Whispers in the heart <i>and</i> mysticism in the soul
Syed Badrul Ahsan relishes a story and enjoys some poetry
Kamrun Haque tells a tale of art coming in combination with the calling of the heart. And it helps that she is an artist herself, for such a background explains not just the various manifestations of aesthetics in purely modern terms but also provides details of why an appreciation of art could eventually turn out to be a study of the artist herself. The forty-something Anish's admiration, followed by infatuation followed by a falling head over heels in love with the slightly over twenty Trisha, is but an instance when the image and the image maker become a complete whole for an individual. It is the paintings at Ajanta and Ellora that Trisha admires. For Anish, a West Bengali Indian resident in distant Canada, it is the art in the being of East Bengali Trisha that matters. He then falls in love with the art, eventually to discover in it the woman he needs to love. As a first-time novelist, Haque demonstrates a capacity to inject an intellectual dimension into the story. It is a narrative that focuses on the dreams of a young woman made nearly vulnerable by the insistence of appreciation that Anish showers on her. And yet it is attention that will leave Trisha's world floundering. It is life that will not collapse, for the protagonist (in this case Trisha) begins to inhabit a world that can properly be defined as a region where there is an interplay of the reality and the shadow. The reality, for Trisha's increasingly morose lover Raihan, is of a beloved moving away from him, or being seduced by one more influential than he. And therein lies the shadow, in the hazy shape of Anish. Raihan's developing bitterness, aroused by Trisha's demarcation of the line between a friend and lover (and he, in her eyes, has been a friend), eats him up from within. There is always something that creates knots inside a young lover driven to desperation. And in desperation Raihan opts to destroy Trisha's marriage to Galib, a young man she once knew when he was a boy and she a girl. The marriage does not go beyond a few months and then reaches a dead end --- because has Raihan passed on an Ajanta/Ellora-related photograph of Anish and Trisha to Galib. It is the end of Galib's passion; and it destroys the illusions in Trisha. That is the story line Kamrun Haque draws in her telling of the tale. It is a heart-breaking story, with pain that begins to turn the knife inside Trisha. It is internal bleeding she suffers through. She breaks within, but there is the public face that she must keep up. Aspirations of family, dreams of motherhood, her future as an artist all recede, until life turns meaningless, or takes a new turn altogether. Trisha's parents succumb to the rules of mortality; and she chooses to lose herself in the service of the indigenous communities in Bandarban. It is the simple people she is drawn to, becoming their venerated didi in the process. The years roll by. Yet in her mid forties, alone and lonely, she does not or cannot push thoughts of Anish under the carpet. At which point the story takes on a certain Hardy-esque dimension. Coincidence comes into play. On a day of rain, an ageing Anish turns up in that isolated spot of earth. The earth then assumes a new fecundity as the pair lose themselves in each other's arms. If a consummation of love is in tight embraces and desperate kisses, then consummation is what Trisha and Anish go through. The night is long and tender. Nothing happens. And everything happens. For two days in the glorious silence of the hills gleaming in the light of the rain and the moon, they pass much needed energy into each other. But Trisha will not go away with Anish, not to Dhaka, not to Florida (where he now lives through bouts of illness). There is no they-lived-happily-ever-after ending to the story. Perhaps it is just as well. Perhaps Trisha is unwilling to forgo a world that has been expanding for her, in that meshing in with the indigenous community. It is Anish's universe that has surely shrunk. It shrinks slightly more with Trisha's final farewell, in the form of a missive. Kamrun Haque leaves the rest to the imagination of the reader. That is a smart thing to do. Do not forget that Haque is steeped in the modern tradition.
The ghazal has been an underlying component of culture in South and Central Asia for generations on end. And it has by and large worked, or strengthened itself, on the wheels of mysticism. Now, of course you do not much link the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini with either the ghazal or the mystical. He remains, for almost everyone who has observed Iran since the late 1970s, the public face of a theocracy that has been admired or hated for everything it has done, or failed to do. The public executions in the post-Shah Islamic republic have done incalculable damage to the reputation of the revolutionaries. Alongside that, however, the grit and determination with which the mullahs have kept Iran going has won the grudging admiration of people across the globe. It is similar grudging admiration that you cannot but demonstrate as you go through the poetry of Imam Khomeini. It is a thin collection, certainly, but it demonstrates Khomeini's understanding of the mystical aspects of Persian culture as also the spiritual elements that have bound men and God through the element of ishq. And ishq is but a state that explains the intensity of feelings subsisting between the Almighty and man. In the poetry here, the danger is one of taking Khomeini literally, in the sense that the ghazals can be interpreted as lines directed at the beloved, indeed at the Muse. The poet speaks of moles on the face of beautiful women; he waits for his saqi; and he deciphers the multiplicity of love symbolised in the hair of a woman. But it is all an illusion, if the interpretation of the poetry boils down to the love of man for woman. Observe the risks staring you in the face: O You saqi! Fill up my cup/with wine to cleanse my soul/For my soul is overflowing . . . It is a woman you envision. But note that it goes beyond woman's beauty, beyond sexuality and the carnal. In the employment of You comes intimations of a higher being, the saqi who must fill the empty cup. Khomeini goes on: I am a supplicant for a goblet of wine/from the hand of a sweetheart/In whom can I confide this secret of mine/where can I take this sorrow? It is the mendicant soul in the poet, in the dervish if you will, that calls out here. His need is plainly spiritual. From the jug of love, he asks for only a sip from his Friend in order for him to navigate the paths of holiness. In the Friend resides the Creator. Khomeini's ghazals are a reassertion of the culture that has dug deep roots in the soil. On a trail blazed by Hafez, they speak of the immutability of heritage --- despite the revolutions that often swallow up lives caught in the crossfire between extremities of tyranny. Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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