"layered like a palimpsest": Review in 'The Other Side'

Library, 'The Other Side'

Reviewed by Jaya Jaitly

A Journey Interrupted

Being Indian in Pakistan

Farzana Versey

Harper Collins Publishers India 2008

Pages 279

Price Rs 295

Farzana Versey is a well-known, independent minded and rather spunky writer whose introverted public personality camouflages a healthy irreverence in her writings for many of the popularly acceptable norms of society. Her personal tale of many journeys to Pakistan as a proud Indian has not received the kind of publicity it is due. This is probably because she is not the wining and cheesing at a five-star hotel type. Publishers probably do not find her persona fitting the Page three book writer type either.

Despite having made a rather quiet entry onto the bookshelves at bookshops, and not being displayed in the show windows, this is one of the more genuine and perceptive books written on the layers of culture, society and history that make up Pakistan. The mannerisms of its people appear to be alien but we soon realize there are their counterparts in India. When seen through the eyes of an Indian they become instantly recognisable. At one point Farzana comments on a man she meets at a social occasion: “Fazal was a man on the make and Aijaz was a collector – a collector of contacts; he called them friends to legitimize his desperate need for networking”. The young show offs in drawing rooms and wedding entourages in so many cities of India are mirror images of these two Pakistani Punjabi men. It makes one give a further thought to Asif Zardari’s recent statement that there is a little bit of Indian in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistani in every Indian.

The author’s views and experiences change in nuance and understanding during her many journeys to Pakistan. They get layered like a palimpsest through which similarities and differences in textures are revealed. She probes with her curious mind the simplest of gestures and mannerisms and tells herself, more than the reader, of how it is to be an Indian visiting Pakistan. She asks, “Is there a place for secularism in an Islamic society? Or Atheism? Atheism remains the invisible minority: they have no heritage to uphold. No blasphemy laws apply to them. Non-belief is a private wound that you nurse quietly”. In a form of anwer, she shares a note she received from a Pakistani before she even went there:

When I was a child I used to think a lot about God and admired his power and grandeur. Then I thought I should find out whether this guy exists or it’s a hoax. I did it this way. I decided to talk to God, and I said “ I will call you an s.o.b. If you respond, then you exist and if you don’t then you don’t , then I am your creator and not the other way round, and if you hurt me for calling you an s.o.b., then you are an s.o.b. and not God” . Nothing happened. I therefore concluded that he did not exist or I left him with no choice but to remain silent”.

Written with a light touch, but with deep thoughtfulness, this book is one of those that stand out because the writer is both natural, sincere, and does not fear to be what she is.

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Jaya Jaitly is editor of 'The Other Side', a socialist journal, and has been working for the revival of Indian crafts. She is the innovator of Dilli Haat and the former president of the Samata Party.

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This review appeared in an issue in 2008, but I discovered about it only a couple of months ago!

A piece on writing about travel is on 'Cross Connections'

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Stepping Across the Line
Shobhana Bhattacharji
The Book Review Literary Trust
VOLUME XXXII NUMBER 10 October 2008

A Journey Interrupted is a secular version of nineteenth-century Indian women’s hajj narratives in which their sense of their Indian identity became stronger and stronger as their pilgrimages proceeded.1 At its simplest, A Journey Interrupted is about a Bombay-based Muslim woman journalist’s trips to Pakistan between 2001 and 2007. She visited and revisited Karachi, Islamabad, and Peshawar; she spoke to friends, politicians, army officers, socialites, poets, prostitutes, chai-wallahs, taxi-drivers, and others; she initiated conversations and had them thrust upon her; she experienced the legendary Pakistani hospitality and hostility; equally, her travelling to Pakistan was derided by friends and acquaintances in India. Summed up like this, we have another cliché, which it is not.

It is the first time I have read about feelings, ideas, and attitudes which must be part of the emotional and conversational furniture in Muslim homes but which the rest of us are not usually privileged to share. Being Muslim in India is tough enough in the normal course, with Muslims having to constantly prove their loyalty to India. It is complicated by their having close family in both countries. (This is true of other minorities like Christians as well, but that story is yet to be narrated, the dominant post-partition story being occupied by the two major affected religious groups, Hindus and Muslims.)

