Roop Behroop: Do Novelette
By Mustansar Hussain Tarar
Sang-e-Meel, Lahore
ISBN: 978-9693533163
182pp.

Mustansar Hussain Tarar is a prolific writer in the true and extended sense of the word. Every few months, new novels and travelogues — often voluminous — penned by him hit the bookstands. One can imagine that he must sit at his writing desk for hours daily.

Having one and half a dozen novels — among them a few genuine masterpieces such as Bahau [Flow], Raakh [Ashes] and Khas-o-Khashak Zamaanay [Littered Ages] — to his credit already, in the recent past he has published two more novels and two novelettes. The novels — Mantaqul Tair Jadeed [The Modern Conference of Birds] and Shehr Khaali, Koocha Khaali [Empty City, Empty Alley] — succeeded in attracting a large audience, yet received scant acclaim by critics. It’s a dilemma almost every popular and prolific writer has to face.

His latest novelettes — Roop Behroop [Guise, Disguise] and Phuphi Noor Bibi Ka Zard Gulab [Aunt Noor Bibi’s Yellow Rose] — combined in a single volume titled Roop Behroop, merit to be widely read, debated and critically evaluated. We will, for lack of plentiful space, discuss only the title tale in this review.

In Mantaqul Tair Jadeed, Tarar sets about reimagining and reinterpreting the fundamental mantaq, or logos, of Fariduddin Attar’s great 12th century Persian Sufi text. As Tarar prioritises mantaq, or logic, over the story of Attar’s allegorical text, so he has another set of stories to tell, making an artist the central character. In Attar’s text, birds embody the logos of the story of spiritual search. Birds — Tarar’s all-time favourite entity and symbol — in Mantaqul Tair Jadeed come to explore the indigenous pluralistic traditions of Punjab.

Mustansar Hussain Tarar’s latest works, as always, negotiate the ‘gap’ between imagined and real worlds, between what the Pakistani nation once envisioned and what it has to ultimately confront

The most striking feature of many of Tarar’s works — including Mantaq and Roop Behroop — is their consistent negotiation of the ‘gap’ between imagined and real worlds. This gap is not metaphorical; it is historical and existential, an interspace between what the Pakistani nation once envisioned and what it has to ultimately confront.

To be more precise, we can say that Tarar doesn’t just base his novels on the culture — the most problematic phenomenon in our context — and the history and landscape of this country, but sets about probing some existential questions Pakistan is facing perennially since its earliest days.

Apart from his informal and somewhat metaphorical, poetic style, the main reason of his popularity as a fiction writer might be found in his relentless engagement with what can be termed the Pakistani theme. A sort of ‘Pakistaniat’ seems to have seeped through all his writings, but a word of caution: Tarar’s Pakistaniat has no ideological tone.

Roop Behroop is also about a perennial question Pakistan has been confronting since its inception. The title itself appears ironic. Roop (or some one’s face) is real, while behroop is unreal, but made to appear real. Also, behroop is simply a mask that serves more than one purpose. It not only disguises reality, but also represents what is otherwise un-representable, particularly in theatre. What an irony that the un-representable is represented by masquerading.

The word behroop used to be part of the common parlance in the world of theatre. So, this word might be taken as a synecdoche for art in general. In Roop Behroop, some chronic questions of Pakistani society are dealt with through the subject of art. Sajid, the protagonist, is a storyteller. Distressed and distraught, he intends to relate his own story as he feels that none of the events of his life are detached from that of his society. He seems to believe there is no viable distinction between the subjective world of an individual and the objective reality of society.

Set in Rawalpindi and Lahore, the novelette unravels how our society has morphed into an extremist one. Around 1952, Sajid — then a child — visits his aunt’s home in Rawalpindi. There, he witnesses his aunt removing a statue of Durga from the home which, before Partition, belonged to some Hindu family. Sajid observes that, from every home abandoned by migrating Hindus and now occupied by Muslim families, idols of Hindu gods and goddesses are being thrown into the garbage as an act of purgation. This way, he comes to register the continually unravelling meaning and unendingly exacerbating effects of Partition. As later events keep reminding him, it is not just geography, but also minds and hearts that were partitioned.

