Basti

by Intizar Husain, Frances W. Prichett (Translator), Asif Farrukhi (Introduction)

Basti is the great Pakistani novel, a beautifully written, brilliantly inventive reckoning with the violent history of a country whose turbulence, ambitions, and uncertainties increasingly concern the whole world. In Urdu, basti means any space, from the most intimate to the most universal, in which groups of people come together to try to live together, and the universal question at the heart of the book is how to constitute a common world. What brings people together? What tears them apart? “When the world was still all new, when the sky was fresh and the earth not yet soiled, when trees breathed through centuries and ages spoke around in the voices of birds, how astonished he was that everything was so new and yet looked so old”—so the book begins, with a mythic, even mystic, vision of harmony, as the hero, Zakir, looks back on his childhood in a subcontinent that had not yet been divided between Muslims and Hindus. But Zakir is abruptly evicted from this paradise—real or imagined—into the maelstrom of history. The new country of Pakistan is born, separating him once and for all from the woman he loves, and in a jagged and jarring sequence of scenes we witness a nation and a psyche torn into existence only to be torn apart again and again by political, religious, economic, linguistic, personal, and sexual conflicts—in effect, a world of loneliness. Zakir, whose name means “remember,” serves as the historian of this troubled place, while the ties he maintains across the years with old friends—friends who run into one another in cafés and on corners and the odd other places where history takes a time-out—suggest that the possibility of reconciliation is not simply a dream. The characters wait for a sign that minds and hearts may still meet. In the meantime, the dazzling artistry of Basti itself gives us reason to hope against hope.

Genres: Fiction, Pakistan, Novels, Historical Fiction, Asia, India, 20th Century

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Intizar Husain (1925–2016) was a journalist, short-story writer, and novelist, widely considered one of the most significant fiction writers in Urdu. Born in Dibai, Bulandshahr, in British-administered India, he migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and lived in Lahore. Besides Basti, he was the author of two other novels, Naya Gar (The New House), which paints a picture of Pakistan during the ten-year dictatorship of the Islamic fundamentalist General Zia-ul-Haq, and Agay Sumandar Hai (Beyond Is the Sea), which juxtaposes the spiraling urban violence of contemporary Karachi with a vision of the lost Islamic realm of al-Andalus. Collections of Husain’s celebrated short stories have appeared in English under the titles Leaves, The Seventh Door, A Chronicle of the Peacocks, and An Unwritten Epic.

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first and last journey with her. We left Vyaspur before dawn, but when the lorry reached Bulandshahr it was already afternoon... As we crossed over the Ganges on the bridge, darkness fell. Somehow, at some point, her hand came into mine. From then on I was unconcerned about the dust and ruts in the road, and about when the lorry would arrive in Rupnagar, and even about whether it would arrive at all

Isn't this the truth perfectly, how that half-secret love can swallow your whole self, how some small touch, even a word, can obliterate time and dissolve every thought in your head...What I loved about this book was, above all, its tenderness. Like other borderland literature, Basti renders lines drawn on a map as an emotional geography that blurs them. Here you will not find a history that steps from event to event explaining the cause and effect of each. We don't hear news, only that the beloved one reads it, or that it is discussed by friends in the cafe... I don't mean that politics or history are sidestepped - rather the opposite, we are inside them in a way that makes it impossible to look down on the situation from above.

"Yar!" He paused, then said somewhat hesitantly, "Yar, was it good that Pakistan was created?"

After this fatal question is asked, the text starts to fragment; Zakir becomes a stranger to himself; he cannot even walk without thinking there is something wrong with his walk, that he is losing his identity. Finally some coherence returns when he hears from his friend Surendar in Delhi about Sabirah (the one he loves).

Yar, how strange it is that the same town becomes for one of its inhabitants, who has left the country, more meaningful than before, so that he dreams about it; while for another inhabitant all its meaning disappears, so that even though [s]he's in the same country, [s]he never feels any desire to see the town again

The town where he and Sabirah lived as children is deeply important to Zakir, but Sabirah, who stayed in India while her family left, feels differently. Here I feel not only the loss of the beloved place, but the loss he feels in that discontinuity with her, that something precious to him has been thrown away... If Rupnagar appears idyllic in his memory, then Lahore (by implication, never mentioned) appears nightmarish in a time of war, but tenderness makes it home:

I can do nothing else for this city, but I can pray, and I do pray. In my mind is a prayer for Rupnagar and its people as well, for I can no longer imagine Rupnagar apart from this city. Rupnagar and this city have merged together inside me, and become one town.

Inside Zakir, the broken world can begin to be repaired... It seems to me that Hussein is refusing to partition his own self by drawing on Hindu and Buddhist sources as well as the Quran and Iranian poets. When the slogan "Crush India" appears on taxis it is startling, because we have not left India in spirit, the movement, the crossing, is from a child's paradise to adult sorrow and loss... the mood is grief above all. But love is the bridge; friendship ignores religious differences and nation-state boundaries entirely. Love dissolves the border like chalk-pictures erased by rain. Love is primary in Basti and everything flows from it, even when it is only a shadow of a memory of a touch...

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, my last read was The Siege of Krishnapur, about the 1857 Indian Mutiny. The author, J.G. Farrell, skewers the British, but except for two characters kept in a cage, he doesn't really personalize the native Indians. This, Basti, seemed a logical next step.

Intizar Husain was born in British-administered India and migrated to Pakistan in 1947. He lived through the Partition and the following war. This novel, to the extent it is historical, is about that time. Yet, there are remembrances to 1857, a bell-tolling; both a banner and a scar. And let us not forget Jallianwala Bagh, a park, in 1919, where a crowd of nonviolent nationalist demonstrators were trapped in a walled garden and repeatedly fired upon by soldiers under a British general, leaving hundreds dead.

Zakir - the 'he' of this novel - keeps going to the garden. He makes friends with the trees. Or finds peace. Momentary peace.

Zakir's father gives Zakir some keys. They are the keys to their house in India. None of them will go back there. Son, these are the keys to a house to which you no longer have any right... And then he dies. Such are legacies.

But I don't want to talk about the book, not really. I want to talk about me...or maybe you.

See, there are a few things I know a great deal about, or pretend I do. Munich. I know who lied. I know who was weak. I know it so well that when I read a book about a family outing, I can tell they are really talking about the outset of war, even if, you know, they are not. And whether I'm right or not, the symbolic burp is casual and reflexive.

But I don't have that with the Partition. I don't really know who the good guys and the bad guys are. Husain doesn't tell us either, at least not by teams, just individuals. Young men who enter the Shiraz, drink your tea, and act tough, then change sides.

So I read this as an American. As a non-believer. I read this as a pacifist, and an isolationist, though I suspect the latter is foolish. I read this as someone whose understanding of that moment in time is limited. I read this as someone who thinks you need look no further than religion and colonialism to see why, today, the world is set to explode. And I read this because a character in The Siege of Krishnapur said, "you have to be very careful thrashing a Hindu, George, because they have very weak chests and you can kill them..."

Much of this was lost on me. So much the better, because that signals a start.

Yet, so much resonated;

Without any sense of boredom he read so many posters with the same message, and so many two-word slogans written in English on car bumpers, on car windows. He felt he was not reading slogans, but walking on flies.

Next is The Dying Grass, because there is Katyn Forest, and Jallianwala Bagh, and Wounded Knee and....I am walking on flies.

[Nicholas During · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads like a creation myth, and when it's the creation of the state of Pakistan, you'd better pay some attention, and be prepared to get a bit depressed. Though actually this is beautiful book, filled with lyrical memories of exploration in time, place, and faith. Loaded with Manicheist imagery of father vs. son, brother vs. brother (yes, Cain and Abel), religion vs. religion, town vs. city, you get the point, it feels like you are in a crucible of a new world, and though a reader without a strong understanding of Pakistani history will get confused, the characters themselves live in a world of confusion where the question "What's going to happen?" is asked over and over again and no one can answer it with any certainty. Often the characters don't know who they are, especially the protagonist Zakir, or where they are, or when they are, as they spin through the history of Pakistan and India and all across the subcontinent. Entering into the myriad myths that have created their current culture, though, as anyone who reads the newspapers know, not without its negative effects.

