The Sun That Rose from the Earth
Author : Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
Publisher : Penguin, Rs799
Divided into five narratives of unequal length, this book displays a rich variety of narrative voice and focalisation which underlies the author’s immense creative genius, says ANUBHAV PRADHAN
A perusal of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s latest English publication, The Sun That Rose from the Earth, a self-translation of his Urdu original Savaar aur Doosre Afsane, brings to mind Terry Eagleton’s famous witticism: “some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness and some have literariness thrust upon them”. The Sun That Rose from the Earth is undoubtedly a brilliant and informative book, but in interesting ways it exemplifies all three of these characteristics.
Divided into five narratives of unequal length, this book displays a rich variety of narrative voice and focalisation which underlies the author’s immense creative genius. Each narrative — afsana — locates one or more historically known protagonist and weaves a colourfully detailed, intricately contextualised tale around him/her.
The collection’s loci are the urban centres of the late-Mughal and early-British ethos and the thematic concerns dissolve into loss, love, woe, nostalgia, melancholy and mysticism so that all five afsane overlap with each other. Hence, the unfulfilled love of Maulavi Khairuddin of Shahjahanabad’s Phatak Teliyan in the afsana “The Rider” becomes urban legend for the young and infatuated Shaikh Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi in “The Sun That Rose from the Earth”; similarly, in “Timecompression” Gul Muhammad, mysteriously transported from Ibrahim lodi’s Dihli to Ahmad Shah Bahadur’s Dilli, is “given to understand that...some sad things” had happened to Mir Muhammad Taqi sahib recently — and these things, of course, are the subject of “In Such Meetings and Partings, Ultimately”.
In this way, the various worlds of all the afsane collapse into each other and make one living continuum, all the more rich and appealing for this vivid diversity of poets, courtiers, courtesans, and soldiers. Yet, the variation of narratorial voice in each afsana follows its specific thematic concern, and so in “Bright Star, lone Splendour” Beni Madho’s keen consciousness of loss and orphanage in relation to the British massacres of 1858 informs his interactions with the ageing Mirza Ghalib whereas in “Timecompression” the obfuscation of the boundaries of space and time is reflected through the multiple narrative voices adopted in that afsana. The portraiture in each of these afsane — speaking more of Faruqi than his narrators — too is commendable for its minute visual detailing and the reader, finding at times Ghalib at his hookah and another time Mir Taqi Mir reciting poetry in the throes of unfulfilled passion, is thrilled repeatedly by the author’s careful and delicate craft. Further, the amount of multi-faceted literary and historical research which Faruqi invests these afsane with — the references, for example, to the growth of Rekhta-Hindi and Urdu — is impressively visible, and serves to strengthen the collection’s appeal as accurate vignettes of a vital period in the subcontinent’s cultural and political history.
In all of this and much else, the book seems born literary and achieves literariness. At times, however, its literariness does seem somewhat thrust upon it. Much of this is an unfortunate consequence of translation, which, despite its depth and microscopic clarity, fails to completely convey the thrill of a passionate ghazal of longing or the sly pun of a wicked verse. Despite Faruqi’s clearly superior skill, the English title seems to suffer in comparison with the Urdu one and many a couplet and dialogue leave one dissatisfied. With poetry, especially our growing, general need for translation to limit itself and inter-language transcription to take over is recurringly apparent; at least Rekhta and Urdu verses, with suitable notes, could have been presented in the Roman script to counteract the losses of translation. Similarly, the collection’s literariness is occasionally dealt with an unfortunate blow when — particularly in “Such Meetings and Partings, Ultimately” and “The Sun That Rose from the Earth” — the passionate commentator supersedes the passionate writer, and the descriptive historical digressions leave one desiring footnotes and appendices for better understanding.
lastly, the collection’s appeal as a readable text, despite the little note about the typeface at the end, is made a little redundant by not simply its price but also its published form. It’s a large hardcover of with a comparatively steep price of almost Rs800, but it also tends to be a very difficult book to read any which way but sedately. This last, of course, may not appear much of a problem, given specially that the collection is available as an e-book, but for those wishing to possess a copy in print these may prove a serious detriment.
Thus, given how well-executed the collection is and how crucial its linguistic, aesthetic and communitarian lessons for our strife-ridden and amnesic times are, addressing these concerns in the collection’s successful reprint, which it seems destined for, should make it perfect — though, as they say, ‘only God is free from blemish’.
The reviewer is an Assistant Professor of English, Bharati College, Delhi University