Monthly Archives: April 2018

Naiyer Masud: Fragments of Consciousness

April 24, 2018Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 ), World OpinionGanjifa (Card), Itr-e-Kafoor (Essence of Camphor), Naiyer Masud, Naiyer Masud - Awarded Padma Shri - 1970, Naiyer Masud - Sahitya Akademi Awardee for Urdu - 2001, Naiyer Masud - Saraswati Samman Awardee - 2007, Naiyer Masud - Short Story Writer - Urdu, Naiyer Masud - Urdu Poet, Naiyer Masud : Collected Short Stories, Padma Shri Naiyer Masud, Seemiya (The Occult), Taus Chaman Ki Maina (The Myna of Peacock Garden), The Occult (Seemiya)mpositiveone@gmail.com

Lucknow, UTTAR PRADESH :

Naiyer Masud. Photos courtesy of Muhammad Umar Memon

Muhammad Umar Memon, who has translated Naiyer Masud’s stories, on the labyrinth of his fictional universe.

Naiyer Masud (1936-2017), who passed away in Lucknow on July 24 at the age of 81 after protracted illness, was one of the greatest Urdu short story writers who has been extensively translated into several languages, including English, Finnish, French and Spanish.

Masud was born on November 16, 1936 in Lucknow. His parents came from families of physicians (hakims). His father, Syed Masud Hasan Rizvi Adeeb, was a professor of Persian at Lucknow University and a famed scholar of dastaan. He was the elder brother of noted Urdu satirist Azhar Masud. In 1965, Masud joined Lucknow University as a professor of Persian where he remained till his retirement in 1996.

Masud’s four books of short stories — Seemiya (The Occult), Itr-e-Kafoor (Essence of Camphor), Taus Chaman ki Maina (The Myna of Peacock Garden) and Ganjifa (Card) — cemented his reputation as the master of the unsaid who created a maze, a labyrinth in his stories that held the reader captive to their narrative wizardry, their illusory spell.

Masud also translated a few short stories of Kafka as well as some Persian stories into Urdu. He also wrote critical and biographical accounts of Mir Babar Ali Anees (1803-1874), Yagana Changezi (1884-1956) and Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869). He was awarded the Padma Shri for Literature and Education in 1970. He was also honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu in 2001 and the Saraswati Samman in 2007.

In this interview, critic and short story writer Muhammad Umar Memon, professor emeritus of Urdu literature and Islamic studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has translated Masud’s stories into English — (The Occult, Penguin Books, 2013) and Naiyer Masud: Collected Stories (Penguin Random House, 2015) — talks about Masud’s enchanting fictional landscape. “His fiction invites you to enjoy the labyrinth for what it is and, if possible, become it — something like the complete fusion or identity of the observing subject and the observed object,” says Memon. Excerpts from an interview:

SHIREEN QUADRI: In Naiyer Masud: Collected Stories (Penguin Random House, 2015), you mention about your first encounter with Naiyer Masud’s fiction in the late 1980s and how you were stunned by Seemiya, his first collection. You talk about his stories as “fragments of consciousness suggestive in their fractured imagery of some presence somewhere in the beyond”. Could you share your initial impression of this encounter and how it has evolved over the years?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: That first impression, which I perhaps share with most of his readers, persists.Take, for example, some images that occur with rare economy of description in most of the stories of Seemiya, but only in fragments, revealing a little of themselves at each occurrence, such as the ubiquitous lone fragment of the mysterious cloud, the curios mentioned in passing in the opening story, “Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire”, and then repeated with additional details in practically all the others, with their relatively detailed treatment in the third story, “Snake Catcher”; or the young woman fleeing from the sexual advances of the narrator which is touched upon lightly in the first story, then again in the third, but occupying a substantial part of the fourth and eponymous story of the collection where her flight ends in drowning. More tellingly, however, it is the opening paragraph of “Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire” and its verbatim retrieval as the closing part of the last story, “Resting Place.”All this creates an overwhelming impression of some sort of inherent interconnectedness and of what lies in between as somehow being an organic part of a continuum. Yet all five stories of the collection preserve their autonomy. While they do not yield any sense of spatial or chronological continuity, or closure, they do leave the reader with two dominant impressions: that (1) the author is dealing with a continuum, and (2) it can be viewed only in fragments.

What stunned me was the deliberate attempt of the author to suppress the links that would — or, might — have restored the fragments to their logical place in the continuum. The resulting jolting effect makes it difficult to grasp the ultimate meaning of the work; perhaps the reason why one is hard pressed to articulate for oneself or explain to others with any degree of confidence and precision what a given story is about — what it means.

Nor can one dismiss these stories as so much mumbo jumbo and move on. They just don’t let you move on. They haunt you. You are hooked. Nothing like this arresting quality is seen anywhere in Urdu fiction, where you are completely taken, without knowing, ironically, what has taken you.

SHIREEN QUADRI: Masud’s four collections of stories — Seemiya, Itr-e-Kafoor, Taus Chaman Ki Mayna and Ganjifa — establish his reputation as possibly the greatest Urdu short story writer. He has been variously described as a “realist of the strange” (by Amit Chaudhuri) and as a “poet’s storyteller” (by Agha Shahid Ali). What place do you think he occupies in the legions of Urdu writers whose works have been embraced and appreciated by the wider world?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: I’m not sure about the perimeters of this “wider world”. Do you mean the territories of South Asia or the whole world? Frankly, I don’t think too many Urdu fiction writers have received much recognition outside the South Asian subcontinent. They became known mostly on university campuses with departments of South Asian Studies after some of their work became available in translation, but not among mainstream Western readers. I think Saadat Hasan Manto and Naiyer Masud are comparatively better known outside South Asia. Essence of Camphor, one of the two books of Masud’s stories I published in the US, received many good comments in Kirkus Reviews, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times and numerous other US newspapers and magazines, and was later translated into Finnish, French and Spanish. But I doubt it sold more than a couple of hundred copies in the US. As for within South Asia, Masud is generally considered the finest Urdu fiction writer today, without progenitor or progeny.

