faruqi takes special care to note, in the list of acknowledgements at the end of the book, his debt to the “distinguished historian and my friend William Dalrymple, from whose conversations I gained much”. But for all the use Dalrymple makes of memoranda, notes, private diaries, letters, court records and the like, his style of storytelling, colloquial and literary, even scholarly, in turns, is not quite ‘dastaanesque’, that is to say, fanciful, meandering, diversionary and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, 2013 Winner of the Man Booker Prize, Mantel’s sequel to Wolf Hall follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell and the waning influence of Anne Boleyn in Henry VIII’s court. White Mughals by William Dalrymple, 2004 A sweeping saga of forbidden love between a British Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad and Khairun Nissa, the great-niece of the Nizam’s prime minister. everything. Coming from a postcolonial region with an awareness of what harm “universalist” notions of civilization can do, one would expect The Mirror of Beauty to fall under one or the other of these two categories. Indeed, in its focus on the often marginalised, almost universally reviled, figure from the past, Wazir Khanam – the mother of poet Dagh Dehlvi – through a liaison with Navab Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan, as a woman keen to use her extraordinary beauty to gain social power and status, the novel does strike the chord of the everyday and the ordinary, of what is singular and exceptional in the The Herald Annual, January 2014 digressive — features which provide a richly different experience from the usual designed, vertebral narrative that readers may be generally familiar or comfortable with. This is where Faruqi provides his own distinct infusion to the form of historical fiction — a lavishly textured crisscrossing of narrative threads and voices that enlarge the storytelling experience with emphasis on stories told without too much external pressure to make everything cohere and relate in incontestable and indispensable ways. The kind of text that results is poly-vocal and multi-plotted; a text that decentralises the narrative and allows it to flow in multiple streams and sub-streams, much like the multi-plot Victorian novel in its heyday (from 1850s onwards), though without necessarily the Victorian novelist’s often strict organisational control over the story. “Loose baggy monsters,” is how Henry James described this Victorian novel, ignoring the pluralistic, multivalent world it opened up to its readers. “A picture without composition slights its most precious chance for beauty, and is moreover not composed at all unless the painter knows how the principal of health and safety, working as an absolute premeditated art, has prevailed. There may in its absence be life, incontestably, as The Newcomes has life, as Les Trois Mousquetaires, as Tolstoi’s Peace and War, have it; but what do such loose baggy monsters, with queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean? We have it maintained, we well remember, that such things are ‘superior to art’; but we understand least of all what that may mean, and we look in vain for the artist, the divine explanatory genius, who will come to our aid and tell us,” he wrote in the preface to The Tragic Muse. But such texts, we now recognise, are dialogic, openended and attempt to underplay or challenge the idea of the “divine explanatory genius” of an Author Shamsur Rahman Faruqi artist controlling the shape and flow of the narrative. The author still makes the crucial decisions about where to start, what to bring to the foreground, what to push to the background, what to include, what to leave out, how to provide necessary background information, what point of view to employ, what kind of language and language registers to use, how to organise, and how to conclude — but the author eschews the imposition of his interpretive will on the text, so that the text, in turn, shows an awareness of his manipulation and resists it by signaling its polyphonic qualities and by inviting layered and multiple readings of it. Contemporary novel, especially in its postmodern manifestation of compulsive self-regard and self-play, challenges what are seen as the “master narratives” of earlier times, those grand narratives considered universal, common to all, as modes through which historical meaning, knowledge, and experience are inevitably and incontrovertibly constituted. They were seen to be the crucible of legitimacy for whatever constituted culture and civilization, in any historical time or geographical region. The multi-plot, polyvalent, polyphonic novel is a rejection of this false universalist imposition as is the novel of small, singular, ordinary events or characters of everyday life with no pretense of speaking for all and 147 mundane. But it is also a narrative of narratives, if you will, in that it tells not only the story of Wazir Khanam and her loves, but also of important phases from the life histories of Wazir Khanam’s ancestors: The enigmatic Mian Mukhsusullah, the inspired painter from Hindal Valika Purwah, in Kishengarh, who migrates to Kashmir when his village is destroyed