HE was never big on dates, months, or years, and anniversaries could never catch his fancy for any stretch of time. Marking the first anniversary of his departure from the world of the known to that of the unknown, one can never be sure what Intizar Husain would have preferred the world to do on the occasion. He would have lived (irony intended) with the idea of people remembering him and recalling his diverse contribution to literature, but would have rejected out of hand the idea of doing it in relation to a particular date. Husain, it seems, was quite allergic to the calendar.

In a lengthy interview with Muhammad Umar Memon (Fun-i-Fiction Nigari [The Art of Writing Fiction]), Husain consumed as many as five questions pointedly asked about his date of birth without actually answering the query. All the interviewer could extract from him were Husain’s memories that he was a kid-going-to-be-lad when he heard the news of Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar’s death, and that he was “probably in the ninth grade” when “Allama Iqbal had died.”

Vague as they were, even these memories came with a disclaimer: “The idea of numbers, dates, and years is beyond me. I mix up centuries, what to talk of dates! My sense of recall is not dissimilar to that of the womenfolk of Dilli [Delhi] who used to remember things in relation to events and not dates. For them, 1857 had no meaning; it was the ‘year of the mutiny’ as far as they were concerned.”

From literary festivals to conferences, nothing has been the same without the master storyteller

It is interesting to reflect on how Husain would have remembered the date of his death; Feb 2, that is. Since he just could not put a date on anything, he would have probably remembered it as the date when James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in Paris back in 1922, or when Charlie Chaplin made his film debut in Making a Living even further back in time, in 1914. Most probably, for reasons more than one, he would have remembered it as the day when Urdu was first declared Pakistan’s national language in 1948.

And what about the year 2016? He would surely have loved to remember it as the year when Donald Trump proved everyone wrong and got himself voted to power in the United States. This would have underlined Husain’s unconventional and almost unique approach to politics. But perhaps the event that would have stuck with him would have been Bob Dylan’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature, for he loved the offbeat even more.

But those who have known Husain for more than a while would agree that he was more likely to choose not to remember the incident at all. Nonchalance was his characteristic trait while dealing with anything personal and private. His death — and the anniversary of his death — would have been no different to him. At best, he would have crafted a story about it, perhaps woven around the likes of Scherzade and Raja Basik!

Mired in mythologies, fables, and legends, Husain had a diction that mesmerised audiences, and not just with his written word. Though a key aspect of his high-profile existence, the written word happened to be just one aspect of his personality; he was as much a master of the spoken word.

Having honed his skills at the Pak Tea House, Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq, and many other literary platforms that dotted life in Lahore in the halcyon days of yore, Husain was a much-valued and meaningful presence in conferences and literary festivals when the trend came to Pakistan around the turn of the century. They have not quite been the same without the master storyteller and his penchant for an argument.

In the last few years, it was not rare to see Husain apparently dozing off on stage as others around him took their turn at the podium. It may have been age catching up, but it was often a facade to cover up his ennui at the ramblings, because the moment he was called to take the centre stage, Husain, without fail, was in his element. He even remarked about things that were said when he was seemingly taking a nap. The facade was always an interesting sight and his reaction was a typical smile; a disarming smile, to be precise.

The loss of live audiences has been the gain of those more interested in the written word. In the first year that we have lived without Husain being around, at least four wonderfully readable books by, or about, the man have hit the shelves. Two of them have been compilations; one bringing together the scripts Husain had written for theatre (Khawabon Ke Musafir [Explorers of Dreams]), and the other being the third collection of his Urdu newspaper columns (Qissa-i-Kotah [In Short]).

The other two volumes make an attempt to cover the life and times of Husain. Fateh Muhammad Malik, a respected critic and scholar, was the first to come up with his short but meaningful take, titled Intizar Husain Ka Khwabnama [The Dreamworld of Intizar Husain]. It’s a decent effort and shall be taken as a handy quick-reference tool for anyone interested in understanding why dreams were more meaningful to Husain than life itself.

Asif Farrukhi, however, is the name that will serve as the guiding light for future historians looking back at the work and worth of Husain. His voluminous critique, Chiragh-i-Shab-i-Afsana [Light in the Night of Storytelling] is the most comprehensive work on the multi-faceted Husain that could be conceived. That he could go beyond the concept stage and had the competence and the patience to do what he has done is amazing.

Frankly speaking, it can only be a labour of love. Nothing else can quite rationalise the painstaking effort that Farrukhi has put into every single aspect of Husain’s life; from family history to the entire range of his craft, from short stories and novels to biographies and travelogues, from drama scripts to literary critiques, and from newspaper columns to personality sketches — Farrukhi has covered them all. And he has not just bound them in a narrative; there is a full-scale hardcore critique of every aspect that is worthy of Husain every inch of the way.

Going through the book, it is there for all to see that Farrukhi is to Husain what James Boswell was to Samuel Johnson in 18th century England. As pointed out by the great Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges in The New York Review of Books, it could be said that Boswell had a premonition of his destiny. “Like Milton knew that he would be a poet before he had written a single line, Boswell always felt he would be the biographer of a great man of his era,” wrote Borges in a lecture titled ‘The Art of Biography.’ Farrukhi fits the description; only more.

He was close to Husain almost his entire adult life and had time to explore the man inside out. His understanding of the man is reflected in his critique of the man’s work. The chronology at the end of the book is a case in point. Even though it has been tiered and layered four ways, it is only apt that it goes back all the way to the year 2600 BC and takes Panchatantra — dated third century BC — as the first literary milestone. This is where the man belonged: away from his mortal frame.

Intizar Hussain would surely have approved of it without a blink.

The writer is a member of staff.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 29th, 2017