Narrative is a buzzword these days. We see it being wildly used by political class, security establishment, clergy and literati across the country. Each uses it in a different context in an effort to put across its views and notions on specific issues in an elaborate manner with the help of descriptive and analytical tools. But mostly the attempt is half-hearted; at best it’s fragmentary and incomplete and at worst it’s muddled and incoherent. Literati by the virtue of being what it is, seems better equipped to build their narratives. Tariq Ismail Ahmadani’s book ‘Saraiki Lok Bayania’ published by Saraiki Publications Rasulpur, district Rajanpur, offers, in his own words, a view of Saraiki culture from an anthropological perspective.

Mr Ahmadani is a senior Saraiki writer and poet with a number of publications to his credit. He is a maven of folklore and cultural traditions and practices. His book is a potpourri which can offer something to everyone.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first, we find write-ups on some important contemporary Saraiki writers such as Ashiq Buzdar and Sufi Taj Gopang in addition to articles on folk-sayings, proverbs, folk-dance, marriage rituals, cultural practices and religious superstitions. The second section carries the heading ‘criticism and research’ and deals with Ahmadani’s creative writings which include an explanatory note on traditional headgear ‘turban’, the sketch of a friend, translation of one of Kafka’a short stories and some of his own poems. The last section is in Urdu, titled ‘criticism and research’ which contains an article on ‘flora and fauna in Khawaja Farid’s poetry, ‘Aas Aaf’, a primitive Balochi custom of determining the guilt of the accused where modus operandi is trial by fire and water and ‘Faal’, an ancient local practice steeped in superstitious lore to gauge omens, good and bad, before doing anything.

Certain elements of traditional culture which we think are inexorably linked with social practices are fast disappearing into thin air under the impact of modern life that is partly an organic result of evolutionary process and partly the fallout of the unwelcome intrusion facilitated by dominant global capital. In an underdeveloped society like ours what cannot be saved can at least be documented. And this is what Mr Ahmadani’s effort seems to be aimed at.

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There is also another angle to the book; political urge to make Saraiki identity distinct by separating what, in his opinion, constitutes Punjabi identity through an exclusionary approach. An unmistakably obvious example is his write-up on folk dance ‘Jhummar’ which he asserts is typical of Saraiki culture forgetting the fact that this form of dance is popular across the west Punjab, especially in the area that stretches from the river Sutlej to the river Chenab, a very large swathe called Bar. This, however, is an excellent piece written with a feeling and critical insight. He traces Jhummar’s origins and development and gives us a detailed description of its structure. His analysis of its technical aspects is superb. His description of the percussion and wind instruments that accompany ‘Jhummar’ is thorough. Another good piece is on the ritual of marriage and its evolution from ancient times to the present. The types of marriage as enunciated by him illuminate the dark recess of our forgotten and anachronistic social life of yester years. Mr Ahmadani has vividly painted the much neglected phenomena of our cultural life from anthropological and sociological perspective.

One thing that may irk some of the studious readers is the author’s attitude towards the language; it’s heavily loaded with loanwords from Arabic and Persian via Urdu. The language most of the Punjab’s writers come up with in prose is a soulless hybrid of Punjabi and Urdu or Saraiki and Urdu, reflecting their cultural alienation and intellectual laziness. The book however is a rewarding read indeed.

Sabir Ali Sabir’s book, Waseb Di Kahani (The Story of Society), published by Sanjh Publications, Lahore, seems to be a bit of oddity not because of its contents but because of our current sociocultural context in which whoppers are fondly taken as history, faith as science and superstition as reason. It’s pleasantly surprising that Sabir, a popular poet and fiction writer, takes up the evolution of human society as his subject which has deep linkages with biology, genetics, linear time, human consciousness, philosophy and science. The saga of human existence on this earth is as much fascinating as it is puzzling for the fact that the crucial question of how and why humans have developed the way they did in the eons of history has not been fully answered. And of course there can be no single simple answer to the near unsolvable riddle. All disciplines of knowledge which include physical and social sciences are yoked together to build a plausible narrative that attempts to delineate human odyssey and make some sense of it in a way that is logically acceptable and scientifically verifiable to a reasonable extent.

Sabir has versified the story especially for children though it must be a compulsory reading for the adults who, with their head in the clouds, are lost in the wooly ideas peddled by rampant political and religious obscurantism across the subcontinent. His versified story is based on already available material. Versifying nonpoetic stuff is not something new as we find lot of books in our classical period that deal with religious affairs, medicine, craft and artisan’s skills in the form of verse. He derives the source material of his narrative from the books such as ‘Biological Basis of Human Freedom’, ‘Insan Ki Kahani (The Story of Humankind)’, ‘Zamin Ki Kahani (The Story of the Earth)’ and Dr Mubarak Ali’s ‘Tehzib Ki Kahani (The Story of Civilisation)’. He starts from the Stone Age and ends it with the rise of Roman Empire. The stuff he selected obviously has nothing to do with the Creation and creationists. It’s free of sacred mumbo jumbo.