The Vice President, Mohammad Hamid Ansari presenting the Saraswati Samman Award 2006-07 to Dr. Naiyar Masud at a award function organized by K.K Birla Foundation, in New Delhi on March 05, 2008.

SHIREEN QUADRI: Seemiya, a collection of five interlinked stories, which you translated into English (The Occult, Penguin Books, 2013), is more like a novel in stories. They have no discernible plots, their terrains are unidentifiable, the characters that inhabit them have no names. While these stories are autonomous, they coalesce in unexpected ways, with certain images recurring in more than one story. Tell us about your understanding and appreciation of his first collection which, in many ways, cemented Masud’s reputation as a master of the form?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: I have already given some idea of both my appreciation and the tenaciously illusive nature of The Occult in the answer to one of your previous questions. However, let me add a little more: The jolts that throw the reader in a vortex of incomprehensibility are the result of paring down to as much as one-tenth the draft of a work from its original length. Why does he do that? Two examples, in his own words:

“(1) Once a thing is brought into existence, it continues to live in some form or fashion even when it is removed from the scene. For example, you are sitting on this sofa; you then decide to get up and leave. You are not on it anymore, and yet your presence will be felt, to some extent at least, however obscurely or intangibly. But that other sofa, just brought in from the store, on which no one has yet sat, cannot be the same as the one you had sat on. It is necessarily different. One cannot describe this difference in words, but one can feel it, subliminally.

(2) There was this woman who was an accomplished cook. A certain dish that required only four ounces of ghee she’d cook with two-and-a-half pounds of ghee, removing the extra when it was done. But the dish tasted very special and retained the flavour, the essence of the finest dish from the table of the nobility.”

What he tries to do, then, is to retain the aura of the excised portions in those that he does keep. Never mind the suppression of details pertaining to the event being described, something reminiscent of their erstwhile existence will be felt in the retained parts. His job is to craft a language which will convey this veritable existence in its equally veritable absence. He elaborates it further: “Take, for example, the phrase ‘nisvānī badan kī khushbū’ [scent of a woman’s body] or ‘qadmoñ kī āhat’ [the sound of footfalls suggestive of a presence]. They occur once or twice in my work at most, yet nonetheless seem to pervade it.”

SHIREEN QUADRI: Masud’s fictional landscape is like a labyrinth. In the introduction to Collected Stories, you write that his stories seem to pull the readers into the centre of a vortex — at once provocative and inaccessible. You wrote: “Even while failing to understand his stories, one is unable to walk away from their haunting ambit. Somehow they seem to retrieve for the reader a part of their memory buried deep in the liminal folds of consciousness otherwise preoccupied with the more immediate problems of mundane existence.” For a reader, what is the best way to approach Masud’s stories?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: The “best way” is also indicated in the continuation of the passage you have quoted, viz., “It is a part that needs to be discovered, patiently, more through feeling and introspection than by reason. The moment reason is engaged, what it sees is a formidable scrambling of logical coordinates, always leading back to the same labyrinth, never reconstituting into a discernible [and complete] entity.”

You see, although one could say, everything, however ineffable and vague, carries a sub-stratum of “meaning”, meaning ultimately has to do with “ego”, the desire to grasp and be done with the claustrophobic labyrinth, not to dangle permanently in a worrisome state of incomprehension. But what is the meaning of an object d’art, a painting, a symphony, a nocturne? Why can’t we enjoy it for its own sake? Let it generate its diverse epiphanies in the reader’s imagination. For it is emblematic of nothing beyond itself, and so is Naiyer Masud’s fiction. If we continue the quest for meaning, it would be like the attempt to get out of the labyrinth, while his fiction invites you to enjoy the labyrinth for what it is and, if possible, become it — something like the complete fusion or identity of the observing subject and the observed object. I might also add here that it is the limitation of any grouping of written words with their inevitable consecutiveness that raises our expectation, the necessity for it to have meaning. If somehow a story such as “The Colour of Nothingness” could be converted into a painting, with all its events simultaneously present on the surface of canvas, would we still approach it with the same expectation of meaning as we would in its written form?

SHIREEN QUADRI: What is your mental portrait of Masud based on your interactions with him over the years? Could you trace for us the world Masud came from and how it influenced his fictional landscape?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: I’ve met him only once, by accident, in Delhi, for a few hours, in the company of his friends. It was difficult to talk to him much, certainly not about his work. My only contact with him was through correspondence and occasional telephone calls. I have no mental image of him except when I think of him during the last half a dozen years of his illness, the painful image of a bedridden, frail man who had gradually severed his contact with the world sails through the mind. He had stopped writing altogether during this period, whether due to physical inability (the stroke had more-or-less paralysed his right side) or, even if he could write, he was determined not to. I do have a theory about it, but it is difficult to articulate it with clarity. Perhaps a kind of affront to his pride compelled him to deny the world all those scintillating gems he could have given it, to get even with Providence in as incomprehensible a way as unfolds in his fiction. He was a very gentle person, a paragon of rare subtlety and what we call “sha’istagi” in Urdu, who hurt no one, extremely reserved, immensely confident but least demonstrative of it.