But it isn't just a loose mythic and mystic (I'm stealing from the back copy here) introduction to a complex history and culture. It is also a very clear, very real invocation of living in a war-torn city, Lahore in 1971 to be exact, to be in a place that alternates between the shouts and shots on the streets to the quiet nights of curfew and black-out. Where each morning the city you've live is unrecognizable. Where you radical communist friends became Islamists seemingly overnight (or after a visit to the US) and the only escape is in memory and in the past. And yes, it does have a Proustian feel to it, as Zakir continually returns to his hometown and hometown friends, an ideal India where religions and people freely mixed and one could quote the Koran and the Ramchandar-ji in the same sentence, and no one would blink an eye.

If you are interested in South Asian history, and South Asian literary, this book is a must read. It's wonderfully written, moving but dense, and I at least left it with a deeper sympathy, I hope understanding, for the travails of a large and important place and all the people over the generations who have lived there.

[PS · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautiful, I need time to process it. Review to come

[Zaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Original Review:

Intizar Hussain migrated from India to Pakistan after Indian partition. He lived in the crucial age in which relationship between India and Pakistan became tense and both countries moved away from each other, instead of reconciling, as envisioned by the leadership of both countries and wished by the public. This book revolves around these two themes; partition and war. Intizar Hussain is concerned with how these changes affect the psychology of common people. He doesn't go in the debate of right or wrong, but deals with how it affected the lives of common people.
By using the tools of love and friendship, he connects people of both sides. Apparent differences can't separate people. No matter how big the change is, people are connected with one another in a complex way and that big change can't break those connections.
Nostalgia is also one of the themes of this book, our protagonist wants to go back to his hometown where he spent his childhood, he wants to visit those streets, he wants to meet his lover, but he couldn't do due to imminent war. The war destroys the beauty of his new town, as well.
Intizar Hussain is more concerned with the cultural history of this area. He talks about Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. He talks about the 'ghaddar' of 1857 and the rulers of subcontinent from the ancient times to the modern times. This shows he's more concerned with those things which connect people, not separate them.
Intizar Hussain is a great story teller, as well. Through stories, he teaches big lessons in a very simple and beautiful way. Particularly the story of elephant and tortoise tells us what India and Pakistan are doing to each other.
The themes of love, whether romantic or platonic are beautifully depicted in this book. The way he describes his love for nature, trees, animals, and birds is beyond description. He is actually connected with the land. He skillfully portrays that you can physically leave a place but mentally you remain there. In short, intizar Hussain deals with everything that affects the life of a common man.
P.S. "And when Zakir reminisces: ‘Those were good days, good and sincere. I ought to remember those days, or in fact I ought to write them down, for fear I should forget them again. And the days afterward? Them too, so I can know how the goodness and sincerity gradually died out from the days, how the days came to be filled with misfortune and nights with ill omen.' Literally, this is the postcolonial condition described here so beautifully, so poetically: how the initial hope and excitement slowly fades away when reality sets in."

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

"বাস্তি" আমাদের উপমহাদেশের গল্প। দেশভাগ থেকে শুরু করে ইতিহাসের অনেক চোরাগলি পার হয়ে আসেন লেখক। সদ্য দুর্ঘটনায় যে হাত পা হারিয়েছে তার যন্ত্রণা হয় ভয়ংকর ও জান্তব, মান্টোর গল্পে দেশভাগ  ঠিক এভাবে উপস্থিত। কিন্তু সেই দুর্ঘটনা একটা সময় সয়ে এলেও তার ক্ষত সারাজীবন মানুষকে বয়ে বেড়াতে হয়, ইনতেজারের লেখায় দেশভাগের যন্ত্রণা সেভাবে বর্ণিত - গোপন কিন্তু চিরস্থায়ী ও স্নায়ুক্ষয়ী। ইনতেজারের চরিত্ররা পালিয়ে বেড়াতে চায় কিন্তু বাস্তবতা তাদের রেহাই দেয় না। চারপাশে আশার আলো নেই, তবু এরই মাঝে বেঁচে থাকা আর পালাতে পালাতে জীবনের কাছে ফেরা - এই হলো "বাস্তি।" দেশভাগ নিয়ে এর চাইতে ভালো উপন্যাস সম্ভবত কমই আছে।

[Hassan Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

"بستی" تذکرہ ہے ان پرانی یادوں کا جو سمے کی دھول میں کہیں پیچھے رہ گئیں۔۔۔ جہاں پرندوں کی چہکاریں تھیں، نیل کنٹھ، کھٹ بڑھیا اور کوئل تھے۔۔۔۔ درخت صدیوں میں سانس لیتے تھے، جیون شانت اور سندر تھا۔ پھر ایک دن روپ نگر کی اس بستی میں رہنے والوں کو سفر درپیش تھا، ایک ایسا سفر جو شاید جیون بھر ختم نہ ہونے والا تھا۔۔۔ جس کا کوئی انت نہیں تھا۔۔۔

"ہندوستان چھوڑ دو ۔"
"ہندوستان چھوڑ دو۔۔۔۔۔۔ انقلاب زندہ باد۔۔۔۔۔۔ مہاتما گاندھی کی جے"

کیوں صدیوں کے مکین ایک پل میں اپنے پُرکھوں کی قبروں کی زمین سے بیگانے کر دئیے گئے؟

کالے کوسوں کا سفر تھا اور ایک نیا شہر تھا۔

سب کچھ چھوڑ کر آ جانے والے اپنی حویلی کی چابیوں کا گچھا سدا سنبھالے رکھتے۔۔۔ شاید کبھی کسی بھلے دن اپنے روپ نگر لوٹ جانے کی آس پر۔۔۔ وہ واپس تو نہ جاسکتے تھے مگر جب کبھی یاد کے سفر سے واپس لوٹتے تو یہ چھوٹے سے کرائے کے گھر کے در و دیوار کتنے عجیب اور اجنبی لگتے۔

پرانی بستیوں کے مکین صدیوں کی تھکان اور مسافتوں کے بعد اِس بستی میں اترے مگر یہاں تو اپنے لوگ ہی بیگانے تھے۔۔۔ اینٹ گارے کی کشادہ حویلیوں نے جانے کب اپنوں کے دل محلے تنگ کر دئیے۔۔۔۔۔

کسی دیار میں پہلا دن کتنا اجلا ہوتا ہے۔۔۔۔ ایک تازہ زمین اور تازہ آسمان۔۔۔۔ پھر جب نئی بستی میں رات آتی ہے تو بے نیند آنکھیں آنسوؤں سے تربتر ہو جاتی ہیں۔۔۔ آنسوؤں کے باوجود پہلی رات بہت پاکیزہ ہوتی ہے۔۔۔ مگر وہ پہلا دن پہلی رات آنے والے دنوں میں کہیں پیچھے رہ جاتے ہیں۔۔۔ آنے والے میلے دن۔۔۔۔ اُس پہلے اجلے دن کے بعد تو سب دن ہی میلے ہوتے چلے گئے۔۔۔ شاید یہی ہوا کرتا ہے۔۔۔۔ دن گزرتے چلے جاتے ہیں اور پہلے دن کی پاکیزگی گردشِ ایام میں زائل ہوتی چلی جاتی ہے۔۔۔۔ کتنی جلدی ہمارے دنوں کی پاکیزگی زائل ہوگئی، کتنی جلدی ہماری راتوں سے ٹھنڈک رخصت ہوگئی۔۔۔۔۔۔

