Aini Apa No More?

It was a lovely winter evening in 1983 when I first metAini Apa at the home of my beloved Misdaq Khala Jaan (Saleha Abid Hussain, theprolific Urdu writer) in Okhla (New Delhi). She looked even grander in personthan I had imagined and by the end of that evening, I was completely ravishedforever by her palpable charisma, her sharp intellect and her great good humor.She, on the other hand, thought I was a snob and said so to my dearest friendSughra Mehdi (a famous writer in her own right and the adopted daughter ofMisdaq Khala Jaan and Janab Abid Hussain Sahib). The reason she thought I was asnob is quintessential Aini Apa. My visit to Delhi, along with my mother, hadbeen hastily arranged from Karachi, while I was home from the USA for two shortweeks and our stay in India was going to be quite rushed. The dinner had beenarranged by Misdaq Khala Jaan so Ammi and I could meet our friends and relativesin one evening. Aini Apa was living in Zakir Bagh at the time, being the firstoccupant of the Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Chair at Jamia Millia, and was afrequent presence at my aunt’s home. She considered Sughra Mehdi as her friendand confidant (Aini Apa bestowed the title of "Musheer Fatima" on Sughra asSughra is forever being solicited for practical advice by the young and oldalike).

Like every other reader of Urdu literature, I worshipped Aini Apa and wasdying to meet her, but had been duly forewarned by Sughra not to show myadoration as Aini Apa was known to be irritated by all manner of people claimingto be her fans. As a result, I spent the entire evening regaling her with juicygossip about our common acquaintances (she loved to gossip), jokes (she had afantastic sense of humor and she roared with complete abandon if she liked thejoke), poetry (I lay claim to knowing hundreds of Urdu verses, including somewicked and funny ones) and conspicuously avoiding any acknowledgment of her asthe greatest living writer of her time. The fact that Aini Apa minded mydeliberate avoidance of the subject is why I say it was quintessential Aini Apa.She was full of surprises and contradictions. For example, she once asked afamous critic repeatedly to tell her what he thought of her latest book, whilehe tried helplessly to excuse himself modestly from doing so because he felt hewas not good enough to critique her work. At her insistence, he finally caved inand feebly critiqued a few very minor points in the novel. Aini Apa’ssubsequent unbridled wrath which immediately and ferociously descended upon themiserable chap and lasted late in to the night, lived up to its legendaryreputation. Paradoxically, when the famed Urdu writer and tri-lingual poet, andmy flamboyantly gay best friend (we were known as the Hag-Fag couple in Chicago,and he insisted that he was the hag) Ifti Nasim was invited by Jawarhlal NehruUniversity in Delhi to give a series of lectures, one of his major attractionswas to be able to meet Aini Apa. He asked me for an introduction to her and Icalled Aini Apa to request some time for Ifti. She was completely smitten by himforever as on the first meeting, he promptly produced a lipstick from his pocketand said, "You will love this Aini Apa because I use the same shade."

It took two more meetings before we really becamefriends, and then stayed in touch ever since. I invited her as a guest of myliterary club Urdu Mehfil in the summer of 1992 to Cincinnati [photo below shows us at that time], and during the few weeks that she stayed withme, we traveled (Buffalo, Niagara Falls), laughed hysterically, had seriousbitching sessions, ate out at fancy restaurants, and talked endlessly aboutsubjects ranging from Masnawi e Zehr e Ishq, Dilli kay karkhandar,Mir Anis, and Bollywood to how sweet she thought EM Forester, Arnold Toynbee andJohn Dos Passos were in person, and how arrogant Steinbeck. During this stay, Itaped many hours of serious conversations with her. She agreed to be interviewedonly if I would write out my questions in advance and she would decide whetherthey were worth answering or not. I will transcribe these in Part Two of thisarticle. She had very definite likes and dislikes and two things she hated witha passion were any mention of her writing and all deserts. The latter promptedmy darling Zakia to compose the following parody of Ghalib’s ghazal on thespot while we were all together in Cincinnati:

Zindagi youn bhi guzar hi jaati
Kyoon jawani ka figure yaad aaya

Munh mein rasgulla na aya tha hanooz
Aini Apa ka qahar yaad ayaya

Some years ago in Chicago, I was complaining about the malice and politicalacrobatics of a peer to my dear friends Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridgewhen Arjun cut me short and made the following profound statement: "Azra yaar,there are very few people who are truly the A-team (Beethoven, Einstein, Freud,Michelangelo…..you get the picture). The rest of us are all just B-team. Whatdifference does it make to complain or feel competitive within the B-team?" Ican safely say that of the five A-team people I have met in my life, Aini Apaheads the list.