That said, what I have gathered of his background is common knowledge. He grew up among books and in a cultured family. An extremely well-read man who was keenly aware of the sophistication and achievements of his native Awadh, in arts, in sports, and everything in between. Bygone Lucknow — once palpably real — was now a place in memory. Even in stories which are not time-and-place-specific, their locales nevertheless are redolent of the aura of Lucknow — in the dilapidated wall of a building, in a crumbling mihrab.

SHIREEN QUADRI: How were Masud’s stories received by the Urdu world and his contemporaries?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: He was writing already from his early years, but he didn’t publish anything until 1970s. “Nusrat” was his first published story. It came out in his friend S.R. Faruqi’s literary magazine Shab-Khoon. Interestingly, when he gave it to him to look at, he didn’t say he wrote it. He said he had translated it. I do not recall Urduwallahs taking much notice of or getting excited about his stories initially. Once I asked S.R. Faruqi what he thought of Masud’s work, his reply left me dumfounded. “They don’t go anywhere,” he said. (In a way, it was a very intelligent, indeed a very perceptive remark: not going anywhere yet making the pursuit worthy of every effort was precisely the point).

All this changed with the publication of his first collection (Seemiya). Now everyone in Pakistan and India was talking about him, I mean the Urduwallahs. Critics, such as Muhammad Salim-ur-Rahman, Muzaffar Ali Syed, and Safdar Mir praised his work in newspaper columns, but they didn’t venture a formal critical assessment. It appears they were smitten by his style. Anyway, today he ranks as the foremost author of Urdu short stories. Without a doubt, his is the most original voice in Urdu letters.

SHIREEN QUADRI: Masud is among a clutch of writers who broke away from the conventions of Urdu short fiction — the linear development of the story and the sequential structure of the plot — and charted a new path: the abstract. The social realism of Progressives (Manto, Chughtai, Krishan Chandar, Rajinder Singh Bedi et al) and the symbolism of Modernists (Surinder Prakash, Balraj Manra, Ghyas Ahmad Gaddi, Joginder Paul, Balraj Komal et al) gave way to mimetic realism, the new way of capturing the multi-faceted reality which reflected that post-1970 Urdu writers had a more nuanced, complex notion of reality. Kafka, whom he also translated into Urdu, had a great influence on Masud. Could you talk about what possibly shaped his fiction and gave it a new direction?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: While one’s background and milieu may play a part in shaping the character of his writing to some degree, style, ultimately, is the result of an innate element of one’s personality. The circumstances of Ghalib’s life are well-known. Could someone else have with identical circumstances produced Ghalib’s kind of poetry? Background and milieu cannot account for the imaginal world and ways of a writer, nor could this illusive “element” be explained rationally.

A man of undemonstrative feelings, Masud had deep roots in and intimate knowledge of the vanished culture of Lucknow, most clearly visible in his story “The Myna from Peacock Garden”. But even in stories where the locale and time is deliberately obscured, the details and ambience betray his intimacy with that culture. This is as much as one can say. What, however, unfolds within the confines of this knowledge is pure imagination, a working out of one’s unique personality and illusions and what have you.

However, in his several dozen letters to me, he often names Ghulam Abbas as his main influence, while many others (Azim Beg Chughtai, Rafiq Husain, Kafka, Poe, Emile Brontë, Dostoevsky) may have worked only as models. Kafka’s influence on him has been often grossly overrated. Although he thinks that Kafka and Poe have a lot to give, he is not sure whether he has consciously come under their influence. Let’s just say that Masud has consciously followed Ghulam Abbas and creatively assimilated Kafka. Whatever he learned from these writers helped him craft a style uniquely his —a style which is as deceptively simple as it is hard to imitate.

SHIREEN QUADRI: You also wrote somewhere that Masud’s narratives work as a reminder against completion and closure. In a very interesting analysis of his stories, you wrote once that in Masud’s stories “one experiences things in dynamic movement, not as objects with fixed perimeters, in a state of repose or quiescence. So one cannot be done with them and move on. Circularity has no terminus. Finishing one of his stories does not bring the expected comprehension and completion. What it does bring is a continual engagement with the unsaid and the ineffable, preserved in memory. It is like walking into a well-maintained living room, but no one greets you. You wait for hours, but no one appears. And you cannot leave because you vaguely feel a presence that you cannot see or name.” Are Masud’s narratives also a reminder against the quest for meaning? How deeply are they also enmeshed in dreams and disillusionment?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: Dreams — yes; disillusionment — with qualification. In fact, his very first published story “Nusrat”, according to his admission, is a transcription of a dream he had. Disillusionment is a fact of life, any life. So, to that extent, it is there in his stories. But it has nothing to do with the author’s disposition or pathology. Masud is mature enough to not allow disillusionment to become a dirge of what once was and is no more. When the word “morbidity” or “decadence” is used to characterise his work, he vehemently takes exception to it. He knows how good that culture was and it is a shame it didn’t last, but he also knows that one must move on to the future and its teeming possibilities. Thus, a fictional recapitulation of that culture is merely a recording and not an act of mourning.

As for completion and closure, answering just this question in an interview, he expressed his dislike of the dramatic ending, adding,

“Even as a child I found it repulsive. A story’s end shouldn’t be dramatic. Which means the story should not give the impression that it has ended, that all is finished and done with, that nothing remains. The other reason could be that even after I’ve finalised a story, I seem to want to continue writing it, or if not it per se, then a fresh one along much the same lines. […] I do intend for my story to give the feeling that it has not ended, that rather what has ended is the specific episode around which it is woven. Although the short stories in Seemiyā were not written in the sequence in which they appear in the book, they illustrate my point well. You will notice a particular connectedness, a certain coherence and affinity flowing through all of them.”