نئی بستی میں آکر بس جانے والے کچھ نوجوان بھی تھے جن کا سامنا خالی پن سے تھا۔۔۔۔ نئی بستی میں پرانے سایہ دار برگد نہ ملیں تو آوارگی میں پناہ لینا کچھ ایسا غلط بھی نہیں۔۔۔۔ایک ریستوران سے دوسرے تک کے سفر میں جانے کتنے سال گزر جاتے ہیں۔۔۔

نئی بستی کی مال روڈ نجانے کتنی بار جلی ہوئی بسوں اور خون کے دھبوں سے آراستہ ہو چکی مگر ہر بار ہنگامے کے اگلے دن ٹریفک پھر رواں ہوتا ہے جیسے ایک دن پہلے یہاں کچھ ہوا تک نہ ہو..... بس ریستورانوں میں "سیاسی گفتگو سے پرہیز کریں" کی تختی آویزاں ہوتی ہے۔۔۔۔اور چائے بدمزہ ہو جاتی ہے۔۔۔

بستی کی دیوراوں پر نعرے بدل گئے.... باسی نعروں کی جگہ نئے نعرے آگئے۔۔۔۔"کرش انڈیا - کرش انڈیا"

پھر جنگ کا خوف بستی پر مسلط ہو گیا۔۔۔
"یار بستی کے پرندے بہت پریشان ہیں۔ میں ابھی ابھی راوی کی طرف سے آرہا ہوں۔ جب جہاز آتے ہیں تو آس پاس کے باغوں سے پرندے حواس باختہ اڑتے ہیں، بے معنی طور پر آسمان پہ چکر کاٹتے ہیں اور غریب پھر درختوں میں چھپ جاتے ہیں۔"

نئی بستی میں آکر بسنے والوں کی یاد میں روپ نگر کی وہ پرانی بستی تو ہے۔۔۔۔ مگر نئی بستی اب اُس ناسٹلجیا کا محور بن چکی ہے کہ یہاں پر بیٹھ کر روپ نگر کو یاد کیا، اُس کی یاد میں دکھ جھیلے اور اُس کو اب تک تصورات میں زندہ رکھا ہے۔۔۔۔۔اگر جنگ سے اس بستی کو کچھ ہو گیا تو؟
"بستی برباد ہوتی ہے تو اس کے ساتھ وہ دکھ بھی فراموش ہو جاتے ہیں جو وہاں رہتے ہوئے لوگوں نے بھرے ہوتے ہیں۔ اس جنگ زدہ عہد کا المیہ یہ ہے کہ ہمارے دکھ ہماری یادیں نہیں بن پاتے۔ جو عمارتیں، جو مقام ان دکھوں کے امین ہوتے ہیں انہیں کوئی ایک بم کا گولہ دم کے دم نیست و نابود کر دیتا ہے۔"

بستی کا مکین ہمہ وقت دونوں بستیوں میں رہ رہا ہوتا ہے۔۔۔ اس نئی بستی میں بھی اور یادوں کے اُس روپ نگر میں بھی۔ اس کی سوچ کی لہروں اور دل کی دھڑکن میں دونوں بستیوں کی چنتا ہے۔۔"میں اس شہر کے لیے اور کچھ نہیں کر سکتا، دعا کر سکتا ہوں، سو کرتا ہوں۔ یہ میرے تصور میں آباد روپ نگر کے لیے بھی دعا ہے کہ اُسے میں اب اِس شہر سے الگ کرکے تصور میں نہیں لا سکتا۔ روپ نگر اور یہ شہر میرے اندر گھل مل کر ایک بستی بن گئے ہیں۔"

میرے نزدیک بستی ایک بہت بڑا ناول ہے۔ اتنا بڑا کہ یہ ہر کسی کو اپنے روپ نگر کے درشن نہیں دیتا۔ میں نے اس ناول کا بیشتر حصہ رات کے آخری پہروں میں پڑھا ہے۔ میرے خیال میں بستی کے درشن کے لیے لازم ہے کہ آپ ایک ناسٹلجیا زدہ حساس شخص ہوں، اگر ایسا نہیں ہے تو بستی کی وہ اداس گلیاں اور وہ لمحات آپ پرمنکشف نہیں ہوں گے۔۔۔ شاید یہی بڑی وجہ ہے کہ اس ناول کے بارے میں لوگوں کے رائے دو انتہاؤں پر ہے: ایک وہ لوگ جو میری طرح اس کو بہت بڑا ادب گردانتے ہیں اور ایک وہ جنہیں اس میں کوئی خاص بات نظر نہیں آتی۔

میں یہ نہیں جانتا کہ اِس نئی بستی کے باسیوں میں پرانی  دیواروں پر رقم نئے معروف نعروں کے سائے میں اس ناول کو پڑھنے یا سمجھنے کی کتنی اہلیت یا سکت ہے۔۔۔لیکن یہ ضرور جانتا ہوں کہ انِ نعروں، جلسہ گاہوں میں ہنگاموں اور مال روڈ کی جلتی ہوئی بسوں اور خون کے دھبوں کے بیچ ہمیشہ کچھ ایسے لوگ ضرور ہوں گے جو دونوں بستیوں کو ایک دوسرے سے الگ نہیں کر سکیں گے۔۔ جن کے اندر روپ نگر کی وہ بستی اور یہ شہر گھل مل کر ایک بستی بن چکے ہوں گے۔۔۔

حسن علی، نومبر کی ایک اداس رات، 3 بج کر 20 منٹ، راولپنڈی شہر

[MI Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

اردو ادب میں انتظار حسین صاحب کو بلند پایاں مقام حاصل ہے اور  یہ کتاب میرا ان سے اولین تعارف ہے۔

جس قدر مقبولیت ان کے اس ناول "بستی" کو حاصل ہے، مجھ ایسے کم فہم انسان کی ناقص علمی کہیئے یا کچھ اور کہ میں اس مقبولیت کا راز نہ پا سکا۔

میرے جزبات و احساسات میں یہ ناول اس قدر ارتعاش نہ پیدا کر سکا جتنی میری توقعات تھیں، شاید معروف کتابوں کی خرابی یہی ہوتی ہے کہ ان سے امیدیں بہت وابستہ کر لی جاتی ہیں۔

کتاب میں چند ایک مقامات بہرطور ایسے ضرور ہیں جو قاری کو ورطہ حیرت میں ڈال دیتے ہیں اور خیالات کی عمیق کھائیوں میں ڈبو دیتے ہیں۔

یہ ناول ایک ٹوٹ کر بکھرتے ہوئے انسان کی سرگزشت ہے جس نے قیام پاکستان اور ہجرت کی کرب ناکیوں میں اپنی اوائل عمری اور جوانی اور پھر سقوط ڈھاکہ جیسے سانحے کے ساتھ اپنی ڈھلتی عمر کے دن بتائے۔ اور ایک خوابیدگی سی کیفیت میں خود کو محسور پایا۔


جیسے بقول جون ایلیاء:

اے صبح میں اب کہاں رہا ہوں
خوابوں ہی میں صرف ہوچکا ہوں


گردش دوراں میں شہر لاہور کے بدلتے رنگ اور لوگوں کے بدلتے نظریات اور مزاج نے مصنف کو ایک مستقل مخمسے میں الجھائے رکھا اور وہ اس بات کی کھوج میں پھرتا رہا کہ ہم نے جس بستی کو خود بسایا تھا اس کو ہم خود ہی کیوں آگ لگا رہے ہیں اور وہ اکثر خود سے اور قاری سے سوال طلب نظر آیا کہ ہم سب کون ہیں اور یہ سب کیا ہے اور ہم نے اپنی شناخت کو پالیا ہے یا کھو دیا ہے یا پاکر کھودیا ہے۔