Versey writes as a second generation Indian affected by partition, one like me who grew up in India but among parents who knew undivided India. In the early years of this century, Asma Jehangir used to say with passion that unless our generation worked for peace between the two countries, there was no hope. Our generation, even those of us who are midnight’s children born after partition, feel we have lived in undivided India because we share our parents’ memories. But history has changed later generations.

To paraphrase Versey, they are bombarded with new weapons of hate and do not have the tolerance of the older generation who, she says, felt we should try and forget what happened and get on with life. They do not have the partial understanding but strong desire of some of our generation that we can at least cooperate and live in peace. This sounds like some more been-there-done-that.

The new thing about this book is that its rather impressionistic and sometimes dateless-diary mode is held in the strong clasp of a preface.

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 (Review updated on blog in Aug 2015)

"The narrator drew me into her world": A new review at Amazon

Amazon 
July 17, 2011 

By Keiko Amano

It took three weeks to receive this book, but it was worth it. I was very excited to read and finished the book. I truly enjoyed it.

Through the scenes and narrative, I felt closer to the characters and situations although I didn't even know any of the Pakistani writers or other well-known people in India and Pakistan. But, all the more, the narrator drew me into her world. This reading was truly special to me. Out of all the elements, politic, religion, history, travels, and personal accounts, I trusted the narrator's wisdoms and sensitivity in language.

From this book, I learned many facts. First, I knew many Muslim people live in India, but I didn't know more Muslims in India than in all of Pakistan. I thought most of the people I know probably didn't know that. And I was even more surprised to find that 3 millions Hindu people live in Pakistan. I thought to myself, "What a simplistic imagination I used to have!" Second, Goa, India, was occupied by Portuguese until 1961. That wasn't too long ago.

About the terms the narrator used, I thought them interesting, such as atheist Muslim or secular government because I thought governments are to operate independently away from religion. Obviously, I've been taking this kind of things for granted because I'm Japanese. So, reading this book, I started to understand the needs of such terms even though I understood the narrator was against labeling. It made me think.

About Urdu, I enjoyed reading dialogues. Even though I don't know the language at all, I read each dialogue with much interest. I appreciated the narrator's deep knowledge of the language and culture.

About honesty, the author/narrator's voice seeped through, and I just loved when her honesty spilled humor. It was like Flannery O'Connor, my favorite American author. The narrator made me chuckle more than a dozen times, but I would give just two examples. On her first visit to Pakistan and about to be deported, her Pakistani driver says, "When you return home you can at least tell people you saw the best sight in Karachi." Haven't we all had such experience? Then, the narrator says, "I did not know what I had `seen' since my back was turned to it." I imagined the seriousness of her situation, a famous ancient site in Pakistan, and the driver's concern for tourists, I started to giggle reading late at night. Second example, a fortune teller said to the narrator, "Men will cause you troubles." She said, "You could tell this to any woman in any part of the world and she would agree." Ha ha. I couldn't agree more!

I learned a lot from this book and very satisfied with it.

An Indian in Pakistan - Interview with FV

An Indian in Pakistan

By Raziqueh Hussain
8 October 2010, 
Khaleej Times

The title Being Indian in Pakistan: A Journey Interrupted is enough to get one excited. It’s a book that “There was no inspiration as such to write this book,” she says. “I was sitting in a coffee shop and a friend introduced me to someone as a writer. He asked me what I’m writing and without a blink I said Pakistan, because I had just returned from there. After I reached home, I realised oh, now there’s a book,” she recalls.

With vast material on hand, but without a manuscript or a query letter, she simply sent a note to the publisher saying that “I’m passionate about writing this. If you are interested, let me know” and pat came the reply within two days.

Versey had done a lot of interviews with people like the legendary poet Ahmed Faraz which she put into this book — an absolute delight as it allows us to peep into the revolutionary poet’s mind.

She has also written opinion pieces, feature articles and interviews for several publications for two decades. “No one likes to call me a journalist. In those days, they would spit out, ‘You are just a writer.’ But still I considered most insults coming my way to be hugely complimentary. Now that I have published my first book, some reviews have called me a journalist!” she says.

