Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's Kai Chand The Sar-e-Aasman

कई चांद थे सरे-आसमां [Kai Chand The Sar-e-Aasman] by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I added Kai Chaand The Sar-e -Aasman to my TBR after the journalist Ravish Kumar praised it. During the last few days, I often closed this book to postpone reaching the last page. Now that I am done, it will leave a void. This is what masterpieces do to readers.

When I try to place this classic among other great works, I am tempted to compare it to
The Radetsky March
, perhaps because both deal with sunsetting empires. Sadly, Kai Chaand The Sar-e -Aasman does not seem to have got the international acclaim it deserves (though the cover blurb is from Orhan Pamuk).

There isn’t even very much on Faruqi, considering his legendary contribution to Urdu, on the web. An exception that I liked is this interview in Hindi, conducted by the journalist Saurabh Dwivedi. Dwivedi asks Faruqi if there is “a long cut, a short cut, a process” for the many people who are brimming with ideas for novels and wondering how to go about writing. Faruqi says: “Son, if I knew the long cut and short cut, would I have taken so long to write my novel? I was seventy when wrote my novel… There was a time when I was a young boy. You probably won’t believe it…” And he goes on to describe his approach to writing and editing with great charm.

Faruqi himself wrote this piece on translating the book from Urdu to English, a project that must have been supremely challenging. He has this interesting take: “Take ‘love’, for instance. How many words can you think of in English, including Latinisms and archaisms, to convey the idea of love? Well, just one, or maybe another two or three if you stretch the matter. Urdu has at least 18 words to express the emotion of love.”

Faruqi has blurred history and historical fiction with his canvas a whole host of real characters: Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, Nawab Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan of Loharu, William Fraser, Ghalib, Dagh, and many others. Towering above them all is the protagonist, Wazir Khanum, an unusual woman with strange anachronistic ideas of emancipation – a woman whom history might have consigned to a footnote if it wasn’t for this great novel.

Faruqi shines in the detail of his settings. Painters in Kishangarh, in Rajasthan, created organic colours with traditional methods; they rubbed dried leaves and insects between silken sheets gently. How gently? Well, the sound of rubbing couldn’t be heard, and the cloth couldn’t be allowed to tear. Where did thy get water to mix into the dry colours? It was from the western shore of the Kishangarh lake, where it took on some qualities from certain types of grass… and the urine of crocodiles. Faruqi expounds on a staggering range of settings – just for example, the science of carpet-weaving in Kashmir, the magical of a sufi recital in Lahore, the rites and rituals of thug bandits, and the layouts of the places that Wazir Khanum lives in on her chequered journey. Early on in the book, there is (view spoiler)[ a bit about an Arabic word for prostitute also being used to mean a cough, because prostitutes would could to please their clients. It took me a while to figure this out… (hide spoiler)]

He also covers a broad sweep of history, with its focus being mostly on Delhi in the times when the Mughal empire had crumbled, leaving the vestiges of an urbane and cosmopolitan culture without any military power to back it. He stops the narrative just short of 1857, the year of rebellion against the East India Company. Among the fascinating episodes in the story is (view spoiler)[ the assassination of William Fraser, and the following public hanging of Wazir Khanum’s lover. (hide spoiler)]
Faruqi’s love and knowledge of poetry thread the narrative. Detailed recitals of Farsi and Urdu poems adorn scenes of courtship, love, sex, and death. Wazir Khanum herself was an accomplished poet, and her son with the ill-fated Nawab Shamsuddin Khan, Dagh Dehlvi is a leading figure of Urdu poetry. The title of the book is taken from this couplet written by Ahmad Mushtaq:
Kai chaand they sare aasmaan ki chamak chamak ke palat gaye
Na lahu mere hi jigar mein thaa, na tumahri zulph syaah thi.
I am not equal to the task of translating these lines, but some day I will pick up the English translation of this novel just to see how Faruqi did it.

I read the Hindi translation by Naresh ‘Nadeem’, who has translated a staggering 150 books.

Faruqi has said, “A lot of women have accused me of being in love with Wazir Khanum, and why not?” His love has created a truly loveable work.





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