ہر کردار وحشت اور خوف میں گھرا ہوا، پراگندہ خیالات و جزبات کا ایک جھکڑ ہر نفس کے اندر چلتا ہوا محسوس ہوا۔ خوف اور ناامیدی کی تیز و تند آندھیوں میں الجھتے سلجھتے بکھرتے لوگ   کسی بھی ایک سمت میں خود کو لے جانے سے  قاصر کہ جانے اگلا دن کیا قیامت لے کر آجائے۔ وہ سانحہ ہی اس قدر اندوہناک تھا کہ جس میں ہم نے خود اپنا ایک بازو کاٹ ڈالا۔

یہ کہانی ایک بستی کی نہیں، ہر اس بستی کی روداد ہے جہاں ظلم بولتا ہے اور انصاف نے کانوں میں روئ ٹھونس رکھی ہوتی ہے۔

"جب گیدڑ بولتے ہیں، شیر چپ ہوجاتے ہیں"

[Shumail Hassan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minds are overwhelmed by the war signifying restless masses especially the protagonist, Zakir, who seems to be at loggerheads with himself and with the rationale around. War has benumbed these people, the people having affiliations; with religion, with revolution while some with the inherent relationships they hold with humans, with landscapings, with nature. Hence, Intizar's nostalgia hits time and again with so many historical, religious and socio-cultural elements that reader is taken into the study of these people's lives forcibly. The writer has, so exceptionally, done justice to plot and so mesmerisingly knitted the storyline that reader keeps on turning the pages from cover to cover. This orphic pen is well-conversant with pure Hindi origins of these people and their historical, psychological affinities for their land without any malaise. This remains a masterpiece I have ever read in Urdu fiction not only because this is one of the very few attempts at putting down people's history unplugged from 'wonted political whatabout-ery'.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complex multilayered novel switching from modern Pakistan to 1857 to 1971. Events which shaped Pakistan and India. The narrator in the story Zakir captures the tragic history of Pakistan beautifully. Translated from Urdu the story perhaps misses the complexity of Muslim and Hindu storytelling and history from legends, poems and excerpts from the Quran.

Well worth a read.

[Sorayya Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This innovative novel has its own style--part plot, part memory, part dream, part mythology. Although its backdrop is Partition, the novel is extraordinary in its rendering of "waiting for war". The historical moment is 1971 and the brutal war out of which Bangladesh was born. It's a story of place, from Lahore, Delhi, Dhaka, and others to Rupnagar and Vyaspur, imagined villages central to the sorrows of this story. The story moves from one location to the next, as it does from the present to various moments in the past. The book is translated from Intizar Husain's Urdu by Frances Pritchett who says, "My goal has not been to make the characters sound like Americans. I want a careful balance: sentences that are within the range of standard English, but a rhythm that retains the flow of Urdu. I want the reader to have an agreeable double experience: to realize through the semitransparent medium of English that people from a different culture are living their own lives, not ours. While the sentences swim in Urdu like fish in a sea, in English I want them at least to swim like fish in a well-designed aquarium." Even in translation, the story is transportative, capturing a rhythm of different worlds and different times, but presenting a familiar melancholy of loss and loneliness and more.

There are several gorgeous passages:

"They had left their cities, but they carried their cities with them, as a trust, on their shoulders. That's how it usually is. Even when cities are left behind, they don't stay behind. They seize on you even more. When the earth slips out from under your feet, that's when it really surrounds you . . . "

In a letter written by Surendar to Zakir, "Come and see the city of Delhi, and the realm of beauty, for both are waiting for you. Come and join them, before silver fills the part in her hair, and your head becomes a drift of snow, and our lives are merely a story. That's all."

A line of dialogue, spoken by Irfan: "But it's not your fault, that's the state the newspapers are in nowadays. Once they used to publicize the news, now they conceal the news; in any case, may God have mercy, things don't look good."

The opening sentence, "When the world was still all new, when the sky was fresh and the earth was not yet soiled, when trees breathed through the centuries and ages spoke in the voices of birds, how astonished he was, looking all around, that everything was so new, and yet looked so old."

And in the opening, a child wonders:
"Maulana, when will Doomsday come?'
"When the mosquito dies, and the cow is free of fear."
"When will the mosquito die, and hwne will the cow be free of fear?"
"When the sun rises in the west."
"When will the sun rise in the west?"
"When the hen crows, and the rooster is mute."
"When will the hen crow, and when will the rooster be mute?"
"When will those who can speak fall silent, and when will shoelaces speak?"
"When the rulers grow cruel, and the people lick the dust."
After one "when" a second "when," after a second "when" a third "when." A strange maze of "whens"! Then "whens" that had passed away, the "Whens" that were yet to come. What "whens" and "whens" Bhagat-ji recalled, what "whens" and "whens" were illumined in Abba Jan's imagination! The world semed to be an endless chain of "whens." When and when and when ---

[Kamran · Rating 3 out of 5]

بستی۔۔۔ ایک داستان ہے ، ہجرت کی، بچھڑی محبتوں، بچھڑے درخت، چرند پرند اور بچھڑے حال کی اور جو اس سب کے بدلے ملا، اس پر منڈلائے جنگی اثرات کی ۔۔۔ اور پھر ایک اور المیہ کی۔۔۔ جو سن سینتالیس کے بعد سن اکہتر میں واقع ہوا۔
میرے نزدیک یہ ایک اجتماعی حادثہ نہیں تھا۔ یہ حادثہ صرف مشرقی پاکستان والوں کا تھا۔ پر اس بار اس میں ہاتھ انگریز کا نہیں اپنوں کا، مغربی پاکستان کا تھا۔ اس موضوع سے متعلق ناول کے ایک منظر میں مرکزی کردار ذاکر، اس سانحے/شکست کی ذمہ داری ہر شخص پر عائد کرتا یے۔

"بستی برباد ہوتی ہے تو اس کے ساتھ وہ دکھ بھی فراموش ہو جاتے ہیں جو وہاں رہتے ہوئے لوگوں نے بھرے ہوتے ہیں۔ اس جنگ زدہ عہد کا المیہ یہ ہے کہ ہمارے دکھ ہماری یادیں نہیں بن پاتے۔"

میں ادیبوں کی خود نوِشت سے ان کو پڑھنا شروع کرتا ہوں۔ انتظار حسین صاحب کی "یادوں کا دھواں" پڑھی۔ اور یہ تجربہ اس ناول میں بے حد کام آیا۔ مرکزی کردار ذاکر میں کم و بیش انتظار صاحب کی جھلک ملتی ہے۔

سہل اردو، کربناک خیالات، ناسٹلجیا تو ہے پر اس کا تخیلاتی ربط جس طرح کے مناظر تخلیق کرتا ہے بے حد خوبصورت ہے۔ ہندو متھالوجی کا استعمال بھی ناول کو خوب تر بناتا ہے۔

“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

― Bertolt Brecht

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate the adjective "Faulknerian" but weirdly I can't think of a ready-made way to convince you to read this. If you're like me, you likely haven't discovered much South Asian fiction like this famed Pakistani novel and its highly regarded author. A stream-of-consciousness series of interlaced and overlapping memories of the Partition and the narrator Zakir's family flight from their idyllic, near-mythic village where Hindus and Muslims alike lived together to their squatter-like existence in brand-spanking-new Pakistan, Basti is very much in the dreamy, messy tradition of Faulkner. Steeped in its ever-shifting localities and dreams of lost loves, geographical and literal, Zakir wanders back and forth across his own life as the splitting of Pakistan occurs in the early 70s.
Dreamily, beautifully written, Basti might befuddle the reader unfamiliar with these dim political contexts since they are only dealt with tangentially in the story itself. That's why I hesitate giving four stars. Oh, shoot, let's say 3.5 stars.

