The Dawn: Dec 22, 2017

Punjab Notes: Two new novels: elegy or eulogy or both?

Mushtaq Soofi 

Saleem Shezad is a well-known literary figure. He writes poetry and fiction. Being multilingual he publishes his writings in Seraiki, Punjabi and Urdu. It’s remarkable that away from our happening big cities, based in far-flung Bahawalnagar bordering Cholistan, Saleem Shezad has kept his creative spark alive. In small cities and towns intellectual and creative activities are rare. Tradition rules the roost. Infrastructure, material and intellectual, that spurs and supports artistic and creative endeavour is almost nonexistent. Written word valued is just as a curiosity. It’s centuries-old oral tradition that holds sway in the social life. Whatever knowledge or creative skill the towns have is orally inherited and orally transmitted to the next generations.

Orality though a reliable tool of transmission in the past has lost its effectiveness due to the intervention of technological aids and gadgets in the process of communication. It’s indeed no mean feat for someone immersed in the ethos of oral culture to take to writing seriously as Saleem Shezad has done. He has 10 publications, three in Seraiki, two in Punjabi and five in Urdu, to his credit and it seems as if he is just warming up. He is a poet and fiction writer. In recent years he has emerged as a novelist to reckon with.

‘Ploota [The curse]’ is his latest novel in Seraiki published by the Multan Institute of Policy and Research. Since the canvas, the evolution of Indus valley society during the last five thousand years, is large, Saleem Shezad employs symbolic method. Realising that symbolic method has its limitations in terms of communication we find his symbolism robed in a descriptive narrative. So he ends up having what one may call a symbolically descriptive narrative or a descriptively symbolic narrative. Our ancient society that has been incessantly mauled and ravaged by the unending stream of invaders is symbolised by an eternally resilient tree ‘Wann’, another name of Pilu tree. The tree is called ‘Panjhazari’ [a tree that has been there for the last five millenniums]. The symbol chosen is quite apt. The choice of ‘Wann/ Pilu’ tree whether conscious or subconscious reflects the novelist’s organic connection with society that he puts under his microscope. In the ancient epic ‘Mahabharata’ the Punjab is described thus: ‘Panchanadyaowahanti eta yatra Piluwanaanyapi…[The land where five rivers flow and where there are forests of Pilu trees…]’. So the Wann/Pilu and the river have been the natural emblems of this land. The Wann is witness to what has been happening to the society that in its present incarnation is in a state of utter despair as a result of what it has suffered at the hand of time that has been ruthless and unsparing. The Wann, the witness and the resilient victim of leaner time, is rooted in the soil and thus is obliquely a source of a mysterious but distant hope for the people.

Another symbol that hangs overhead is the perpetually overcast sky that neither rains nor allows the light to filter through the clouds to the ground. The ever-present semi dark sky over head is a sign of a denial of spiritual illumination. It also has a material dimension; the lack of sunlight would lead to the wilting and withering of what grows on the earth. All this implies the impending disaster that works gradually or a temporarily suspended punishment that would eventually extract its heavy toll any moment in the future that is uncertain.

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses in one of his stories the symbol of unending rain. Saleem Shezad uses the static canopy of clouds whose pouring out or dispersal seems impossible. All these mysterious happenings have to be deciphered by an amorphous character who may be an intellectual or narrator or historian organically linked with his benighted society. He takes upon himself to decode the mystery and communicate the arcane reality to his people. The situation he is faced with develops into an existential crisis for him that makes him come close to the edge.

The narrative is a somber but gripping. Saleem Shezad very wisely doesn’t allow his narrative to be marred by parochial or colloquial tinge as is some Seraiki writers’ wont these days. His culturally nuanced idiom which is unencumbered and close to natural speech, can communicate all across Punjab. ‘Ploota’ is one of the best books that have hit the stalls this year. It must be on your table if you care to know the story of our complex anthropological and social trajectory.

‘Lohawar’ is a novelette by Ejaz brought out by Fiction House, Lahore. Ejaz is a young writer who edits Faisalabad based literary magazine ‘Quqnas’ and also looks after an online Punjabi paper ‘Anhadd’. He already has three books of poetry to his credit. ‘Lohawar’, his first piece of fiction, as the very title suggests, is about the Lahore city. Lahore is a metropolis that evokes strong but diverse feelings as it has hallowed mystique about it. It was the magnetic pull of such mystique that brought Levi Strauss, the most celebrated French anthropologist and ethnographer of twentieth century, to Lahore in the times that followed the Partition. But what he found was quite the opposite of what he had expected to see. The desolation and destruction stared him in the face as a result of communal violence that accompanied the division of India and emergence of a new state called Pakistan. ‘So often housed have been destroyed and patched together again, so absolute is the decrepitude that notion of time has no meaning in their context. I should have liked to live in the age of real travel, when the spectacle on offer had not been blemished, contaminated and confounded; the I could have seen Lahore not as I saw it but as it appeared to Bernier, Tavernier and Manucci..’, writes Levi Strauss in his book ‘TristesTropiques’. The young writer just like him is perplexed though in a different context by the changes which inevitably take place in the wake of ill-conceived modern development works in the city. What disappears seems precious and what replaces it appears ugly. ‘Lohawar’ driven by love for Lahore which has a richly layered history tends to be reportage that focuses on the visible development projects that wreak havoc with the highly valuable heritage. It’s in fact strident critique of governance that vacuously vandalizes or destroys tangible and intangible cultural assets. Factual reporting interspersed with historical tidbits in a fictional manner a makes an interesting read. — soofi01@hotmail.com

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