A novel that paints a 2500 years of Hindustan’s history, going through 4 epochs which starts from the prehistoric times around 500 B.C. and ends with Pakistan and India in the post-partition; a novel that has no one protagonist, but many characters that tends to reappear in every epoch with the same name, reincarnation but with different people to live the same lives; a novel that beautifully and subtly gathers the themes of time, philosophy, religion, history, love, kingdoms, betrayal, patriotism, partition, exile, abandonment, and much more, into a single book of 480 pages, that has no parts or sections, just a continuous flow of time and chapters.
Was I being slightly too unaware (although unawareness about the books I’m about to read is something I quite cherish) going into this incredibly comprehensive and elusively ongoing, giant book? Was I then too headedly ignorant not to research about this masterpiece of Urdu Lit., which is considered to be a cornerstone of Urdu novels, when I started reading this book and maybe subconsciously felt the light weight of its prose and dialogues upon, its eeriness and elusiveness – and instead continued to read so nonetheless? Then, was I being too naïve to simply arrogant to keep diving into this book, given it was only my second Urdu novel that I was reading and that this book stood at top tier, far out of the comprehension of a reader who’s a toddler at reading Urdu novels, and finding the rock-solid surface as I dived, for I hardly caught the plot of the novel nor remembered any of the characters?
As I write these words where I’ve put the book at the summit while I wander in embarrassment and frustration down at bottom, I remember my similarly frustrating and embarrassing reading experiences of Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ and Durant’s ‘The Story of Philosophy’, as well as the elusiveness I felt when reading Wolf’s beautiful novel ‘The Wave’ which was based on 6 characters and was just as ungraspable as Hyder’s novel, where in the pre and post partition era, it focuses on these 6, or thereabout, characters belonging to a Hindu and a Muslim families.
But as with many things in life, reading a book once doesn’t end it there; one can always reread the book, given it was worthy of and you capable of rereading it, and pick things that were missed the first time, and thereby understand it higher terms. It was only after I finished this novel that I watched the reviews of it and felt heavily its volume from every dimension, the crushing and humbling effects of which are clearly visible in this review. I am both sad and embarrassed not have grasped or understood much of this book, expect its outline which I learned from the internet.
However, this unsavoring experience has left me hungrier and determined for the rereading of this highly important and singularly complete (unto itself) novel, a novel that of its rarest kind. I am relieved to have finally finished this book, for the reading of over the past months, had become a kind of mild torture, where I understood nothing yet I couldn’t shut the book as well, all the while the feeling of inadequacy and shame took over me. Until next time, I shall grow more aware and adequate for the awaited visit of this incredible work of fiction.
Ratings: 3/5 *** August 14, 2021_
*It is 14 of August today, Pakistan’s Independence Day. Partition was one of the big themes in this novel, and much of the novel took place in the pre and post partition era. This partition has a dual perspective to it, that if you look at it from the Pakistan’s perspective, the divide of Hindustan into two countries, one for Muslims one for Hindus, seemed inevitable. Muslims being the largest of the minorities living in United India, felt the need and had the potential to ask for their separate rights, which living amongst the majority Hindus were not being served adequately – at least not since the idea for a separate country for Muslims took root. For the Indians however, and much of the literary people that lived the lives both in the pre and post partition, this partition was an unnecessary and tragic event. While much could be solved had the United India, one of potentially great and promising countries, remained intact, the ideology for separate countries based on religions, and then the hasty and bloody partition, struck so deep a divide between the two priorly joined nations that there remained no hope for any lasting kindred of respect or love, or a cultural history shared together. In this novel, we see in certain passages how the two families of different religions that lived so harmoniously together, as if their differences only made their joint lives more beautiful, became so distant and bitter once the partition took place and neighbor started to cut throats of each other. Families had to migrate or live to see their own homeland become an exile land for them; how once a familiar place became at once so strange; how trust turned into skepticism and love into hatred and detest. As today millions of Pakistanis celebrate their Independence Day, and tomorrow the Indians, the dual perspective of the partition will continue to live for the two nations, both with their convincing arguments. The youth that have lived their lives in the post partition might never know how tragic an event this partition was, or how revolutionary depending on who is looking at it; those lived before, through and after the partition might have a more balancing perspective on the overall partition.