by the Maharaval and his men; his son, Muhammad Yahya, who learned from his father the art of carpet design (talim); Muhammad Yahya’s twin sons, Muhammad Yaqub Badgami and Muhammad Daud Badgami; their wives, twins Jamila and Habiba; The Herald Annual, January 2014 148 The last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar Muhammad Yaqub’s son Muhammad Yusuf (who is also one of the narrators of this family history) and Muhammad Yusuf’s daughters Anwari Khanam, Umdah Khanam and Wazir Khanam. Many celebrated historical personages of the time also appear in The Mirror of Beauty and their manners, activities and fates are recorded here. The rise of the Sindhia and the 1803 battle between the Firangee and the Maratha – during which 10-year-old Muhammad Yusuf loses his parents, his uncle and aunt – reflects the turmoil and instability that India was experiencing at that time. William Fraser, the Resident of Delhi, is first shown at his soiree, attended by Mirza Ghalib and the many “noblemen and elites of Delhi” whom the British Resident wishes to keep under his eye. At this “assembly of poetry and conversation”, Wazir Khanam meets Fanny Parkes – the Englishwoman who lives in Allahabad and travels around India writing about its people, places and customs – and Navab Shamsuddin, for whom she immediately feels a strong sexual attraction. Fraser’s murder and the trial of Karim Khan and Navab Shamsuddin for the crime, their conviction and death by hanging are dealt with at some length, highlighting the vagaries of the legal system instituted by the British. Mirza Fakhru, the third in line of succession to the throne of Hindustan, whom Khanam marries, also figures in the last part of the book which presents the reader with a glimpse of the life of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, his redoubtable wife, Zinat Mahal, his various dependents and the intrigues brewing inside the Delhi Fort. The novel starts with a prelude providing an account of the first encounter of Muhammad Yusuf and his 14-yearold daughter Wazir Khanam with Captain Edward Marston Blake, “the Company Sahib”, who rescues them from a deserted road where their bullock cart had broken down in a dust storm on their way from Mehrauli to Delhi. It ends with Wazir Khanam on her way to Jaipur to join Marston Blake as his bibi there, after he has concluded the arrangement with her father. This prelude, we are told, is from “the notes and diaries of Dr Khalil Ashgar Farooqui, Ophthalmologist,” who we discover in a later chapter is to be now retired from his profession and is also an amateur genealogist. It is he whose notes and diaries constitute the first two chapters of Book 1, following the prelude; in tracing the descendants of Marston Blake and Wazir Khanam, he brings us to the present day. Wasim Jafar, who works as the Assistant Keeper of Nineteenth-Century Mughal (and Company School) paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, we are told, is the last surviving descendant of the line, barring a sister who remains unnamed and unaccounted for. Chapter 3, which closes Book 1, is from “the notes and memoranda of Dr Wasim Jafer”, published posthumously, and deals with a “mysterious book” and an “unnamed spirit” (suggested to be of the poet Dagh) that appears to Jafer, quite confounding him and binding him in its spell. Thereafter – that is, over the next 900 pages – neither Asghar nor Jafar make an appearance in the novel! Jafar, we are told, dies of cancer “three or four months” after Asghar returns to India from London, following their meeting at the former’s flat on Portobello Road, where the amateur genealogist is shown a picture of Khanam, which the Assistant Keeper of paintings has pilfered out of the journal of Mirza Fakhru’s court from a cache of papers from 1857 that had not yet been catalogued. But he has left Asghar with an invitation to an important task, as the letter from his legal representative, Dr Douglas Abernathy, describes: “Dr Jafar had instructed that the enclosed papers and the sealed envelope be despatched to you after his decease. The deceased also desired that should you like to put together a historical narrative based on the enclosed, a sum of £1,000 sterling be made available to you towards research and ancillary expenses.” Presumably, what follows in the novel is gleaned from the papers Jafar has left behind and, perhaps, not just organised in some order but also edited by Asghar. However, there are few signs of editorial intrusion in the narrative that follows. Book 2, which runs from chapters four to 18, is ostensibly narrated by Muhammad Yusuf, Wazir Khanam’s father — but, not quite. Chapter 12 seems to be a first-person account of his grandfather Muhammad Yahya. After that, it is less clear. Occasionally, the use of first person suggests that the text continues to be Muhammad narrative flow, as it does its autonomy. Thus, we have glosses like, “maidah shahab (finest ground flour kneaded with juice of real saffron)”; “Mir, a great poet of the 18th century”; “bani thani (the bedecked one)”; “familiar ‘tum’ and tu’ of disdain”; “I said, “Salam alaikum”, greeting him in the IndoMuslim way; ... he extended both his hands to me for the traditional IndoMuslim