She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and grewup among the exclusive elite circle of her famous parents Sajjad Hyder Yildirimand Nazr Sajjad Hyder. At 19, she astounded the world of Urdu with her firstnovel, Meray Bhi Sanam Khanay which dealt with the theme that occursrepeatedly in her subsequent works; the tragedies and social betrayals resultingfrom the partition of the subcontinent. Where history is concerned, the devildefinitely lies in detail. With profound insight, exquisite sensitivity andheartbreaking prose, she chronicled the stories of families and individual livesas they were rent asunder in parallel with the fissuring of the country. This iswhat C.M. Naim, Professor of Urdu Literature and Languages at the University ofChicago says in his introductionto A season of Betrayal which contains the English translations of hershort story Patjhar ki Avaz and the two novellas, Sita Haranand Housing Society:

The days and months that preceded and followed August 1947 – when the Indian subcontinent became free of colonial bonds – were filled with most horrific acts of physical violence. It was also a time of other, equally rampant violations that were not any the less scarring for not being patently physical. These were violations of trust; they wounded and maimed the psyches of their victims, leaving the bodies intact. And their time – that season of betrayals – lasted longer than just several months. At the time, most major Urdu writers – they were almost all men – wrote about the horrors and brutalities that some human beings could deliberately inflict upon others in the name of religion.

Only later did some of them –Rajinder Singh Bedi, for one – turn their attention to the other, less overtly bloody tragedies: what had happened and continued to happen to individual and families at that human site where there had been no "riot" and yet there were any number of victims. Prominent among the latter was Qurratulain Hyder, who may also have been unique among all writers, women and men, for having experienced and written about such tectonic upheavals in all the emergent borders – in India and in both West and East Pakistan. Interestingly, she first responded in the form of novels, as if the magnitude of the events demanded a larger canvas, and only later turned to shorter genres. In some sense however, she never stopped examining the consequences of those events, as is evident even in her most recent works.

The second last paragraph sums it up beautifully:

In almost all her writings Hyder has been concerned with Time, that faceless presence which transforms all appearances and which we ignore only at our own peril. Though this inevitability of change is our only permanent reality, Hyder persistently urges us to recognize both its faces, one of gain and the other of loss. A linearly progressing time brings about changes. Should we then take sides? Should we say that change is progress? Or should we sat it is decline? Either according to Hyder would be simplistic and perilous, for such issues are not settled by a reference to the material world alone. What counts for her is the human spirit and relationships it generates and nurtures. That is where the linearity of time seems to curve into a spiral, urging us to recognize a past that never quite disappears.

I may be stretching the point but it seems to me that what Hyder tacitly offers us is nothing but that wise Candidean response: even in the best of all possible worlds, it is best not to neglect to tend our garden. Certainly, through the several thousand pages of her writings, she has shown herself to be an eloquent witness to that truth.

A Season of Betrayals (Oxford University Press).

At 28, she published her magnum opus, the landmark Aagka Darya, which is arguably the best book in fiction, occupying thatcoveted place in Urdu which Garcia Marquez’s One hundred years of Solitudeoccupies in Hispanic literature. The world of Urdu changed forever after thisbook was published since every subsequent writer has been influenced by Aini Apa(yes, including Salman Rushdie):

It was the season of beerbahutis and rainclouds, some time in the 4th century B.C. In a cool grotto Gautam Nilamber, a final year student at the Forest University of Shravasti chances upon Hari Shankar, a princeling yearning to be a Buddhist monk. He falls in love with the beautiful, sharp-witted Champak. And thus begins a magnificent tale that flows through Time, through Maghadhan Pataliputra, the Kingdom of Oudh, the British Raj, and into a Time of Independence. This fiery river of Time flows along the banks of their lives as they are reborn and recreated, weaving through twists and turns, the flows and eddies, keeping them together, keeping them apart. The story comes full circle in post-Partition India where Hari Shankar and his friend Gautam Nilamber Dutt meet in a grotto in the forest of Shravasti, and mourn the passing of their lives into meaninglessness, their friends who have left for Pakistan, and what remains of their country of which they were once so passionately proud.

What happens between then and now is history, full of the clangor of conflict, the deviousness of colonizers, the apathy of maharajahs, and the irrelevance of religion in defining Indianness.

(Publishers' note on River of Fire).

I read this mesmerizing book once every 2-3 years, and to me, in addition toits captivating prose and the stories themselves, it also represents one of AiniApa’s central and profound tenets: current events, history, and mostimportantly, the past, have a nasty habit of intruding into our lives no matterhow private a citizen we wish to be. Should we then abandon society and lead thelife of an ascetic Jain? Well, as she deftly shows in the interconnectedstories, even that does not protect us. In fact, one of the major messages ofthe book is exactly the message which Ghalib sends in the following brilliantcouplet.