The book is a collection of vignettes about the many journeys made by the author to Pakistan between April 2001 and May 2007. These experiences are reflective of the changing geopolitical landscape with the 9/11, NATO in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Gujarat, Karachi, Lal Masjid and many other incidents impacting the period of her reportage. “The Lal Masjid incident had happened and I felt strongly about it, especially the repercussions that took place. I am a big supporter of women out there. Theirs was a dissent of a certain kind. See, we all have standard ideas about what dissent is, what protest is; everyone wears a T-shirt and shouts slogans. Bob Marley songs are not dissent. Basically, I feel indigenousness is important. And it has a lot to do with identities,” she says.

This book is about the identity question in large measure — the Indian Muslim identity, the Pakistani identity and a woman’s identity too. Versey grapples with the conflicts between societies, politics, nationalities, religions and genders and these conflicts play out in her interactions across a wide section of society on a “foreign” land. She meets Pakistani cultural icons and ventures out into other unexplored nooks and corners of that “land of the pure.”

“I don’t think a man would ever write about Peshawar the way I have written it,” she says, adding, “I do believe I have shown the women of the frontier province as I saw them; absolutely the way they are. I saw an amazingly courageous rebel in a village here and it may come as a surprise but Peshawar was the only place that they didn’t give much attention to my religion, as opposed to other cities.”

She doesn’t like labels or genres that can pin her down and so won’t describe what kind of author she is. “I cannot blindly believe in anything in the environment and have to question everything, including myself. I have a healthy disregard for objectivity. Give me an ‘ism’ and I shall give you a subjective opinion,” she says. Nothing defines her more than the written word. “The stark black and white also reveals the extreme positions I take on almost all issues. On the other hand, I can sit at home for a month without meeting anybody and still entertain myself,” says the author, who writes poetry as well as paints.

Talking of her influences, anything of consequence, she avoids reading {on the topic, other than factual accounts - ED} so that it doesn’t jar her thinking. “I don’t want other people’s words to inflict an influence on me. Even if it’s a bad news, I’d rather mine is worse than anyone else’s. But there are a few authors that I identify with, like Ismat Chugtai, Sadat Hasan Manto; it turns out that they are writers in Urdu though it is not my first language. I like Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf and Henry Miller, basically any writer who has an element of passion in writing,” she says.

She is equally scathing on the right-wing Hindu fundamentalists, as she is on the Mullahs, or on the US imperialism and even tougher on the Wagah candle-lighting peace talks. Her clash of identities — of religion, culture, gender and nationality — makes for a potent concoction when blended with her independent take on all issues. “I’m judged all the time based on what I’ve written and I just love people who have not read me because they are coming to me fresh... people who are illiterate, uneducated and ignorant technically — I find them very enlightened. I can learn a lot from them. I’m not being patronising. They could be very good in their respective fields, it’s just that they don’t read and won’t even spend Rs295 on my book. It’s another matter that I read out the excerpts to them,” she says.

Her biography on former Indian Prime Minister, the late VP Singh — which was supposed to have been her first book — is already written. “I find him fascinating as he altered the face of Indian politics with the Mandal Commission,” signs off Versey, who has plans to write a novel next.

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If you have not already read it, my experience with interviewing will put this in perspective. It is here

Reader views

Still getting responses...in the mail and posted elsewhere 

Dear Ferzana,

I wanted to read your wonderful book once and "study" it a second time before writing to you. First reading fascinated me. The way you have, after starting off as a travelogue, weaved history of a period that I have been conscious of is superb. You did manage to meet, talk to and interview a whole range of personalities from almost every walk of life I enjoyed reading the book. Thank you.

A word about Lahore. I have never visited it but have seen many friends who migrated from Lahore to Delhi. They are very proud of their being "Lahorians". It was the best cantonement of undivided India. It also boasted some of the best colleges. I suppose you know that the film actor Dev Anand and his wife Kalpana Kartik (Mona Singha) are from Lahore. Her sister Sona was the wife of one of my bosses in service. And her brothers were in the armed forces. One of them, an Air Force officer got married to the daughter of the police commissioner of Lahore. I met the chaming couple when they spent (a part of) their honey moon in a tent in Doraha in Punjab. I used to enjoy the chilgozas she would pass around sitting on the canal bank. I do not know if the Air Force got him to take premature release because I never heard of them afterwards. What I started out to say to you was that Lahorians being a little snobbish is forgivable. In the second reading I was "reading" more the author than the contents.

