Women of magic and men of sweet tooth
History and tales of families excite Farida Shaikh's imagination
While reading Blood Brothers: A Family Saga, I felt as if it was a sequel to Shahidullah Kaiser's Sangshaptak: A Bengal Saga. Both the books are marvellous works on the socio-cultural history of Muslim Bengal, skillfully crafted prose in beautifully blended fact and fiction. Book-wise the two are blood brothers! M.J.Akbar's book is a storehouse inlaid with historical occurrences of enormous magnitude within the British Empire, and their ripple effects are felt on the small and simple life of the people in an obscure village Telinipara around 1861, which is the setting of this autobiographical narration covering two and not quite three generations. As the last line of the book reads, 'I was seventeen. Life had begun.' The Hindu-Muslim relationship during this period is portrayed with pathos and patience. Starvation, famine, migration, polite form of slavery, drought and loss of income, becoming a Muslim, improving sanitation by establishing a municipality, characters, et al, interlink into a narrative of social history authenticated by a powerful memoir. 'Bengal is famous for the magic of its women and the sweet tooth of its men …. The Bihari tooth is different ….. Rahmat suspected that class consciousness kept Bihari workers averse to delicacies like the shandesh created by sophisticated Bengali confectioners.' Rahmat told Modak that he wanted to learn how to make shandesh. Modak smiled. 'You are not a Bengali. How can you make shandesh?' The tailoring and the meat shops in Matiyaburj make it 'apparent that the population was largely Muslim………This is because we Avadhis taught Bengalis to wear stitched clothes. Before we arrived from Lucknow Hindus would wear a dhoti and Muslims a lungi.' Akbar's grandfather was named Prayaag, meaning confluence of the holy rivers Ganges and Jumna. A Hindu Kshatriya, Dadu was born in a village near the town of Buxar in Bihar, the last stronghold that fell under the control of the East India Company. The English company thereby earned the title of Bahadur Company or Heroic Company, having previously defeated the joint forces of Emperor Shah Alam of Delhi, Nawab Mir Qasim of Bengal and Nawab Shuja ud Daula of Avadh. Dadu lost his parents to the 1870 famine, when the whole village emptied through migration and others became indentured labourers. His mother had taught him about the eternal creator, Brahma the originator of mankind, its division into the four castes to make for social structure and social order. Half a dozen jute mills were set up along the banks of the Hooghly in Shamnugar, Gondalpara, Angas, Titaghur, Champdani and Kankinara. Thomas Duff and Company with headquarters in Dundee opened Victoria Jute Mill, protected on three sides by a one-foot thick and eight-foot high wall and the river on the fourth side, in Telinipara, connected to the nearest railway station Chandnagor, a French outpost some thirty miles upstream of Calcutta, 'the political and industrial centre of the British Empire.' Wali Muhammad, a Muslim, picks up Dadu from near the door of his teashop and his wife Diljan Bibi, whom he calls Mai since his mother died, feeds him a meal. Prayaag for Wali and Diljan is Allah's answer for a son. Many years later Dadu builds the first double-storied brick house in Telinipara, near the tea-shop. Prayaag becomes a Muslim, knowing that 'one of the marks of faith is khatna which is the Arabic for circumcision'. Rahmatullah, Rahmat's bride, is a Muslim girl, Jamila. The founders of the Deoband Muslim order fought the British in 1857 --- 'their motive was reform within the Muslim community through a renewal of faith.' There was a growing demand for fatwa and judgments on Islamic laws; their network of schools and mosques stretched from 'Kabul in Afghanistan to Chittagong in Bengal'. In 1867 Deoband took roots at Chatta Mosque in Delhi. After the census of 1871 people learnt that Muslims were a majority in Bengal and "the rift line sharpened between the Hindus and the Muslims.' Hindu revivalism at the same time found 'a new momentum from powerful and lyrical writers of Bengali prose.' A mystic, or a dervish, who visited Telinipara gave an account of the spiritual leader Syed Muin al-din Hasan al-Hussain al-Sijzi Chishti of Ispahan, who had arrived from Mecca during the reign of Maharaj Prithviraj. His shrine in Ajmer 'is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus and Muslims, an altar where the prayers of the poor are answered.' Jamila and Rahmatullah knelt down …….. 'and prayed for a son.' In September 1917 'my grandfather took into his arm a………..baby, his son….' The child was named after Akbar, not the poet Akbar Allahabadi, but Akbar the emperor, and 'faith and heroism of the Prophet's son-in-law.' The full name was Akbar Ali. The old man on Bakr' Id day noted that 'Allah has ninety nine names… not one describes Allah as a warrior… Allah is a creator not a killer'. 'There are Hindus who enjoy washing a wound with blood. They exploit what divides brothers and are blind to what is common. The supreme God of Vedas is Brahma….has no form, Allah also has no form….mimansa saya…idols are only a means to assist the mind towards Brahma….Hindu seeks release from life in Nirvana' …. And a Muslim 'seeks assimilation in Allah. Both sufi and sannyasin reach God through meditation. The Hindus kravana is my sama, we both listen, his manna is my muraqaba, we both obey; his nididhyanasana is my tawajjuh, we both contemplate. The buddhi of the Brahmin is my ilm; we both learn; his jnana is my marafat, we both seek emancipation through knowledge ….. maya illusion, I call alam-i-khyal, the world of fancy.' It is this that expresses the essence of Blood Brothers. Born on 11 January 1951, named Mubashshir, studied at the English medium St. Joseph's Convent in Chandernagar, for 'the future was written in English.' The misspelling of his name changed to Mubashar. The three-syllable name was changed to Moby by his peers. He was referred to as Moby Dick the whale and a juvenile joke attached to the extension. He was joined by sister Arfana and younger brother Hashim and surrounded by a joint family of aunts, nieces and nephews. His mother's response to his father's temper was to see 'a tearjerker Hindi film full of daughter-in-laws being maltreated.' During the holidays they would travel from Telinipara to Lahore by 'second class sleeper compartment of Amritsar express at Howrah Station.' It is in Lahore while watching Mughal Emperor Akbar in a film Mughal-e-Azam, standing against a map of United India and the announcement, 'Mein Hindoostan hoon that gives young Akbar his identity, '… I found myself, my past, my culture, my language, my flirtation, my love, my rebellion, my poetry, my music, my intrigues, my art, my suffering, my sacrifice, my oath, my father, my mother, my present and perhaps even my future.' The book ends, leaving the reader 'fused' as the writer makes a short circuit on the autobiographical loop. The narration ends when the writer reaches the age of seventeen in 1968. The long story is biographical, an account of his grandfather's and father's lives, covering a period of nearly a hundred years. The book at best is a history of Hindustan disguised in fiction, telescoped from a remote village in Bengal, a chronicle of events on a macro scale that occur and coincide with the observation and realisation from within a miniscule of ordinary family space. Farida Shaikh is associated with The Reading Circle and reviews books regularly.
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