[Zehra Kazmi · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book of 2021, Basti, a slim, dreamlike novel by Intizar Husain, was both a difficult and gorgeous read. The sheer scale of Husain's vision, which incorporates everything from myth to political commentary to absurdism in one of the most original pieces of writing I have ever read, is stunningly impressive. To the uninitiated, Husain reads a bit like Marquez, but even more melancholic and dreamy. Nonetheless, I cannot with certainty say I loved it or really enjoyed reading it. A part of me feels like it is unfair to pass judgement before I have read the original Urdu version (which I have decided to get my hands on now) because I found Pritchett's translation unyielding and awkward. While there is much here is that is admirable, I suspect that Husain sacrifices some aspects of storytelling at the altar of artistry. I also believe that the translation would be intractable for someone who didn't have a strong grasp on South Asian history.

I am still processing the references I came across in this novel and to be honest, there is some symbolism here that was lost on me. There is a labyrinth of secular and sacred versions of South Asian history to unravel while reading the novel. I am divided on recommending the book, especially this translation. If you are feeling brave, I would urge you to read it and you will find something worth holding on to in the end. More importantly, if you have read the Urdu version and believe you can do a better job, then I'd love to read a new translation of this novel.

[Faaiz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the translated version of Basti and not the original in Urdu. I hope to be able to read that one day.

As far as the current translated book is concerned, I just didn't find it as compelling and evocative as I would've hoped it would be. I think a lot was lost in translation here and I often tried to imagine what the Urdu version of what I was reading would've sounded like. I found the writing and prose to be stiff, muddled and obscured - like there was a layer, or veil, between what was written and what was meant to be conveyed, like the author was holding back on me and being guarded.

Most of all what irked me was the constant barrage of dreams, imagined fantastical scenarios and sequences from which transition back to the current wasn't always smooth and their relevance was lost on me. Also, the characterizations were puzzling, it was as though the protagonist and the supporting cast of characters were in a sort of arrested development with childlike naivety and without a strong or well formulated characterization, personalities or traits. I wonder if that is intentional in that the constant disorientation of the plot and the characters is meant to convey a postcolonial condition borne out of trauma, and a repeated trauma in particular. Still, the whole thing seemed underwhelming and a bit dull really.

People seem to like it. I guess this just wasn't for me.

[Dhwani Advani · Rating 4 out of 5]

ig: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJLrXML2...

basti?
human settlement, an inhabited place.
Basti is a novel of homes and homelessness, of memory and it's resilience.
This enchanting novel takes us through the tragic history of Hindustan and Pakistan through different bastis, the liveliness and charm in each of them, and then their burnt rubbles; all through the eyes of our protagonist, Zakir.
zakir?
from zikr, the one who remembers.
and so it is, for he is our storyteller through the houses of Rupnagar and the advent of electricity to the jungles of Vyaspur and finally to the city of Lahore and it's Sheeraz.

Zakir grows up with us, from an innocent childhood in a syncretic neighbourhood surrounded by both Muslim and Hindu folktales.
His teenage love, Sabirah, who is left behind in Hindustan as a consequence of the Partition. Following which Zakir finds himself in an alien city, with a longing for his old home and the misery of sleepless nights.

The novel essentially spans from 1947 to 1971, walking us through the tragic breakdown of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of three new states. Unlike other partition fiction, basti is not directly graphic about the physical violence and terrors of the war, rather it is about the emptiness and fear within. About uncertainty and hope(lessness).
It is about an acute sense of displacement and a most saddening nostalgia for a different place and a different time, a simpler time in an undivided country.
Zakir slips in and out of dreams, finding himself back in the city of his childhood. The latter part of the novel takes a very dreamy, stream of consciousness style as Zakir begins to maintain a diary during the '71 war. Intizar Hussain very skillfully interweaves folk tales from Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic traditions and we traverse throigh new worlds wiith Zakir. The wreckage of the war also included several parallels to the downfall of Shahjahabad (Delhi) in 1857, often using lines by Ghalib and Mir to describe the devastated state of the city.
This style of writing was a little difficult to follow at times (especially in Urdu) because past and present, myth and reality blend seamlessly here. (Here, I was very grateful to the translation for the footnotes and dividers.)

The Sheeraz in Lahore could be reflective of the intellectuals of the time. The fickleness of Salaamat and his followers as they abandon their communism the moment the war is lost, the constant sarcasm of Irfan which has no purpose, the feigned righteousness of Afzal that finally breaks down and most prominently, the ambivalence of Zakir for he just doesn't know where he stands as there is a massive turmoil within himself:
“I don’t know, yar. I don’t really know what I’m for and what I’m against today.”
1971 has reignited the pain of the Partition, strengthening it even, for now Zakir is in a constant fear of displacement, he prays desperately that the attacks shouldn't destroy his old home, his first room that sleepless night in alien Pakistan and of course his current neighbourhood.

Saabirah remains a strong metaphorical and fantastical character for Zakir. Despite their painful separation they still seem to love each other. Zakir yearns to write to her again as bombs fall in his city, bombs that perhaps came from her city. Finally, Zakir decides he will write to her before it's "too late."

The novel is open ended. Afzal calls for his friends and whispers, “This is the time for a sign.” What this sign is and whether or not it will ever come are questions left unanswered as they all sit surrounded by rubble and wreckage.
Let me end by quoting Asif Farrukhi's introduction:
“In a sense basti itself is the sign, or at least a sign of the possibility of a sign, just as Zakir is shown to keep faith in the possibility of a revelation, a shimmering nearness that evades our grasp even as it hovers within reach.”


PS
This book has been a long, long journey. I think I picked it up in July, there was a huge gap in the middle and I came back to it in October.
An Urdu book always brings with it a huge sense of achievement on accomplishment, in this case more so because I simultaneously read the translation, not as a crutch, but because I wanted to compare them and hopefully understand more about how it works along with my own notes and modifications. It was a tedious yet really interesting process because I definitely gain valuable insight. Things are bound to get lost in translation but this helped me see how translators still manage to put forward a complete work and all the tedious efforts that have gone behind that.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book - a little slow to get into - is excellent. A young boy from a Muslim family leaves India for Pakistan and later, as a young man, is faced with his family's experience in the Bangladesh War and with violence between India and Pakistan. Not particularly about the violence of Partition, more about the results on an emotional level for one boy and his family. References to violence in India in the 19th century. There is a good little introduction that gives some of the relevant history that was helpful to me. More about the mood and feelings than actual events. Left me wanting to read more by this author, if it's available.

[Sermad Farooque · Rating 4 out of 5]

یادوں کے حصار میں لپٹے ہوئے ایک ایسے وقت کا انتظار جو گزر گیا ہے, جزباتی لوگوں کے پر اشتعال دعووں کی کھوکھلی سچائی, ادھوری محبت, مایوسی کی وہ انتہا جب وہ بےحسی میں ڈھل جاتی ہے اور جنگوں سے خوفزدہ شہروں کی چیختی خاموشی______ انتظار حسین پڑھنے والے کی آنکھوں سے نظریات اور عقائد کی پٹی اتار کر اُسے ایک عام آدمی کی بینائی دینے کی کوشش کرتا ہے جس نے روایتی تاریخ دانوں سے تاریخ لکھنا نہیں سیکھی.

[MomināReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

افضال اور اس کی باتیں۔۔۔

This is not spoiler but still He is not the main character

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've wanted to read Intizar Husain's classic novel 'Basti' for a long time. I finally got around to reading it.

The story starts in the early 1970s, sometime before the start of the war in Bangladesh. Zakir is a history teacher in college. He lives in Lahore. (The city is not named in the story but it looks like Lahore.) There is a kind of unrest in the streets. It takes Zakir's mind back to an earlier time, to the early 1940s, when Zakir and his family were living in a small town in India. We get to see the story and history unfold through Zakir's eyes, as the story moves back and forth between the 1940s and the 1970s and even moves further back to the 1850s. All these time periods had traumatic events which resulted in many innocent people getting killed and getting displaced from their homes, and we get an eerie feeling that history as tragedy just keeps repeating itself.