First, I admire the courage (once or twice bordering on foolhardiness which just happened to pay off without getting you into trouble) you showed in making your trips and organising meetings.

Your intellect I shall not comment on for fear of getting branded as a flatterer. However, I was surprised to find that occasionally acted so naive! Sensitive you have to be to be what you are. Sensitivity and intelligence go together. What i had not noticed earlier is the insecurity you inwardly feel.

Of course many of my muslim friends in Bombay feel slightly insecure because they were touched though remotely in the riots sponsored by our Hindu extremists ("terrorists" ?) I do not know your or your familiy's direct experience in that context. But the feeling of your insecurity hurts me.as a human being, not as a Hindu because I am virtually an athiest - or "rationalist" as I would prefer to be called. If there is insecurity, there must be a solution somewhere!

- (Rt. army officer, now living overseas)

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Dear Farzana,

I just finished reading your "Journey". What can I say? I am speechless. It is so exhaustive.....history,politics,sociology,economics, people ranging from the poorest to the grandest, poets to dancers, gays to lusty hetero's,military to the artistes.

Tears sprang in my eyes when I read of your hurt at the Wagah border callisthenics.

The 3 books that seriously affected me have been ...Dosto's' Crime and Punsihment', Camu's 'The Fall', Kafka's 'The Trial' and Capote's 'In Cold Blood'. But then there are so many of them out there that I have read and deeply enjoyed. But the books I have mentioned are embedded in my heart. And now your book. This one too has not only clasped and embraced me tightly it has already begun engraving herself ( I cannot use 'itself' ) in my very soul.

I must thank you for so lucidly informing and educating me on Pakistan. I could talk to you for hours and hours on the Partition and the new State and the never ending tragedy unfolding repeatedly year after year and day after day. These are flames that can consume so many for absolutely no reasons whatsoever.

'Rajhish hi sahi...'is saved in my iTunes library and never fails to stir me. Once again one of my favorites and you interview the Great Faraz himself in your book. I admire you for your sensitivity, astuteness and courage.

Yes I have questions, maybe a couple of disagreements also.These are triflings...... but ultimately my heart beats for what you write in this book.

(India)

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Although the book is based on author's 4 travels to Pakistan between August 2001 and May 2007, it is not a travelogue, says the author and rightly so. Unlike travelogues, people (known, unknown, blurred) are the subjects of the book, not places; latter merely provide the backdrops.

The book does not have a single photograph from any of the four travels, which underscores the fact the it is not about places or even faces, but views. The reader does get a feeling of the journeys being narrated. The narration is so engaging that the author swiftly embeds anecdotes to factual details without disrupting its pace.

The author has been able to include Manto's memories with the same ease as her meeting with Ahmad Faraz. Apart from Faraz, the readers get rare opportunity to know up close some other well known names like Ardeshir Cowasjee, Pervez Hoodbhoy. However it's the unknown names (till you read the book) like Saqlain, Bilal, Shujaat, etc., who tell about that country, often without telling, what makes this book different. Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of Dr Abdus Salam. Besides, how could Pervez Hoodbhoy say "... There is no major Muslim scientist or ...". So, for him too, like many Pakistanis, Dr Salam was not a Muslim.

Author, no point in guessing, is the protagonist, besides being the narrator. How she is seen in Pakistan and her reactions to how India (and Indian Muslims in particular) is perceived by Pakistanis naturally makes her the protagonist. Her style of describing women is graciously sensuous and reminds me of Ismat Chughtai.

The book is an essential read, if one wants to read about Pakistsn as a person, not as a strategist or even a peace activist. I never imagined myself visiting Pakistan, but after reading the book, I may plan to travel to Pakistan as a curious traveler the day it starts issuing tourist visas to Indians, as I have neither relatives there nor I'm an Aman-ki-Asha activist.