The only person who shows resistance to this practice is Nasimullah Jaan, who owns a shop in Raja Bazaar named Roop Behroop. In his shop, Jaan stores masks, coffins, costumes and other paraphernalia required for theatrical performances, and also the thrown-out idols of gods and goddesses. Jaan tells Sajid, who visits his shop often, that all this paraphernalia has no room in a country created in the name of religion. Art interpreted as profane cannot come to terms with the sacredness of religion.

In the collection and veneration of broken idols of gods and goddesses, Jaan comes to embrace — and then reveal — a secret of his own cultural/ religious self. According to him, embracing a new religion doesn’t mean that you become absolutely alienated from your past religion. You can discard idols, throw them out of your homes, but you cannot totally erase from your heart the clandestine attachment you had developed with them over time.

You can grow disdainful emotions or thoughts towards your past but, paradoxically, through this process of disdainfulness the past remains an inerasable part of not just your memory, but rather your whole being. This psychological fact was terribly glossed over and repressed by those who ran the affairs of Pakistani state and society. Jaan typifies — and scathes — the problematics of art in a country that has religious ideology embedded in it.

Among all the theatrical items cluttering the shop, a globe made of mirrors mesmerises Sajid. Jaan tells him that peering into the globe lets one visualise future events. Sajid’s curious mind is captivated by this claim. One afternoon, when Jaan is snoring in a deep sleep, Sajid peers into the globe and foresees some truly horrific events: the lynching of Mashal Khan; the massacre of the students of Army Public School (APS), Peshawar; a temple set ablaze.

Later, when he has adopted storytelling as his profession, a grown-up Sajid shares with people what he had seen in the globe, but first they scoff at, and then ultimately reject, his prophecies. Here, Tarar seems to emphasise that writers — storytellers — have been resilient in exposing the pitfalls of society from the earliest times, but their voices went unheard.

In 1948, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote a satirical short story, ‘Allah Ka Bara Fazal Hai’ [Allah Has Been Very Kind], in which he stated that all forms of art have been ruthlessly banned in the country created in the name of God. Manto had foreboded the future of human creativity in an ideological state. Although Tarar shares Manto’s dystopic vision, his technique is different. He goes back into the past and propels events that have already happened as prophecies. Here, Tarar goes against the grain as, in most cases, writers either interpret history or portend future events.

A few words are in order about Tarar’s popularity despite the sluggish attitude of critics towards his writings. Readers who persistently follow his writings might question, what is the alchemy of his prolificacy? Is it an insatiable urge? Inexhaustible passion? Professional requirements? Or just habit?

It is neither easy nor appropriate to point to a single factor. In the very process of creative writing, all sorts of boundaries blur; writings themselves can reveal where there was an insatiable urge to explore deep layers of human existence and where things were jotted down habitually or professionally. Disinterested and critical reading can zero in on the difference between the earnest, psychic urge to write something different and substantive and a habit to produce more and more. This kind of reading has yet to resort to Tarar’s writings.

By every measure, Tarar is the most popular Pakistani writer of our age; each of his books, be it travelogue or fiction, is warmly welcomed by snobby, common and literary readers alike. Indeed, popularity is desirable — every writer wishes to have access to a larger audience. The act of writing might originate from a sort of soliloquy, but publishing your work means nothing except to be read by a greater audience.

But popularity cannot claim to be the sole measure of a book’s literary worth. In unambiguous terms, popularity and critical acclamation are not two sides of the same coin. It is true there are some writers who are both popular and critically acclaimed, such as Haruki Murakami in our times, but Tarar’s case is somehow different. Many of his most popular books haven’t succeeded in earning critical appreciation. To some extent, contemporary Urdu criticism can be blamed for not extensively studying creative works hitting the big time.

A sort of repetition of style and narrative techniques, employed more or less in most of his novels, might explain the silence and sluggishness of Urdu critics. In spite of all that, new books by Tarar are a must-read for all avid readers of fiction who are concerned with how and why our society became entangled in regressive comportments, and how new Urdu fiction is consistent in unveiling the logic and history of this repressiveness.

The reviewer is a critic, short story writer and professor of Urdu at the University of Punjab, Lahore. He tweets @NasirAbbas65

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, December 26th, 2021