Dair naheen, haram naheen, dar naheen aastan naheen
Baithay hayn rahguzar pay hum, koi hamayn uthai kyoon

Aini Apa’s memory was extraordinary and flawless, herintelligence was dazzling, her knowledge of Urdu, Hindi, and English literature,archeology, dance, classical music, (her last book is a biography of Ustad BarayGhulam Ali Khan), painting, etymology and history was astonishing. I never heardher utter a platitude in all the times I have spent with her, and she wasequally brilliant in both Urdu and English. Aini Apa was a fantastic mimic andcould adopt a series of perfectly authentic regional accents. She thoroughlyenjoyed a good joke, especially if it involved her. She loved the hajvwritten by her cousin which begins with the following lines:

Qurratulain hayn adab may dakheel
Jaisay Mulk e Arab mayn Israel

She was a stunningly good looking young woman and cut a striking, imposingand graceful figure when older, and when she was not writing, her pet hobby waspainting. I have never met anyone who valued her family more than she did. Therewas unconditional love in her heart for each and every member of the extendedHyder clan and for that of her mother’s side as well. Her glorious personalitysparkled and lit up every room she was in. When I was in Delhi in 1992, ShabanaAzmi had come to see me at my lovely friends Zakia and Akku Zaheer’s home inAshadeep. Aini Apa was also there for dinner that night. It was a magicalevening with Sughra, Saiyeda (Hamid), Zakia, Aini Apa, Shabana, my friend Mehroand her husband Samar. Sparks of wit, hypnotizing Urdu couplets, and funny linesranging from Ajit epigrams to Blonde jokes were flying all over. I saw Shabana,who is no less magnificent a person, an icon of Bollywood cinema with hundredsof millions of devoted followers, being completely blown away by Aini Apa. Suchwas her charisma, such her charm.

Aisa kahan say laain kay tujh sa kahain jissay?

I never met anyone whose set of values was as decent, who combined hercelebrated wisdom with mind-boggling innocence and vulnerability, who was trulythe kindest, gentlest, most sensitive person around and yet who did not sufferfools lightly. Javed Akhtar once said to me that the names of people Aini Apareally likes can be written on a grain of rice (secretly, both he and I wereunabashedly confident that we were among those) and yet her circle of friendsand acquaintances was exceedingly wide. She was compassionate to a fault andcould feel the pain of the haves and have-nots with equal sensitivity.

As a friend, she was breathtakingly generous and thoughtful. During one of myvisits to Delhi, she arranged an amazing evening for me. My favorite Urdu poet(who I think is as great as Ghalib) is Mir Anis, the acknowledged King ofelegiac poetry (marsias), and whose unique style of reciting marsiaswas legendry in Lukhnow. Aini Apa invited the grandson of Sir Sultan Ahmed for amajlis at her place because Tanveer has learned to copy Mir Anisprecisely, from gestures and voice intonations to the angarkha and dupalli topihe wore. I was more deeply touched by her thoughtful gesture of holding a majlisfor me because she was not a practicing Shia (although her mother was), but didit because she knew of my absolute devotion to Anis. She was also a greatadmirer of Anis and her story, "Qayd khaney main talatum hay kay Hind aatiihay" is a lovely reminder of that.

Aini Apa could do no wrong as far as her diehard admirers like me wereconcerned for one simple reason:

Wu tu iss funn ka Khuda hay yaaro
Uss ko har baat rava hay yaaro

(She is the Goddess of her field
Everything is permissible for her)

Last year, we were chatting on the phone when somethingI said reminded her of a wonderful anecdote about the great Ismat Chughtai.Ismat Apa was trying to give some extra money to her washerman, an extremelypoor, illiterate man from some hinterland in UP. He asked her what he wassupposed to do with the money, and Ismat Apa said what do you mean what are yousupposed to do with the money? Buy toys for your children. His response was adrawled out "Phaiiiiinh???" (the Purbi version of phirwhich means and then?). And Ismat Apa said, well, buy some new clothesfor your wife, and he said "Phaiiiiinh???" And on and on. So AzraBegum, this is what life is all about…..a never ending series of "Phaiiiiinhs???"I got the Sahitya Academy Fellowship …. "Phaiiiiinh???" I got theBharatiya Gnanpith (India’s highest literary award)…….."Phaiiiiinh???"I get the Nobel Prize tomorrow …... "Phaiiiiinh???"

During my last trip to India in 2004, I drove from Janpath to Noida everysingle day to see her. Her breathing problems caused by severe and progressivepulmonary fibrosis were getting visibly worse. One afternoon following lunch, Icornered Aini Apa and suggested immediate re-evaluation of her condition by afresh team of specialists. She was adamant in the beginning, insisting that shehad the best physicians taking care of her already, but over the next few days,was finally convinced to follow my advice, and subsequently, did better for along while.

The first evening I went to see Aini Apa in 2004, I had taken my 9 year olddaughter Sheherzad with me. Aini Apa was exceedingly attentive to her, had herrecite lots of poetry by Ghalib and Iqbal which I have made the innocent onememorize since she was three years old, encouraged her on during and after eachpoem by applauding loudly. When she found out that Sheherzad had been taking Kathakdance lessons, Aini Apa was visibly delighted and insisted that she does a fewsteps for the guests which included the Vice Chancellor of Jamia. Such was AiniApa’s aura that without a peep, my daughter got up and performed an entiresong for her.

On my last day in Delhi, Aini Apa insisted upon coming to see me herself forlunch at Abid Villa in Okhla. Walking into the house from the car which had beenpulled up in the driveway almost to the front door, Aini Apa was completely outof breath and had turned blue. It took many puffs from her various inhalers, andthe connection to her portable oxygen tank before she could catch her breathsufficiently to be able to talk.