Ayaz Alam

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These are the fateful queries that partition raised and whose answer still haunts us! A lot has been written about identities whether Ethnic or Religious, but in this present book Farzana Versey raises some distinct and distinguished insights into this complex problem of identity. Though this book is neither a research work undertaken by the author under the auspices of a grand university and seasoned researcher nor is it a conventional travelogue, though one may find certain traits of travel writing in it.

Mushtaq, India

Review in Swagat

This is a review that has appeared in the November 2008 issue of Swagat, which is the inflight magazine of Indian Airlines. Their website says it is read by 2 million upmarket passengers every month. But they will still read Paulo Coelho da jawaab nahin!

As with all reviews, I shall not comment, except to clarify that nowhere have I mentioned that Aga Khanis are a persecuted lot in Pakistan.

Review in Deccan Herald

Negotiating for an identity
Deccan Herald

What begins as an exciting concept soon descends into confused dialogues and reflections. A Journey Interrupted becomes an opportunity interrupted. Farzana Versey embarks on a unique journey, as an Indian in Pakistan. But what makes her journey unique is that she is not only Indian, but an Indian Muslim and so, much information not easily accessible to many Indians becomes accessible to her. She takes the reader with her to Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar and many other interesting and unique places, some known, others little known places.

The book tries to give as complete a slice of Pakistani society as possible, without any obfuscation no matter how disconcerting the narrative and introduces an array of interesting personalities. So when the Karachi teenagers tire of pornographic sites, they ‘visit Indian sites. There are fights about Indo-Pak issues...and Kashmir is top in the list; then we discuss films, cities and politics.’ UK-based Sikh Satwinder, is rebuilding his father’s lost-in-partition empire in Lahore, ‘...his way of hitting out, telling Lahore that he is rebuilding his father’s life’; Shujat, wants to have an affair with ‘Not just an Indian woman, but a Brahmin one’, which would not be ‘about love, but hate...like war’; Tariq thinks ‘..the Hindu is a stigma for Muslims, anyway, they are definitely not seen as the same as us’.

Against them is juxtaposed Jeremy, the Christian, who does not care that he cannot discuss Christianity in social gatherings like Islam is discussed, so long as ‘I am allowed my drinks, I carry my name and I go to church...’, Nihal, who wants a break in Bollywood for ‘Bollywood is the place to be, even our established actors want to make it there.’

Khalid Ahmed, in charge of the ‘Beyond Borders’ concept in Pakistan, who, born in Patna came to Pakistan as an adult and carries all these — ‘a Bihari identity, an Indian identity and a Pakistani identity’. Sheema Kerwani ‘dances in a society where she is not permitted to, to the strains of Indian music in a form that was created as a celebration of Hindu gods. But for her Lord Krishna is not just a clay idol, but a vision of love...’. For Ardeshir Cowasjee, ‘a motherland is a motherland. If I am asked where I was born, I would say India. In 1929, this was India’. And Parvez Hoodbhoy, who rejects that there is a Pakistani culture and sees a ‘deliberate attempt to ‘Saudi-ise’ it, as opposed to accepting a South-Asian identity’.

The academician, the harlot, the delinquent juvenile mystic, the rich Sindhi Hindu, the gay, the lesbian, the Afghan refugee, the poet, the civil rights activist — all are touched upon.

There are some beautiful imagery and moments of reflection. And the author’s own journey through her many fractured identities — as a woman, an Indian, a Muslim, a Muslim in India, an Indian Muslim in Pakistan — ‘the emotional mulatto. The fence sitter who could not make up her mind. But when did I have a choice?’

The style at times is reminiscent of M J Akbar, but unfortunately the author is unable to sustain it and the reader’s interest. So it becomes an endless series of interviews culminating into analysis often defensive and judgmental. The incessant questions, the disjointed narratives and the constant refrain of the Babri Masjid demolition combine to dull the reading. There are also some sweeping and simplistic generalisations: ‘Unlike in Mumbai...in Pakistan a Parsi can at least die with his faith intact’, 'This was how the Hindu mind, the urban, western-educated mind was thinking’, and a sorry apologist argument about the blowing up of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

The ending is poignant; witnessing the ‘Beating the Retreat’ at the Wagah border on the Pakistani side, the author bursts into tears when she hears the voice of Lata Mangeshkar from the Indian side against the Pakistani backdrop of Allahu Akbar. “I could not explain. Allah-u-Akbar and Lata Mangeshkar are both embedded deep in my consciousness. Both are part of my personal history.” These lines convey the message that the rest of the book struggles to. All the challenges, the contradictions, the anger, the pain and smugness of being a Muslim in India come gushing forth. So while A Journey Interrupted leaves one with insightful vignettes of Pakistan, its tortuous tryst with its identity-based destiny, the book is also about the author’s attempt to negotiate her own identity.