The contrast between the 1940s and the 1970s is so beautifully depicted – different time periods, different countries, separated by a traumatic event. The depiction of the 1940s is charming at the beginning till things turn dark because of the Partition and the ensuing violence.

I loved the way Intizar Husain blends literature and mythology from different cultures seamlessly into the story. The notes section and the glossary at the end of the book were very informative and were a pleasure to read. I learnt a lot from there.

I loved many of the characters in the book. Zakir's father Abba Jan was one of my favourite characters in the book and he speaks some of my favourite lines from the story. Zakir's cousin and beloved Sabirah who ends up in India while he moves to Pakistan was another of my favourite characters in the book.

Intizar Husain's prose is beautiful and it was a pleasure to read. I couldn't stop highlighting my favourite passages – there were so many.

The book has a brilliant introduction by Muhammad Umar Memon which discusses and analyzes the plot. It is best read after reading the book. There is also a beautiful interview with Intizar Husain at the end, which is a pleasure to read.

These days 'Basti' is published by NYRB. I personally feel that NYRB just buys the rights of pioneering editions and translations which came out earlier and puts them out at prohibitive prices. The edition of 'Basti' I read is by Oxford University Press. If you can get hold of this edition, it is much better than NYRB – hardback, thick paper, big font, and so an absolute pleasure to read.

'Basti' is one of the masterpieces of Pakistani Urdu literature. It was moving, haunting and heartbreaking. I loved it and I'm glad I finally read it though it took me a while to get to it. I've heard that Intizar Husain is famous for his short stories and so hoping to read one of his short story collections sometime.

I'll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.

*****

"Just then thunder rumbled in the clouds, scaring them both, and at once the rain came down so hard that before they got from the open roof to the staircase they were both drenched.

How forcefully the rainy season began! Inside, outside, everywhere was commotion; but when it went on raining at a steady pace, the atmosphere slowly filled with a kind of sadness and voices were gradually silenced. When evening fell, the stray call of a peacock came from deep in the forest, and mingled more sadness with the sad, rainy evening. Then night came, and the rain-soaked darkness grew deep and dense. If anyone woke in the night, the rain was falling as though it had been raining for an endless eternity, and would keep on raining for an endless eternity. But that night was so well-populated by voices."

******

"The rain poured down all night inside him. The dense clouds of memory seemed to come from every direction. Now the sky was washed and soft. Here and there a cloud swam contentedly in it, like a bright face, a soft smile. How deeply self-absorbed he was! For him, the outer world had already lost its meaning."

******

"Other people's history can be read comfortably, the way a novel can be read comfortably. But my own history? I'm on the run from my own history, and catching my breath in the present. Escapist. But the merciless present pushes us back again toward our history. The mind keeps talking."

******

"Zavvar was the youngest of us all, but he established himself among us as a learned scholar, and his brilliance and maturity of mind fully made up for his youthfully downy cheeks. At such an early age, after reading books of all types and descriptions, he announced that wisdom doesn't come from books, but from passing through the experiences of life. Thus, in search of wisdom, he sat for a few days with Afzal, trying out liquor. Then, believing it inadequate, he tried marijuana, hashish, and opium. Taking baths, changing clothes, and shaving he considered to be a waste of time, and insofar as possible he avoided such extravagances. Partly because his shoes were rather old, and partly because they were unpolished and covered with dust and dirt, they looked ancient. He himself took out and threw away their inner soles, and contrived to leave the nails protruding. He used to walk for miles, and come back to the Shiraz with his heels covered with blood.

"Yar, why don't you get a shoemaker to fix your shoes?"

"No."

"Why?"

"To become a man, one ought to have the experience of torment; and great art is born only through suffering."

******

Anisah watched this whole scene with sadness. She said, The Imperial has gone into a total decline. How did it happen? When I left, the Imperial was really at its peak. Who could have imagined then that such a fate would overtake it?'

"That's the trouble with peaks. Those who are on them never even imagine that they could be brought down from such a height! And when the decline starts, it can't be stopped halfway. The decline doesn't stop even for a moment, until it reaches its limit."

"You've started talking about the decline of nations. I was talking about the Imperial."

"Whenever and wherever decline begins, it works in exactly the same way."

******

"What's happened to my walk today? He hesitated, then reflected that before today he'd never even paid attention to his walk. We keep on walking, and never pay attention to how we walk. Here I am, walking along. Immediately he was brought up short. When he observed his own non-human walk, the strange thought came to him that it was not he who was walking, but someone else in his place. But who? He fell into perplexity. Gradually he controlled his doubt. He walked in measured paces, and listened to the sound of his footsteps. No, I'm myself all right. I'm walking here on a paved sidewalk in my city, and this is the sound of my footsteps. But while he was reassuring himself like this, a sudden impression came to him that the sound of his footsteps was gradually drawing away from his footsteps. It's a strange thing. I'm walking along here, and the sound of my footsteps is coming from over there – from where? Or perhaps I'm here, and I'm walking somewhere else? Where? Where am I walking? On what earth are my footsteps falling? He looked around him in surprise. Everything was silent and desolate. As though the town had emptied, the way a matchbox empties. "Houses and inns and places, all empty." No noise, no voice, no sound of footsteps, no nothing..."

******

"Yesterday when I was drinking tea with Sabirah, my eyes fell on the part in her hair. How elegantly straight a part she had made. I saw that among the black hairs one hair was shining like silver. So, my friend, time is passing. We're all in the power of time. So hurry and come here. Come and see the city of Delhi, and the realm of beauty, for both are waiting for you. Come and join them, before silver fills the part in her hair. and your head becomes a drift of snow, and our lives are merely a story. That's all."

******

"Well, listen now, where is the key to the storeroom?"

"Storeroom? What storeroom?"

"Ai hai, you've already forgotten! Was there not a storeroom in our mansion?"

"Oh, the storeroom in the mansion." Abba Jan was silent, then said, "Zakir's mother, twenty-five years have passed."

"Well, I'm asking about the key to the storeroom, not the number of years."

"When you asked about the key to the storeroom, I thought I ought to tell you how much time has passed."

"Oh, what does time have to do with it time always goes on passing, but if the key to the storeroom's been lost, it's a disaster! All our old family heirlooms are shut up in there. All the things from my dowry are in there..."

******

"From somewhere deep within the bag, under some papers, he brought out a bunch of keys. He looked at them closely, and said, "That day you were thinking about the keys to the mansion, and here they are."

Her lined face brightened. "Truly?" She looked longingly at the bunch of keys. "Well, you wouldn't believe, that day when you said you didn't know where they were, my heart almost stopped beating. I thought my soul had left my body." She paused, then said, "And the rust hasn't gotten to them?"

Abba Jan examined the keys once more. "No, I didn't let them get rusty. From now on, it's up to Zakir." Then he addressed him : "Son, these are the keys of a house to which we no longer have any right. And when did we ever have any right? The world, as Hazrat Ali has said, is a guest-house. We and our desires are guests in it. Guests have no rights. Whatever the earth deigns to bestow on us guests, it's a favor, and the earth has shown us great kindness indeed. These keys are a trust. Guard this trust, and remember the kindness shown by the earth we left, and this will be your greatest act of dutiful behavior." As he spoke, suddenly his breath choked. He closed his eyes with the pain, and pressed his hand to his chest. Ammi at once jumped up anxiously, "Why, what's happened?" She helped him to lie down. "Son, call the doctor!" Abba Jan opened his eyes. He made a sign to say no. Slowly, with the greatest difficulty, he said, "Hazrat Ali has come!"