SHIREEN QUADRI: Your contribution to the promotion of Urdu works has been immense. A professor emeritus of Urdu literature and Islamic studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, you have translated numerous works of Urdu fiction, including the works of Masud. You also served as editor of the Annual of Urdu Studies (1993-2014). Tell us about your association with Urdu literature. Who are some figures of Urdu literature you admire?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: Well, as a Memon from Rajkot, my mother tongue is Memoni and/or Gujarati, but I was born in Aligarh, where my father was a professor at the university, and grew up among Urdu speakers. I always loved Urdu, but I wasn’t thinking of a profession in Urdu. I did my graduate and post-graduate work in Arabic and Islamic Studies. After a Ph. D., I was offered a joint appointment in two separate departments at the University of Wisconsin to teach Arabic in one and Persian in the other. A year later, I was offered to take over Urdu as well and move to one department. I gave up teaching Arabic. Since then I have worked only in Urdu, but I have taught courses on Islamic religion and culture, literatures of Muslim Societies, and Sufism throughout.

Who do I admire? In fiction, surely some of the writers I have translated. In criticism: first and foremost, Muhammad Hasan Askari, next, S.R. Faruqi, and, finally, Muhammad Salim-ur-Rahman.

SHIREEN QUADRI: What memories do you have of Aligarh, where you were born, and Karachi, where your family moved to in 1954? Tell us about some of your early literary influences.

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: Plenty. And the memories of Aligarh seem to be more real than those of the ten years I spent in Karachi. The funny thing is: whenever the image of Aligarh flashes across my mind, the place seems to exist in its own independent space, without even a tentacle stretching into India or Pakistan. In a way, it is more real than the two countries. It is my “Toba Tek Singh.” I haven’t been to Aligarh since 1954 and I’m dying to visit it before my time is up. But politics has a way of thwarting even the most innocent wishes. Even though I’m a US citizen for over 30 years now, I couldn’t get the Indian visa.

Anyway, being the youngest of six children, five of whom having already left Aligarh, I grew up with a father half a century older than myself and always absorbed in some book, I went through a lonely and uneventful childhood and always carried a vague feeling of some unnamed sadness, which has dogged me throughout my life. I did have some friends though. I played the games then common among Indian boys (cricket and gilli danda), stole mangoes, guava and other fruit from university orchards on the way back from school, and enjoyed swimming. So, it was just another ordinary life. I went through many of the same boyhood and adolescent experiences as

other boys.

Out of my entire fifteen years in Aligarh — excluding a few summers which we spent in our ancestral hometown Rajkot in Kathiawar, Suarashtra (the same place where, I believe, during the waning days of the British Raj, the Ali Brothers spent some time in jail on sedition charges), where my parents owned a house — the nights of 1947 stand out in memory. Partition took place while we were summering in Rajkot. When the time came for us to return to Aligarh, my mother stayed behind because of a scheduled minor foot surgery. On the way back, Father left my sister and me at the Delhi railway station and went to attend a meeting in the city which had been planned earlier and Abul Kalam Azad had insisted that he attend it. My father thought a railway station would be safer. My sister and I rode a rollercoaster of veritable fear during those two or three hours alone on the railway platform.

Later we took the train to Aligarh which arrived safely, but we subsequently learnt that the next one did experience some trouble and a few lives were lost. I said, “the nights of 1947”. Although communal incidents were relatively few in the university area, our neighbourhood on the fringe of it lived in constant fear of a sudden attack and had therefore mounted a big searchlight atop the roof of Manzur Sahib’s house, which is where we were to gather in case of an assault. One morning we were awakened in the wee hours and rushed to Manzur Sahib’s. It was a brutally chilly night. I recall I was shivering down to my bones. There was no time to put on anything warm. An overcoat was just hurriedly thrown over my sleeping clothes and off we went, with me still in my slippers. Luckily the night passed without any incident.

As for my early literary influences, well, none, or if there were any, I was not conscious of them. In Aligarh, I enjoyed reading children’s magazines, Khilona and Phulwari and, later, detective novels, such as Ibn-e-Safi’s monthly Jasoosi Duniya and Imran series. Reading of literature didn’t begin until we moved to Pakistan. I did read a lot of books and even wrote some stories, the idea of becoming a professional writer was far from my mind.

SHIREEN QUADRI: Your latest translated work, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told (Aleph, 2017) brings together the works of 25 Urdu writers who are masters of the form, including Abdullah Hussein, Asad Muhammad Khan, Munshi Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Intizar Husain, Ismat Chughtai, Qurratulain Hyder, Rajinder Singh Bedi and many others. In your wonderful introduction, you mention that their stories carried within them “the embryo of some of the future developments of the form”. What triggered this collection and what were your overriding concerns behind their selection?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: You seem to think that the book was planned, that there was a conscious design behind the selection. At the risk of disappointing you, the story is far simpler. Selection, while it may appear to be the result of a conscious act, is, for me at any rate, merely a reflection of who one is, and it takes a while to evolve into one “who one is”. From that point forward, selection is merely following a course predetermine by one’s nature and personality. It just happens. You don’t have to be conscious of it. I never translated a story that I didn’t like, and I never translated a work to meet the demands of a definite publishing project. I didn’t care whether a translation ever got published. This is the reason why I find it difficult to design a book according to the demands of a publisher. The credit for The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told really goes to Simar Puneet, my editor at Aleph. It was her idea and gentle persuasion that made it possible, with my part in it being very little. I only selected stories from my published work and revised them.

