Amarbail, Bano Qudsia, Novel, ناول, امر بیل, بانو قدسیہ,

 Amarbail, Bano Qudsia, Novel, ناول, امر بیل, بانو قدسیہ,

I grew up in an age when the Ashfaq Ahmad-Bano Qudsia duo was very prominent through their very popular plays and literary output. My maternal side is steeped in literature and there are many fans there of Ashfaq Ahmad's work - though mostly the earlier ones barring some who adore his later avatar as a wise baba. As I grew older I became skeptical about many of their conservative, rigid and problematic social stances, their tainted views on democracy, their ostensible closeness to the deep state and simplistic answers couched in seemingly faux spirituality to complex problems. But I am also a loyal reader and Ashfaq Ahmad's first two volumes of short stories had moved me (Aik Mohabbat So Afsanay and Ujlay Phool), as had some of his drama serials (Tota Kahani, Aur Dramay). In the late 1980s I even managed to interview him for an English Daily at his Model Town residence and found him very charming and articulate, heading home gleefully with autographed copies of his books. However, his later works left me unmoved and even skeptical.

While I find some of the subsequent and now popular critique of the couple along with Qudrat Ullah Shahab and Mumtaz Mufti on their politics as well as their social, moral and cultural stances persuasive I am not as readily dismissive of them and feel that their outputs needs to be gauged more objectively and rigorously. They are all different individuals, distinctly different writers and have a varied and complex output. I love the first 1/3rd of the otherwise deeply problematic Shahabnama and I really liked the devotional Labbaik and the surreal Ali Pur Ka Aili by Mufti. But more of that when I review their books.

I must confess that I have so far only read Raja Gidh by Bano Qudsia and that is a discussion all on its on. But my impression always has been that she is essentially a writer of psychological fiction who revels in exploring emotions, social attitudes, relationships, sexuality, class friction, gender politics and normative contestations. The title AmarBail - a yellow parasitic vine I grew up encountering in the Punjab countryside; also known as Akash Bail - always attracted me due to the various symbolic possibilities of the name. But as to the stories under the volume titled Amarbail let me start with a completely candid and irreverent assessment. They are no better than the largely highly melodramatic, weepy, superficial, contrived and cliched tales of the kind certain young women (and I am sure also men) in a certain era may have shed nightly tears on and soaked many a crocheted pillow cases with. The dialogue in particular is more or less identical no matter which character is speaking it and invariably sounds like Bano Qudsia herself - the way she used to philosophize in her interviews. No one speaks like that in real life. And definitely not the various characters in the stories given their class and educational backgrounds.

A common thread through the stories is love - preferably forbidden and taboo (someone else's wife; adolescent infatuation; a second woman etc.,) - and that is quite alright and great literature has been written on such themes. But the treatment here reeks of didactic and preachy middle class morality, abject fatalism, gender stereotypes, over-emotionalism and an often unnuanced assessment of both human psychology and social classes. The upper middle class and the affluent are invariably immoral, soulless and declining and true wisdom lies in fluttering young hearts steeped in and edified by notions of piety, dogma and homilies - or indeed in remarkably ubiquitous, vociferous and yet ostensibly self-effacing holy men (babas) as we discovered increasingly in the later works of all four aforementioned writers. What is particularly cringeworthy are vast and vague generalizations about men and women and lots of verbiage around the same that doesn't signify much. Women are mostly victims, and fairly resigned ones and react to societal and patriarchal subjugation (to her credit she does show that often) in melancholy, breakdown and/or suicide. A few stories follow a somewhat different course but are equally flawed.

This book was a real letdown and it drove home to me also how much superior are writers such as Altaf Fatima (the largely unsung one who never had the supporters and constituency to push her work) and the uber-cosmpolitan Qurat-ul-Ain Haider who had the clout but in any event is brilliant and always a treat to read.

Bano Qudsia does know how to turn a phrase and is well-versed in Islamic and pre-Islamic cultural and literary references. I enjoy her capturing of minor but vibrant aspects of a countryside and culture that I know and hold dear to my heart. And she can be thoughtful - she is certainly more than capable of it and is no mere weaver of tales of entertainment. But this is a very amateurish and inadequate work. It is over-philosophizing and turgid which makes the stories unwieldy and ineffective. A few stories showed promise but the same malaise that characterizes the rest of the book also overtook them. A real disappointment this.

Download