What will You Give for This BeautyIJ
Author: Ali Akbar Natiq
Publisher: Penguin, Rs399
The collective failure of humanity to rescue itself from the clasps of savagery makes mankind a collaborative agent of doom. Ali Akbar Natiq has managed to drive home the point with efficient candidness, says ANANYA BORGOHAIN
Often applauded as one of the erudites strengthening the literary fabric of Pakistan, Ali Akbar Natiq’s debut collection of short stories is set in the country’s rural Punjab. The people in the story are the commoners pre-occupied with a myriad of impulses. It is in fact, an irreverent social space, entangled in deceit, violence and an unscrupulous but powerful struggle for the fittest to survive.
A collection of 12 stories written by him and translated by Ali Madeeh Hashmi, Awais Aftab, Khalid Channa, and Mohammed Hanif, What Will You Give For This BeautyIJ holds a riveting mirror to the darkest moral alleys of the society. Existing within a barbarically rigid hierarchy, each story presents the people as victims of circumstances and troubled times. Friction and death are almost the fundamental characters in the plot. The collective failure of humanity to restore itself from the clasps of savagery makes mankind a collaborative agent of doom. Natiq has managed to drive home the point with efficient candidness.
This pastoral, rustic world world is under the helms of hierarchical brute forces. The opening story, ‘Jeera’s Departure’, narrates the life of a charming storyteller who enthralls the whole village with his captivating art of narrating tales. Until of course, he narrates one that has irreversible, fatal consequences. ‘Jodhpur’s End’ is an engrossing account of a brutal and guiltless murder, ‘The Share’ is a riveting love triangle narrated with gripping grief and an enthralling concluding line, ‘Despair’ is the story of Noora, a prostitute’s son who is battling his inner demons, ‘The Maulvi’s Miracle’ on the other hand is an amusing lampoon about a maulvi and a dog.
The collection brings to the fore several burning issues like social ignorance and apathy, bullying in school, feudalism, the conflict between nature and nurture, iconoclasm, disillusionment, social and economic hierarchy, as well as celebrates the art and spirit of storytelling and folklore. It reinforces that a thing of beauty need not be joy forever, and hence asks a hard hitting question: What indeed will you give for this beautyIJ
Natiq was born in 1976 in a village near Okara and his ancestors had migrated from Faizabad near lucknow to Ferozepur in Punjab and then to Okara after Partition. His early education was in the village school and he also did manual labour to make the two ends meet. literature, history and religions of the world were pursuits he was always fond of. Not surprisingly, Natiq has been widely published in acclaimed journals and other publications.
As a labourer, he has wandered across Middle East — to Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran — where it is said that his interest in Arabic and Persian deepened. His story, ‘A Mason’s Hand’, about the journey of a disillusioned, overexhausted immigrant struggling on the streets of a land that had promised him all glory, seems to be inspired from this part of his life, and wonderfully underscores strains of a destitute in a desert.
It is evident that his translators strive to do him justice and fairly succeed to bring alive the world of folklore and literary traditions that Natiq has built in his narratives. However, there are occasional moments which generate disinterest.
Having said that, it needs to be acknowledged that translation is a challenge which robs the original of a lot of authentic attributes, and this collection is no exception. After a point, it becomes predictable that the stories will have a tragic turn and a macabre end. They lack a certain sophistication that wordsmiths usually employ. In spite of the black humour, most conceits in the stories fail to move the readers with the intended amount of resonance. However, they soon grow on the readers and redeem themselves to a fair extent.
There is a stark attack on iconoclasm as well, on religion and godmen. This collection juggles many hats but maintains the socio-cultural landscape. Natiq flamboyantly familiarises his readers with the world of the countryside, the culture of the pind, without romanticising it. His objective treatment is juxtaposed with glaring overtones of aggression, penury, gluttony, feasts, the works. lovers, robbers, conmen, godmen, masons, courtesans, Hindus, Muslims, and so on, and all leave their imprints to create this world of irony and power struggle.