SHIREEN QUADRI: What are you working on next?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: There is no next, not in English anyway. After retirement in 2008, I decided to stop further translation into English. Half a century in the US had slowly affected my ability to write proper Urdu. Henceforward I will do all my work in Urdu, I told myself. I have since written very little in English, except for a few columns for the Karachi-based newspaper Dawn. When R. Sivapriya, a former editor at Penguin, asked me to translate Manto, I remember my initial reluctance to accept her offer. She persisted, I gave in.

In the past nine years, I have translated into Urdu a variety of writing from Arabic, but mostly from English: about a dozen novels, a few short stories, a work on Sufi metaphysics, articles on the nature of Islamic culture in al-Andalus, Islamic philosophy, etc. Currently I’m collaborating with a friend on translating a book about the nature and myths surrounding the transmission of Greek science and philosophy into Islamic civilisation and Islamic contribution — grudgingly acknowledged, if at all — to the making of the European renaissance. The work is proving to be quite arduous as it involves advanced mathematics and astronomy. So my courtship with English now appears to have effectively ended, although I might revise some earlier work and reprint it.

SHIREEN QUADRI: Who are some of the contemporary writers in Urdu (poets, novelists and short story writers) we must watch out for?

MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON: This is a difficult question. I really haven’t kept up with the Urdu fictional production in the past two or three decades. There are, of course, many new writers, but I haven’t read their work critically to make any predictions about their promise. Although among the older contemporaries Ikramullah, Asad Muhammad Khan, and Muhammad Salim-ur-Rahman are quite well-known to Urdu readership; their work needs to be introduced to a much wider reading public. In poetry, however, I will mention two names: Asif Raza and Riyaz Latif. Their work breaks new ground and is indicative of an entirely fresh poetic sensibility in Urdu. The former lives in the US and the latter was also here until recently. I know them personally and have enjoyed reading their poems immensely. Luckily, Asif and Riyaz write enviably good English and have translated their poems into English. I hope they will be published soon.

source: http://www.thepunchmagazine.com / The Punch Magazine / Home> Interview – Profile / by Shireen Quadri / July 31st, 2017

Legumes and legacy

April 24, 2018Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 )Begum Mehmooda Dagar, Book 'Dagars & Dhrupad', Humra Quraishi, Humra Quraishi - Author, Humra Quraishi - Journalist, Ustad Faiyazuddin Dagar, Ustad Zahiruddin Dagar, Wasifuddin Dagarmpositiveone@gmail.com

Lucknow, UTTAR PRADESH / NEW DELHI :

Humra Quraishi at Hyatt Regency’s TK’s restaurant in New Delhi Photo Sushil Kumar Verma | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

Humra Quraishi mulls over her long friendship with the Dagar family

She’s had the courage to live in and report from the violence torn Kashmir Valley, but the memories of grief stricken mothers and orphaned children leave her struggling for weeks after she returns to the Capital. When you meet Humra Quraishi, journalist and author, it’s not difficult to figure out how come she’s such a combination of the hard and the soft. She’s the lady in whose home meat has always been cooked, but who doesn’t taste it beyond the shorba (gravy), and who “can’t see raw meat”.

Meeting us at TK’s, the Oriental cuisine restaurant at the Hyatt Regency in South Delhi for lunch and a chat, Humra, she who has lived alone in a conflict zone, is nervous! Because, comfortable as she may be with the pen, she says she’s no good with chopsticks. But never mind. Chef Amit Rohilla, who has designed the new menu for TK’s, has everything under control. Not only are there forks available for desis like us, he also has a line up of vegetarian delights for our guest.

True to her varied colours, Humra’s two latest books are from two ends of the spectrum of human experience. While one is a coffee table book on the Dagars, known as the first family of Dhrupad, the other is a novel, “Meer” (Rupa) set amid the Kashmir conflict.

As Chef Amit personally sees to the dishes being cooked at the live grill fronting our table, the conversation shifts between the melody and malady of human existence. That a novel should have eventually emerged from her years of covering Kashmir is not surprising. But a history of classical music and musicians?

“Dagars & Dhrupad” (Niyogi Books) is the result of a relationship that began over three decades ago. “I heard them (the Dagar Brothers) in the early ‘80s in the home of the ambassador of Qatar to India,” she explains. Remarking she’s not an expert –– “not on anything” –– Humra says she nevertheless found it was “something that touched your soul.”

She began meeting Ustads Faiyazuddin and Zahiruddin Dagar at their residence in Delhi’s Nizamuddin. Over the years, in that simple, welcoming flat, she met various members of the clan spread over different parts of the country, and a number of newspaper interviews were published.

“One day I was clearing all my papers. I thought, I have so much material, I could do a book. Then I asked Wasif (well known vocalist Ustad Wasifuddin Dagar, son of Faiyazuddin). He said he would have to ask his mother.”

A plate of vegetable yakitori, with tri-coloured bell pepper, cottage cheese and onion, accompanies this warm tale of a close knit family. Not only did the ustad seek a go-ahead from his mother, his sisters and his students too, he left the author free to interact with them. After all, as she points out, “Once you do a book you have to look at all possible details.” However, she adds, “The forte of the book is the pictures.”

The entire family, says Humra, beginning with the elders Faiyazuddin and Zahiruddin sahab, have an air of affectionate simplicity. “They didn’t seem the sermonising type. I’m not into frilly things. And they never gave the impression they were top musicians. Then it took off,” she recalls of her easy friendship with the family.

The ustads explained the music to her and their manner of speaking and “rahan-sahan” was “very simple”, so she became a part of this large hearted family.