handshake” ... and so on. We see then, with misgiving, that despite having won the right to tell our stories, on our own terms, after centuries of struggles against imperial imposition, we are still trying to explain ourselves to our former rulers — perhaps, also to our present ones. The Mirror of Despite the immense knowledge that it displays, on subjects as wide-ranging as music, poetry, painting, carpet design, clothing, especially women's attire, and so on, The Mirror of Beauty is quite shaky on this ground: The narrative voices only occasionally show integrity or inspire credibility. Beauty aims towards breaking free, but ends up compromising that freedom, somewhat, by cajoling and coddling its implied reader. There is also a certain derangement of point of view and perspective that sits ill with a novel so rich in narrative interest. It still provides a compelling account of the sexual attitudes, social etiquette, and political temper during the first half of the 19th century. Outward matters. The inner world is less fully realised. ■ The Herald Annual, January 2014 Yusuf’s narrative account. At times, however, the first person is indeterminate because of the language that is used or the knowledge and familiarity with events that it betrays. Is it Jafar intervening to supply the account? Or, is it Asghar editorialising? The use of certain medical terms in instances such as, “Wazir’s heart began to throb and thud against her ribs as if she was suffering from tachycardia” or, “Yahya’s colour was now pale, turning blue, as if cyanotic,” beside being awkward – in that they disrupt the integrity of narrative voice – suggest interpolation by a pedant or a physician of sorts (Could it be Asghar?). The narrative voice also veers, unaccountably, between omniscience and limited omniscience. It is coy about certain matters: “How can one like me whose speech is mere jargon, and that too, impeded with stutter summon the power of expression to describe the glory and grandeur of the great Lord Sahib’s army whose status was high like the sky?”— this coming from the 10-year-old Muhammad Yusuf as he proceeds to describe evocatively, and in considerable detail, the Company army with its camp followers and the battle that ensues between them and the Marathas! Yet, in other areas the narrator has no qualms or hesitation in describing intimate thoughts that Khanam may be thinking or the private conjugal conversation between her and Marston Blake or between her and Navab Shamsuddin Khan. Despite the immense knowledge that it displays, on subjects as wide-ranging as music, poetry, painting, carpet design, clothing, especially women’s attire, and so on, The Mirror of Beauty is quite shaky on this ground: The narrative voices only occasionally show integrity or inspire credibility. Generally, the point of view and perspective are confused and muddled. Who is telling the story? Which part may be related to which narrator — or are all parts by the same person, unless specifically otherwise designated? How much of this may we believe in? It would be a matter of artistic preference if the voices were deliberately confused and muddled. But the irregularities and contradictions are there without any sign of irony or intent. They come across as glaring flaws rather than artistic design. Just to give a couple of examples: Muksusullah never seems to have written or talked about his history in Hindal Valika Purwah. How is Muhammad Yusuf able to reconstruct that part of his life history — and in such detail? Hindal Purwah was utterly destroyed by Maharaval and his men, forcing Muksusullah to migrate to Kashmir. He married there, communicating very little with his wife and he passed away the day his son, Muhammad Yusuf’s grandfather, was born. In fact, Muhammad Yusuf never got to meet even his grandfather for he was born after his death, hundreds of miles away from Kashmir. What is the source of the first-person account of Muhammad Yahya in Chapter 12? No lead or information has been provided. We are just expected to accept the narrative. Writing a novel without a clear rationale about point of view or views, and perspective or perspectives – that proffer how characters, events and situations are perceived, and by whom – means losing the richness of forces and influences that impel and shape narratives against which the reader measures his own responses. It may mean losing the reader entirely. On a final note, while the learning on display in this novel is colossal and the reader who ploughs through it is bound to come away with a sense of awe at its immensity, there is a tendency in the narrative to throw the information out gratuitously – as if merely for the sake of display – for it is not always essential to the stories being told. In this, the aim seems to be to produce a comprehensive and authoritative text, a “master narrative” of the period. Quite the opposite of what one would expect from a pluralistic, polyphonic novel. The propensity to explain everything, gloss everything – which is much more evident in the English version than in the original Urdu one – serves the same end and appears to be directed to court a reader whose taste for the exotic is being pandered to and excited. This mars the 149