There, I read it. I have read the ‘Raja Gidh’ now. A book I
looked towards with such wonder and buried excitement. I wondered what its
title meant, yet I was more hesitant than excited to read it. I had no plan of
reading it anytime soon. Urdu was and has always been very difficult for me to
read. Knowing the great Bano Qudsia, the wife of Pakistan’s famous literary
icon Ashfaq Ahmad, I knew that this novel wouldn’t be an easy read – not only
because it is in Urdu, but because this book seemed pregnant with great and
hard to grasp ideas. Ideas that I thought I wasn’t ready to dive into yet, that
is from my previous experiences of reading great books and being frustrated
afterwards of not having understood the entirety of it.
Thanks to my reading plan for this year, where I restricted
myself to reading a new genre every new month, in effort to expand my knowledge
about all kinds of books, I finally turned towards Urdu books that I would also
feel obliged to read since I am a Pakistani and Urdu is our national tongue. But
I found myself with a narrow selection of Urdu books, mainly because I did not
know what or who to read. There was of course the famous ‘Raja Gidh’ which I
had purchased a couple of years ago, and also ‘Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire) by
Quratul ain Haider, suggested by one of my life-long teachers. Beside these
two, I purchased a few more Urdu novels on the recommendation of bookstand man,
whom I am a close friend with now and trust his suggestions.
I started with Haider’s ‘Aag Ka Darya’ but stopped when I
was midway in that novel, for reasons I shall explain in its review coming
later this month. I hoped Qudsia’s famous novel ‘Raja Gidh’ would be in ways
more comprehensible and gripping than ‘Aag Ka Darya’ as I started reading it.
Well, it has exceeded all my expectations. This is easily, and will remain
forever, one of my most favorite, beloved, and cherished novels of all time.
As a thinker, one who cannot help but think, I found myself
attracted to, and now am amidst of, literature and philosophy, precisely for
understanding myself and the universe more and more; to ask better questions
and then continue on the endless journey to finding shifting answers. Literary
fiction amply quenches this thirst of mine, and so does philosophy. Reading
‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Dostoyevsky, or ‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian
Barnes, or ‘Candide’ by Voltaire, or ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ by
Milan Kundera, or Schopenhauer’s and Will Durant’s essays, or listening and
reading to Alain de Botton, not only did I find myself become more aware,
appreciative, and inquisitive about life, but in the process built a passion
for reading and writing – which for me at least, are the two ways to know and
understand the miseries and mysteries of this universe. Or the human condition
for that matter.
The human condition, while being one of my favorite
‘umbrella words’, is a term both simple yet complex. It points towards
everything human is: a conscious being, worriers, thinkers, owners of
magnificent brains, minds that question everything, restless being, always in
quest of something – madness. Both reading about and reading Dostoyevsky
himself, I came to understand what this word might mean. In his masterpiece
‘The Brothers Karamazov’, through a set of great characters, Dostoyevsky
brilliantly analyzes life and human behaviors and shows the readers how
complexly intertwined are human within themselves, and thereby how
unpredictable and restless. Mankind is a puzzle that never solves itself, or
rather cannot. Woe to those who become aware of life and mankind’s such
frustrating and increasing burden; the burden of consciousness.
Yet to read Dostoyevsky requires great patience and stamina.
Simple enough to read, yes, but his ideas are so far-reaching and difficult to
instill in our ordinary minds. There’s when Milan Kundera comes in. One of the
most contrasting novelists for me: I hesitate to read him because he always
appears so serious and high-minded, yet reading him as been the most fun and
entertaining. Kundera too has his insight into human condition, but his genius
is in lightening his heavy ideas with amazing ingenuity and wit. His weird
observations and ideas about human beings portrayed through a set memorable
characters in brilliant novels are highly interesting and intellectually fun to
read.
But why am I writing about Dostoyevsky and Kundera in my
review? Because I found Qudsia’s ‘Raja Gidh’ a place where these two writers
came together. Qudsia’s brilliant and memorable novel, with one of the best
characters I have come across so far, is at once both deeply and seriously
inquisitive and insightful of human condition, while also being fun, gripping,
and a joy to read. Yet what really struck me about his novel is its
domesticity. The philosophies of this novel weren’t foreign to me at all, since
I have been living my life in the same country where this novel takes place.
Moreover, this is book right here and the ideas it talks about and the story it
tells is what I have been looking for all along. Nor was the language
different. Urdu novels must be read in Urdu; I imagined reading ‘Raja Gidh’ in
English translation, but for me it would be decreasing of the fun, insights,
and pure intellectual joy that I got from reading it in Urdu.
‘Raja Gidh’, on the surface, is a story of a madman called
Qayum, but it is really the story of all madmen. And it is an endless,
frustrating, shifting, and exhausting search of what really cause mankind to go
mad? Is it love unachievable? Or mankind’s quest for the answers of unanswerable
questions? Or does it start and then pass-on from eating the forbidden? Or does
this madness arise as one becomes aware of death? Each chapter of this book
follows Qayum in his journey of finding the answers of each of these questions.
Together, Qayum’s journeys, exhausting and painful as they are, come together
to make one of the most moving, thrilling, intimate, and oddly complete stories
ever told. Odd for Qayum doesn’t find the answer, yet somehow the readers do…
But really, the most important of all questions doesn’t
concern Qayum and his life of finding one incomplete answer after another at
all, it concerns the vultures – the vultures on trial. Parallel to Qayum’s
story, there’s a court trail going on in the jungle, where the vultures are
being accused of becoming mad as the consequence of being around men. As the
madness in men is on the verge of causing the doom of all men, the birds of
jungle are concerned that vulture would cause the doom of all birds. The
punishment? Vulture must be exiled from the jungle forever. But is madness
crime enough for the punishment of exile? Or – is madness a crime at all? This
is the ultimate question of Qudsia’s novel.
Over the course of reading this book, I was deeply touched,
and intensely shocked; intellectually fed, and emotionally drained; but above
all, I was happy. Happy like a good book makes you happy. Like you know you are
reading something exceptionally brilliant that it will become a part of your
life going forward, and you are happy realizing that. Bano Qudsia’s ‘Raja Gigh’
did not only provide me with one of my best reading experiences yet, but has
also ignited in me an intense yearning for finding and reading great Urdu
novels.
Rating: 5/5 ***** June 18, 2021_