******

"Afzal was right. This was indeed the time to have a long sleep. A man should go into a cave, apart from everyone, and sleep. And go on sleeping for seven hundred years. When he wakes up and comes out of the cave, then he'll see that the times have changed. And he has not changed. It's a good idea, it's better than getting up every morning and looking in the mirror, suspecting that his face has changed, and being tormented all day by the thought that his face is changing! When a man sees people changing all around him, such suspicions arise. Or it also happens that no suspicions arise, and then a man changes. How? How have they gone on changing? Those people, every one of whom believed that the others were changing, while he himself looked the same as before. Everyone looked at everyone else and was stupefied. "My dear friend! What's happened to you?"

"To me? Nothing's happened to me. But I can see that something's happened to you."

"My dear friend, nothing's happened to me But I do see that your face –"

One tangled with another, the second tangled with a third. One clawed at another, the second clawed at a third. They all clawed at each other and were injured and deformed. I was afraid that I too – I came away. I should go into my cave and sleep. And keep sleeping until the times have changed."

******

Have you read 'Basti'? What to you think about it?

[Jesús Cárdenas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una lectura que me removió más de lo que esperaba. A veces me perdía entre tantas referencias religiosas, míticas o históricas, pero al mismo tiempo sentía que eso era parte del viaje: esa sensación de desorientación, de nostalgia, de no encontrar un lugar. Basti te mete en la piel de quienes vivieron la partición desde la pérdida. Y esa nostalgia de quienes soñaron con un futuro mejor y despertaron en un presente roto.

La versión en castellano de la novela la publica la editorial Armaenia, especializada en libros de que han sido best sellers en otras culturas.

[Ashik · Rating 4 out of 5]

আমার বুকের জিরজিরে হাড়ের ভেতর কিসমিসের মতো শুকিয়ে চুপসে যাওয়া হৃদয়টা কখন আবার চিনির জলে ফুলে-ফেঁপে উঠেছিল টের পাইনি। যখন টের পেলাম, যখন তাকে ধরতে গেলাম তখন রসালো কিসমিস ভর্তি বাটিটা ধাক্কা খেয়ে ছিটকে পড়লো মাটিতে!
কে দিল ধাক্কাটা? দেশভাগ? ৬৫ এর যুদ্ধ? না কি ৭১ এর আরেকটা যুদ্ধ, আরেকটা দেশভাগ?

[Unni · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Jab duniya abhi nayi nayi thi, jab aasman taza tha, aur zameen abhi meli nahi hui thi, jab darakht sadiyo me saans lete the aur parindo ki aawazo me jag bolte the, kitna hairan hota tha woh..."
When a book starts with these lines you know you have a treat coming along your way, and the book proved that it's as awesome as it's opening lines were!
In my opinion it's an excellent book, I've read books on partition, but this one is something else, it was not loaded with politics and information, it just presented the time, the era from a layman's view, the fear, the trembling hope, the basti, the family behind, the love, the city, the sirens and tanks and their activities... I could feel I was there, I could feel what must be happening there, how air must've been at that time, what feelings and emotions they must've felt....
I thought about it for a long time after finishing the book, and I think that's a sign of a great book!
Totally recommended!

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an effort to read more books set outside of North America and from different perspectives, I've recently read Basti, a story told by a west Pakistan man which spans the 1971 war between Pakistan and India, Originally written in Urdu, the book is interwoven with religious and cultural references to Hindi, Christianity, and Islamic texts and stories. Very evocative and a fine glimpse into another culture. Accoding to Aamir Mufti, who writes on the back cover, "Urdu is "the strangely homeless language produced out of interactions between the vernacular of north India and those of the Islamic Near East, Persian and Arabic in particular."

[Dil Nawaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

پہلی دفعہ انتظار حسین کی کتاب پڑھنے کا اِتّفاق ہوا اور اس کتاب نے اندر سے جھنجھوڑ دیا-
کہانی تو ہندستان سے شروع ہوتی ہے مسلمان اور ہندؤں کا ساتھ رہنا پھر آزادی کی دھوپ دوڑ اور ہجرت کی پریشانیاں اور پھر آزاد ہونے والے ملک کو دو لخت ہوتے دیکھنا- یہ سب سہنا آسان باتیں نہیں-

لیکن انتظار صاحب نے صرف کہانی نہیں لکھی یہ ٹوٹے ہُوئے لوگوں کی داستان ہے- آزادی کے ۷۵ سال مکمل ہونے کے باوجود ہم آجتک سکون سے نہ رہ سکے-

یہ کہانی اُن تمام بستیوں کی ہے جہاں ناانصافیاں عروج پر ہے قانون کے ہاتھ کٹے ہوئے ہیں جسکی لاٹھی اُسکی بھینس والا حساب ہے-

[Dhwani Advani · Rating 4 out of 5]

ig: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJLrXML2...

basti?
human settlement, an inhabited place.
Basti is a novel of homes and homelessness, of memory and it's resilience.
This enchanting novel takes us through the tragic history of Hindustan and Pakistan through different bastis, the liveliness and charm in each of them, and then their burnt rubbles; all through the eyes of our protagonist, Zakir.
zakir?
from zikr, the one who remembers.
and so it is, for he is our storyteller through the houses of Rupnagar and the advent of electricity to the jungles of Vyaspur and finally to the city of Lahore and it's Sheeraz.

Zakir grows up with us, from an innocent childhood in a syncretic neighbourhood surrounded by both Muslim and Hindu folktales.
His teenage love, Sabirah, who is left behind in Hindustan as a consequence of the Partition. Following which Zakir finds himself in an alien city, with a longing for his old home and the misery of sleepless nights.

The novel essentially spans from 1947 to 1971, walking us through the tragic breakdown of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of three new states. Unlike other partition fiction, basti is not directly graphic about the physical violence and terrors of the war, rather it is about the emptiness and fear within. About uncertainty and hope(lessness).
It is about an acute sense of displacement and a most saddening nostalgia for a different place and a different time, a simpler time in an undivided country.
Zakir slips in and out of dreams, finding himself back in the city of his childhood. The latter part of the novel takes a very dreamy, stream of consciousness style as Zakir begins to maintain a diary during the '71 war. Intizar Hussain very skillfully interweaves folk tales from Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic traditions and we traverse throigh new worlds wiith Zakir. The wreckage of the war also included several parallels to the downfall of Shahjahabad (Delhi) in 1857, often using lines by Ghalib and Mir to describe the devastated state of the city.
This style of writing was a little difficult to follow at times (especially in Urdu) because past and present, myth and reality blend seamlessly here. (Here, I was very grateful to the translation for the footnotes and dividers.)

The Sheeraz in Lahore could be reflective of the intellectuals of the time. The fickleness of Salaamat and his followers as they abandon their communism the moment the war is lost, the constant sarcasm of Irfan which has no purpose, the feigned righteousness of Afzal that finally breaks down and most prominently, the ambivalence of Zakir for he just doesn't know where he stands as there is a massive turmoil within himself:
“I don’t know, yar. I don’t really know what I’m for and what I’m against today.”
1971 has reignited the pain of the Partition, strengthening it even, for now Zakir is in a constant fear of displacement, he prays desperately that the attacks shouldn't destroy his old home, his first room that sleepless night in alien Pakistan and of course his current neighbourhood.

Saabirah remains a strong metaphorical and fantastical character for Zakir. Despite their painful separation they still seem to love each other. Zakir yearns to write to her again as bombs fall in his city, bombs that perhaps came from her city. Finally, Zakir decides he will write to her before it's "too late."

The novel is open ended. Afzal calls for his friends and whispers, “This is the time for a sign.” What this sign is and whether or not it will ever come are questions left unanswered as they all sit surrounded by rubble and wreckage.
Let me end by quoting Asif Farrukhi's introduction:
“In a sense basti itself is the sign, or at least a sign of the possibility of a sign, just as Zakir is shown to keep faith in the possibility of a revelation, a shimmering nearness that evades our grasp even as it hovers within reach.”