Like music, cooking too is a technical subject but also intimately related to the emotions. As with music, so with food, Humra reacts with the heart.

The vegetable gyoza with chili yuzu dressing is delicious, particularly because of the serving system at TK’s, where customers choose the ingredients from a counter and watch the dishes being prepared right at the table. The aromas and smoky air are reminiscent of a family kitchen.

At home, mentions Humra, she is happy with her “very basic U.P.-type khana.” Hailing from Lucknow, she says besan ki roti, bhindi ki sabzi and a bowl of kadhi…these are “the ultimate” in culinary ecstasy.

Meanwhile, seared cottage cheese, broccoli, asparagus, snow peas, with Thai basil and coriander sauce vie for attention alongside Okonomiyaki pancake, tonkatsu sauce and wasabi aioli. One more superb dish served up by the chef is Kaki-age (shredded vegetable tempura) sushi roll.

TK’s also offers an array of non-vegetarian dishes which have recently made it to the menu: There is Lat ma kai chicken, Oriental Wasabi prawn, chicken tsukune, among others, but we are happy with our choices.

Humra has dedicated the book to Begum Mehmooda Dagar, Ustad Wasifuddin’s mother, because without being a performer, she has been the mainstay of the family.

As for that adage about a family that eats together, it certainly applies to the Dagars too.

The author relates a charming tradition that remains unbroken, by which, after any concert or function (including the launch of this book), everyone comes home to have dinner, no matter how late the hour.

When Humra protested that it would be difficult for her to get home, she was told she would be escorted, which she duly was.

Music, food and love. The perfect chord!

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> MetroPlus > Table for Two / by Anjana Rajan / January 13th, 2016

A long way to go: Kutty Ahmed Kutty

April 24, 2018Community Involvement / Social Issues, LeadersK. Kutty Ahmed Kutty, Kutty Ahmed Kutty, Kutty Ahmed Kutty - Minister for Local Self Government - Kerala, Saidali Kutty Mastermpositiveone@gmail.com

KERALA :

Former Minister for Local Self-Government and an avid advocate of decentralisation of powers K. Kutty Ahmed Kutty is disappointed at the way successive governments handled the Panchayati Raj system.

“Decentralisation of powers has not been implemented as envisaged by the Constitution 73rd and 74th amendment. Power and authority have not been transferred completely to the local bodies as originally conceived by our rulers,” Mr. Kutty told The Hindu from his home at Tanur.

According to him, the panchayats and municipalities functioning as the third tier of the governing system have been reduced to mere ‘development agencies’ to expend the funds sanctioned by the government. “The local self-governments have to seek sanction from the State government for many things, which means that decentralisation of powers and functions has not happened the way it should have,” he said.

Mr. Kutty cited withdrawal of the power to issue licence for opening retail liquor outlets as one instance of the manner in which governments have curtailed the powers and functions of local governments. “This is like clipping the wings of the local self-government,” he said. The powers of local governments to issue investment licences are now vested with the local body secretaries and with the elected councils. “E.M.S. Namboodiripad had sought regulatory powers for the local body governing councils, and not for bureaucrats controlled by the State government,” he said.

“We still have to go a long way. We have not moved an inch after A.K. Antony signed the order giving powers to local self-governments in 29 items. We ought to give more powers to local self-governments managed by our men and women.”

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> State> Kerala / by Abdul Latheef Naha / April 21st, 2018

Saiyid Hamid remembered

April 23, 2018Community Involvement / Social Issues, Education, LeadersAll India Educational Movement (AIEM), Dr. Syed Farooq, Dr.Syed Farooq - Chairman - Himalaya Drugs Company, Dr.Zafarul-Islam Khan - Editor - Milli Gazette, Masoom Moradabadi - Editor - Jadeed Khabar, Maulana Ataur-Rahmani, Maulana Ataur-Rahmani - Director - Shah Waliullah Institute, Mozaffar Ali - Secretary - Muslim Educational Trust (MET), Parwaz Rahmani - Editor - Dawat, Rafiq Ahmad - Secretary - Human Welfare Foundation, Saiyid Hamid, Saiyid Hamid - Chairman - MET, Saiyid Hamid - Chairman - Muslim Educational Trust (MET), Saiyid Hamid - Founder & President - AIEM, Saiyid Hamid - Founder & President - All India Educational Movement (AIEM), Saiyid Hamid - IAS, Suraiyya Hamid, Syyed Mansoor Agha - Sr. Urdu Journalist, Syyed Mansoor Agha - Vice President -AIEMmpositiveone@gmail.com

Faizabad, UTTAR PRADESH / NEW DELHI :

New Delhi:

At a condolence meeting jointly organised by All India Educational Movement (AIEM) and Muslim Education Trust (MET), here on 16 January, rich tributes were paid to Saiyid Hamid, the founder-President of AIEM and former Chairman of MET for over a decade. This was one of dozens of such condolence meetings held across India to pay tributes to Saiyid Hamid.

(L to R) Abdul Rashid (speaking), Syyed Mansoor Agha, Dr Syed Farooq, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, Masoom Muradabadi — (L to R) Abdul Rashid (speaking), Syyed Mansoor Agha,
Dr Syed Farooq, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, Masoom Muradabadi

Dr Syed Farooq, patron of AIEM and Chairman of Himalaya Drugs Company, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, Editor of the Milli Gazette and President of AIMMM, Parwaz Rahmani, Editor of Urdu bi-weekly “Dawat”, Masoom Moradabdi, Editor of daily Jadeed Khabar, Syyed Mansoor Agha, Senior Urdu journalist and Vice President of AIEM, Abdul Rashid, former Deputy Secretary to Govt. of India and General Secretary AIEM, Mozaffar Ali, Secretary of MET, Rafiq Ahmad, Secretary of Human Welfare Foundation (HWF) and Maualana Ataur-Rahman Qasmi, Director of Shah Waliullah Institute spoke on the occasion.