"we do not 'need' peace with Pakistan": FV interview

Author Of The Month: August: Farzana Versey

In an email interview to Dhvani, Farzana Versey talks about her book A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian In Pakistan

Q: I think your book in ways tries to say that, "Yes we have our differences but let's leave out the politicians and begin the peace process." Comment.

A: The 'leave the politicians out' bit is right, but I don't see why we need to start the peace process. Such processes are in fact a political agenda. Socially, we do not 'need' peace. We just have to get rid of this anguish about a lost land. No one asks us to start the peace process with Nepal or Sri Lanka or even Bangladesh. And we do have political turbulence with these nations. So, why Pakistan?

Q: How was the response to this book in Pakistan?

A: They are still waiting for it! But after reading my interviews and a couple of extracts, some Pakistanis have written to me to say that I have rubbished their country. It is not true and a rather simplistic reading; it is like saying that when I critique a poem, I dislike poetry. Yes, a few expat Pakistanis have read the book. Some have picked holes and asked why I did not have paan at a landmark place and someone else wants to know why I am obsessed with Gandhi when I don't even like Gandhi....There was an unusual opposite reaction from another Pakistani who said, "Why do you not like that poor man?" I could only say, "It is because I do not like poor people!"

You haven't asked me about the response in India. I find that curious. It is written from an Indian perspective, in fact, far too much at times. I shall answer the unasked question anyway. I have got letters from small towns even before the book was formally launched. These are not just letters congratulating me. They have taken pains to point out page numbers and what those words there meant to them or in some cases did not mean. This is immensely gratifying for what people would call non-fiction. It reads like fiction, I am told, and it only buffers the cliche that truth is stranger than fiction.

Q: In A Journey Interrupted, is there a hint of a nation interrupted? Does your being an Indian take the taste out of the peanut butter?

A: If we use the Charles M. Schulz quote, "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love", then let us just say that which was 'unrequited' was mutually so! To talk about the 'nation interrupted' would mean having epic ideas. I prefer the minutiae. It is true that Pakistan is in denial just as much as India is. But Pakistani denial is more obvious.

Q: Do you think the Indo-Pak conflict has begun to lose relevance when so many singers, actors and models are making a mark in the Indian Film Industry?

A: How many? Where is Meera? And I do have strong reservations about why they can make it here - at least the singers - and we cannot. How many of our singers have performed there? It seems like we let them participate in our music shows, it is entirely possible that it is a strategy for TRPs. Do we realise that it makes Pakistan, our neighbour and supposedly close to us in cultural terms, seem like Mogadishu. This is weird.

Q: You write blogs too, does it give a sense of freedom, to be easily politically incorrect.

A: I have always exercised my ability to be politically incorrect, whichever forum I choose to express myself in. I don't think we should have different standards for writing. A doctor uses the same instruments whether s/he is performing a surgery at a private or public hospital, right? A writer should follow the same principle. The technique for an article may differ, but in my case that too applies rarely. Blogs only give me an opportunity to indulge my vanity a bit more.

Q: Do you have feeling that in India there's a double identity conflict? One is that of the faith and the other is class? Consider this statement by Shah Rukh Khan, "My success is a biggest proof that India is secular."

A: India has multiple identity crises, but if we restrict it to one community then faith and class do come into play. A Shahrukh Khan can talk about his success being the proof of secularism because that is the yardstick - achievement. If Shahrukh Khan did not live in a mansion and was resident of Behrampada doing odd jobs then he would be just a number (and I do not mean Number One). I find it odd that we still have to talk about proof for secularism. This is a sign of insecurity.