PS
This book has been a long, long journey. I think I picked it up in July, there was a huge gap in the middle and I came back to it in October.
An Urdu book always brings with it a huge sense of achievement on accomplishment, in this case more so because I simultaneously read the translation, not as a crutch, but because I wanted to compare them and hopefully understand more about how it works along with my own notes and modifications. It was a tedious yet really interesting process because I definitely gain valuable insight. Things are bound to get lost in translation but this helped me see how translators still manage to put forward a complete work and all the tedious efforts that have gone behind that.

[Sumallya Mukhopadhyay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basti by Intizar Husain (trans. Frances W. Pritchett)

It is like living in a dream. You realise that it is not real. Yet, you are living it, feeling it and residing in it. You are at once there and not really present. You are not absent either. You want to open your eyes, but the dream is your reality. Zakir, the protagonist of the novel, lives in such a dynamic, contradictory and conflicted state. He is not a victim of circumstances, which, however, does not mean that he fashions a life out of his innate displacement. To be honest, he does not want to. His dream, which is his life, is rooted in Rupnagar and Vyaspur. The 1947 Partition deprived him of his life. He dreams of how his life once was. He does not follow a chronological sequence in his bid to reason with destiny. He refuses to offer us a rundown of various events surrounding his life. He is not concerned with history and politics. Instead, he relives the events with his friends in the café, Shiraz.

Zakir embodies the political turmoil of the Partition. He is restless, pensive and nostalgic. There is an intense feeling of alienation and emptiness in him. At times, he simply walks and questions the manner he is walking. It appears that he has lost his sense of identity. He desires to find it by trying to imagine his beloved, Sabirah. But she eludes him. No matter how much he tries, Sabirah does not return to him. Torn asunder by the division in 1947, Sabirah lives in India. Zakir is the lost refugee in Pakistan. Suddenly, Surender’s letter unites Zakir with Sabirah. He sees a glimmer of hope. At the same time, the war breaks out between India and Pakistan in 1971. It marks the moment of the second Partition of Pakistan, and it destroys Zakir, for whom the wound of the vivisection becomes deeply embedded.

During the war, Zakir keeps writing his diary. He narrates the unfolding events by blending the jataka tales of Buddha with the stories of the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. While everyone blames the other for Pakistan’s loss in the war, Zakir takes the blame himself. He desires to hold himself responsible for the fateful happenings. In Afzal’s words, this makes Zakir a virtuous man. It does not ameliorate the pain. So, everyone, in the end, is looking for a sign. Will the sign help Zakir overcome the emptiness that he feels within? Perhaps not. But he wants to wait. After all, he has been waiting for most of his life.

[YBV · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Zakir grew up in a Muslim family in small-town, idyllic Rupnagar, where Muslims and Hindus coexisted. The subcontinent was Partitioned, once and then twice. Aging through the novel—a young man, then a middle-aged adult—Zakir now lives in a Pakistani city, where dreams and reality become muddled, as nostalgia and mythology commingle about what once was—the siege of Delhi; the Buddha; a strange forest; Sabirah, a mayhap could-have-been love...

The political is personal: I was impressed with how delicately Husain sieved the complex politics of decolonization and the two Partitions into the ambivalent, introverted terrain of the personal. Zakir, "he who remembers," is a passive protagonist, one whose introspection, rather than actions, takes the reader on an emotional (but not quite chronological) trajectory. The book never felt bogged down by the ambitious scope of history it parsed through; nor did I feel the author shortchange the happenings of the Indian subcontinent by focusing his lens on how the individual lived the period. (I enjoyed Yiyun Li's piece on how Husain depicts the "Politics of Everyday Life.")

I regret not speaking Urdu, for Pritchett's translator's note convinced me that I am missing out on many of the sophisticated stylistic shifts and markers that Husain employed in the original, which help illustrate the wealth of cultural traditions he is drawing on in his storytelling. (I definitely did not understand or catch all of the references; still, while I do think some knowledge of South Asian history is essential to understanding the story, I think cultural outsiders can enjoy and learn through the book.) With the aforementioned limitations to the translations mentioned, I feel fortunate to have read through such a thoughtful translation, one that, I can only guess, still manages to convey some of the beauty and dreamlike quality of the original. However much it retains, the book read quite poetically to me.

[Ayesha Siddiqui · Rating 3 out of 5]

"عروج کی یہی تو خرابی ہے, اس عالم میں یہ گمان ہی نہیں گزرتا کہ اس عروج کو زوال بھی ہو سکتا ہے اور جب زوال شروع ہوتا ہے تو اسے بیچ میں روکا نہیں جا سکتا ۔ زوال اپنی انتہا تک پہنچ کر دم لیتا ہے ۔
تبصرہ 👇🏻
انتظار حسین صاحب اردو ادب کے مقبول ومعروف لکھاری ہیں انکی کتاب "بستی"ان سے میرا پہلا تعرف ہے اور بلاشبہ پرانے ادب سے واقفیت میری اس ناول کے زریعہ سے ہی ہوئی ہے۔ یہ ناول تقسیم کے وقت پر مبنی ہے, کہانی کے اندر مصنف نے کسی مبالغہ آرائی کے بغیر اس وقت کے حالات کا صحیح نقشہ کھینچا ہے۔

کہانی کا مرکزی کردار ہے " زاکر" جو تقسیم کے وقت ہجرت کرکے اپنے پریوار سمیت پاکستان آ گیا ہوتا ہے لیکن اسے اپنی بستی جہاں وہ بچپن سے ریا ہوتا ہے بہت یاد آتی ہے ۔ وہ وقتاً فوقتاً ماضی کی ان یادوں میں پہنچ جاتا ہے جہاں اسکا بچپن بیتا ہوتا ہے اور جہاں اسکی محبت صبیرہ رہتی ہے۔ پرانی بستیاں اجڑ جاتی ہیں نئی بس جاتی ہیں لیکن دل تو انہی پرانی بستیوں میں اٹکا ہوتا ہے جن کی یادیں وقت کے ساتھ مندمل نہیں ہوتی بلکہ پختہ ہوتی جاتی ہیں ۔ کتاب میں یہ ہی بتانے کی کوشش کی گئی ہے۔

بات کروں انداز بیان کی تو زبان تھوڑی مشکل اور پیچیدہ ہے اگر آپ نئے نئے کتب بینی سے متعارف ہویے ہیں تو شاید اس کتاب کو سمجھنے میں آپ کو مشکل درپیش ہو سکتی ہے۔ ایک تو مشہور کتاب کا تبصرہ لکھتے وقت جھجک محسوس ہوتی ہےکہ کہیں کتاب کی شان میں کوئ گستاخی نا ہو جائے لیکن میں نے یہ ڈر عبور کرکے تبصرہ لکھ ڈالا ہے اگر آپ کو پسند آیا ہے تو کتاب کا مطالعہ ضرور کریں اور اپنی رائے خود قائم کریں ۔
شکریہ ✨

[Nikhil · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5.

A novel dwelling on the loss of home and community for North Indian Muslims. The text juxtaposes 1857, 1947, and 1971 against each other and against cultural memory (Karbala, the death of Krishna, various apocalyptic symbology). The home and spiritual community referred to by the title is a building on fire; the denizens are headless. This violence is dislocating; the main character processes these events by blurring together past, present and cultural memory. The narratives Zakir keeps returning to are those of betrayal. Home is destroyed by brothers betraying brothers — what happens at the Red Fort — and by the pursuit of the throne (political power) over the struggle of the soul (jihad). Overall, the text is a self-critical examination of the professed goal of the Pakistani nation-state — the creation of a spiritual homeland for all South Asian Muslims — suggesting that the project failed.

While innovative and evocative, I found the text slow-going. I will need to revisit it again. It would be interesting to read this alongside Fireflies in the Mist by Hyder.