Presiding over the meeting, Dr Syed Farooq said that the best tribute to the departed soul will be to continue his mission which is far from complete. He was a visionary and a dedicated person, said Dr Farooq. Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan said, after his retirement from civil services, Saiyid Hamid devoted himself fully for the cause of the community. This is rare as there are hundreds of high-ranking Muslim civil servants who are living their own lives after retirement and show no interest in helping their community. Saiyid Hamid was a person of conviction. He greatly valued the capabilities of others.

Parwaz Rahmani said, some of Saiyid Hamid’s actions as the VC of AMU invited criticism but nobody can deny that whatever he said or did was done with sincerity and in good faith. He had a versatile and attractive personality. Maualana Ataur-Rahman Qasmi said Saiyid Hamid was a man of great stature. He always extended a helping hand but never compromised with his principles to oblige anybody.

Masoom Moradabadi said, the character of leadership Saiyid Hamid provided is in contrast to others. He did not rely upon complaining. Instead, he struggled using self-strength and managed to carve a way-out and helped the community. He advised the community to realise their inherent capabilities, mobilise their available resources and stand on their own two feet. Syyed Mansoor Agha said, Hamid Saheb was an education activist and a great admirer of Sir Syed’s vision of education. He believed in an inclusive approach and stressed upon educating the community. He drew our attention towards the importance of health and hygiene and the dire need of social reforms. He was a big votary for promotion of communal harmony. He was a person of knowledge and action and a rare humanist of our times. Underlining Saiyid Hamid’s deep interest in people’s welfare activities, Rafiq Ahmad said, even during his serious illness, he took keen interest in the affairs of HWF and always obliged us with guidance and granted us audience whenever we approached him. Saiyid Hamid was the founder-Chairman of HWF and served in that capacity until his last breath. The HWF is running several charitable institutions including Al-Shifa Hospital and a chain of Scholar Schools including one at AbulFazl Enclave in Delhi.

Concluding the meeting, Mozaffar Ali said, a the first chairman of MET, Saiyid Hamid shaped the mission which is successfully helping thousands of students to receive higher education in spite of financial constraints. The meeting ended after passing a condolence resolution which said Saiyid Hamid was “a visionary who guided Indian Muslims like a beacon for decades to improve their lot, is no more among us.”

source: http://www.milligazette.com / The Milli Gazette / Home> Online News> Special Report / Online February 13th, 2015 / Print issue : 1-15 February 2015

Urdu poet Anjum Jaunpuri passes away

April 23, 2018Arts, Culture & EntertainmentAnjum Jaunpuri, Anjum Jaunpuri - Poet & Shayar, Anjum Jaunpuri (aka) Mufti Mehndi Haider, Mufti Mehndi Haidermpositiveone@gmail.com

Jaunpur, UTTAR PRADESH :

Varanasi :

Noted Urdu poet and shayer Anjum Jaunpuri passed away on Tuesday after a prolonged illness. He was 67. People assembled at his residence in Ajmeri muhalla in Jaunpur to pay homage to the departed soul.

He had been suffering from ailment for a couple of months due to infection in his leg. According to family members, his health condition started deteriorating on Monday evening, and he breathed his last on Tuesday.

Mufti Mehndi Haider popularly known as Anjum Jaunpuri began his poetic career by reciting his ghazal at a mushayara in Bana in 1972.

Since then he took part in a number of programmes, and also attended an international mushayara held in Karachi (Pakistan) in 1981.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Varanasi News / TNN/ April 18th, 2018

Magic of gifted hands without brand power

April 22, 2018Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, World OpinionRafiq Uddin - Master Craftsman on Marble Inlay, Rafiquddin - Awarded 'Shilp Guru' - Award for Arts & Crafts of India, Rafiquddin - Craftsmanmpositiveone@gmail.com

Agra, UTTAR PRADESH :

Frankfurt :

Rafiquddin sat cross-legged on the red-carpeted floor inside Frankfurt’s Festhalle Messe, far away from his home and workshop in Agra where he’s a star craftsman. His tools were laid out in front of him: small slabs of marble, a polishing machine and a few marble boxes with intricately patterned motifs in coloured stone. At the Messe Ambiente Fair, Mr. Rafiquddin and four others, all recipients of the national award for craftsmen, were seated under the banner “India — Magic of Gifted Hands”, an Export Promotion Council of Handicrafts (EPCH) stall.

However, in an exhibition space of over 3,08,000 sq. m (imagine 245 Olympic-sized swimming pools), they were barely noticed as visitors from over 168 countries and exhibitors from over 89 countries, including 435 companies from India, passed by. They were neither exporters nor buyers, and weren’t within the main exhibition halls. They were representing India, from the margins, at a demonstration stall along the lobby.

Since Mr. Rafiquddin won the ‘Shilp Guru’, India’s highest award for arts and crafts, in 2013 for his intricate marble inlay work, the EPCH has sponsored him to several International fairs for ‘demonstration’ purposes.

Over the last three years, many craftsmen have travelled abroad through this initiative, said Rakesh Kumar, executive director, EPCH. “Over seven million Indians are in the handicrafts industry. It’s India’s USP: handmade goods, and at such demonstrations, we showcase their craftsmanship and skills,” he explained.

Such stalls are not aimed at bagging big shipment orders. They act as a branding tool for Indian handicraft exports. And Mr. Rafiquddin has become an unlikely poster boy for such campaigns.

Data from research organisation CMIE show that handicrafts exports from India in 2016-17 totalled $1,926 million, merely 0.7% of the total exports. Of this, exports to Europe accounted for $553 million, about 28.7%.

At fairs such as the Ambiente, nearly 75% of Indian products are handicrafts. According to Nicolette Naumann, vice-president, Ambiente, “In Europe, customers are attaching greater value to individual, high-grade products or products that look as if they have been hand-made.” India will be the partner country for the fair’s next edition, which will have a special handicrafts gallery, she adds.

Narrating his story of learning this medieval-era technique when he was 17, Mr. Rafiquddin says many of his relatives are craftspersons, and so is his son. However, the father-son duo have been unable to crack the mechanics of the European market. “The demonstrations are a great opportunity, but we want some clients in the West,” he said.

Not able to scale up production

There are several policies to promote handicrafts exports, and EPCH too has worked on creating schemes and projects. In recent years, innovative initiatives (like Gaatha Project and Gramin Vikas Sansthan) have provided craftspersons with direct access to the global market. But can an individual artisan, even if he a national award winner, make it big at a global level?

“These are B2B shows, individuals cannot meet the demand and volume that export requires,” explained Mr. Kumar. Mr. Rafiquddin admitted that he needs months to craft large objects and days for smaller ones.

Between the promise of a growing market and the drawbacks of the handicrafts industry are many Rafiquddins, whose magic hands can’t fathom the demands of consumerism.

Mahima A. Jain is a London-based freelance journalist

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> International / by Mahima A . Jain / April 21st, 2018

Man feeding the poor gets Yudhvir award

April 21, 2018Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Community Involvement / Social IssuesFeed The Poor - Hyderabad - Telangana, NGO - Sani Welfare Foundation, Osman Maqsusi, Sani Welfare Foundation, Syed Osman Azhar Maqsusi, Syed Osman Azhar Maqsusi - Awarded - 27th Yudhvir Foundation Memorial Awardmpositiveone@gmail.com

Hyderabad, TELANGANA :

Social worker Syed Osman Azhar Maqsusi has been named to received the 27th Yudhvir Foundation Memorial Award in recognition of his dedication to uplifting the lives of people in marginalised communities by feeding the hungry. The award for this year includes a citation and cash of ₹1 lakh.

Mr. Azhar was only four-years-old when his father, an auto driver, passed away. His mother struggled to care for him and three other siblings. He gave up his studies at the age of 10 and took up odd jobs to support his family. In 2001 he started a Plaster of Paris unit which remains his only source of income even today.

A stray encounter with a hungry woman led Mr. Azhar to start his campaign to feed hungry persons in 2012. This has grown into a daily food camp for over 150 hungry mouths. In October 2015 he set up the NGO Sani Welfare Foundation to carry the work further.

Inspired by his example and at times aided by him, free food programmes for over 1,000 people have come up in different cities across India in coordination with local trusts and authorities. Free clinic, free educational academy and a free tailoring centre for needy women have also been set up.

His selfless perseverance has brought dramatic changes in the lives of those he has helped and he remains an inspiration for all of us, said a press release. Member of Parliament Kalvakuntla Kavitha will present the award on April 30 at KLN Prasad Auditorium, FTAPCCI Bhavan, Red Hills.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – April 19th, 2018

Artist Wajid Khan making India’s tallest Swami Vivekanand statue

April 21, 2018Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Community Involvement / Social Issues, Travel & Tourism, World OpinionMaryam Siddiqui, Maryam Siddiqui - Artist, Maryam Siddiqui - Artist - Madhya Pradesh, Wajid Khan - Artist - Madhya Pradesh, Wajid Khan - Guinness Book of Records, Wajid Khan - Limca Book of Records, Wajid Khan- Artistmpositiveone@gmail.com

Indore, MADHYA PRADESH :

International artist Wajid Khan, famous for his ‘iron nail art’, is making the tallest statue of Swami Vivekanand in India that would be installed in Uttar Pradesh.

International artist Wajid Khan, famous for his ‘iron nail art’, is making the tallest statue of Swami Vivekanand in India that would be installed in Uttar Pradesh. The statue made of ashtdhatu (alloy) will be 170-feet tall and will be installed either in Lucknow or Agra, said Khan.

He said the statue will be completed in six months. Khan is here to take part in the four-day International Art Festival being organised at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

Though Wajid Khan has not studied in any university or college, he has made a mark for himself by his craftsmanship in metal statue making. He is also making a sculpture for FIFA 2022 to be held in Qatar. The project will take five years to complete.

“A 40-feet statue of Swami Vivekanand is installed in Kolkata and that is his tallest statue. Now, the work on making his 170-feet statue has started in Indore,” said Khan.

“The project is being financed by some businessmen from UP, Delhi and Gujarat. They will decide on the place where the statue will finally be installed. As of now, the first preference is Lucknow and the second is Agra. Due to any reason, if the statue is not installed these cities, the third option will be Delhi,” he added.

“The statue is being made from eight metals including iron, zinc and copper. For the time, the total cost of the statue cannot be revealed,” he said.

Wajid Khan said he is also making a 10×8 ft statue of British Queen Elizabeth, which will be installed at the Royal Palace in London.

Khan has embarked upon a new venture. A proposed retro Bhopal city will be established in 40 acres area in Bhopal and the artist will give it a 2,000 years old look. The project is being financed by some businessmen.

source: http://www.hindustantimes.com / Hindustan Times / Home> Cities> Lucknow / by Pradeep Saxena, Hindustan Times,Aligarh / March 15th, 2018