But You Don't Look Like a Muslim

by Rakhshanda Jalil

  Pragmatism aside, I am reminded of the years gone past when my siblings and I were still at home and my parents’ nest was full. Ramzan then had seemed to us an extended period of fasting and feasting. I remember how the rhythm of the household changed; the kitchen slept through breakfast and lunch and geared up to provide iftaar and dinner, followed in quick succession by sehri. With different members of the household having different preferences for sehri, the table ended up looking like a buffet with something for everyone’s taste. Some preferred to have the usual roti, subzi, ande aloo – foods with fibre that stay in the stomach for longer and provide sustenance all through the day. Hapshi halwa – a richer version of Turkish Delight made with corn flour, nuts, sugar and ghee was also eaten for the same reason – being ‘heavy’ it stayed in the stomach longer and provided heat. A traditional sehri favourite used to be jalebis left to soak overnight in milk, or pheni, an extremely fine version of vermicelli bought readymade in what looked like monstrously large birds’ nests, and, like jalebis, dunked in warm milk. Others, who were squeamish about eating a large meal at that time of the night, usually ate toast, eggs or fruit. The smokers took care to have several quick ones and the tea and coffee drinkers similarly tanked up for the day! There was always some member of the household who invariably overslept and, despite repeated reminders and incessantly ringing alarms, invariably straggled in when everyone was nearly done causing a flurry of last-minute gobblings and gulpings accompanied with frantic glances at the wall clock.

  As the night sky lightened and the proverbial white thread held out against the sky would begin to show up heralding the end of sehri, some would snuggle back into bed, others stay awake praying or reading until it was time to go our separate ways. My mother, a librarian, would be the first to leave the house. Abbu, a doctor, would head for his clinic, and the four of us to our respective offices/universities/schools. By the evening we would rally around the long dining table waiting to open the fast (not break it!) with a date, followed by a sip of water and then gorge on a wide variety of snacks. Abbu, however, would prefer to eat just a little, go off to say the maghrib namaz and then return to concentrate on his dinner. The idea behind the iftaar foods, he believed, was merely to tickle the palate not fill the stomach with heavy foods. For the rest of us, iftaar was serious snack time, with dinner following an hour or so later. The spread usually included some, if not all, of the following:

  Pyaaz aur aloo ke pakode: Fritters made with onion and lightly boiled potatoes cut in rings and coated in a spicy gram flour (besan) paste; green ones with chopped spinach; or with whole green chillies or other seasonal vegetables encased in a spicy batter.

  Kachalu: A pungent sweet-and-sour fruit chaat.

  Chaney ki daal: A light chaat of boiled chana dal which, oddly enough, no one ever thinks of making at any time other than Ramzan.

  Ghughni: Sautéed or steamed green peas, seasoned with crushed pepper corns and green chillies.

  Dahi ki phulki: Gram flour dumplings in beaten curd redolent with crushed garlic and roasted cumin seeds.

  Chhole: Boiled chick peas seasoned with garam masala and generously studded with chopped tomatoes and onion.

  Kaleji: Tongue-tickling bite-sized pieces of liver in a methi-flavoured thick sauce.

  Keeme ke samose: Mince stuffed in pastry puffs.

  Sonth ki chutney: A tart concoction of tamarind, jaggery, chilly flakes, dried ginger. Usually thin and runny with sliced bananas floating on top, it is eaten as an accompaniment with most of the above.

  Gallons of good, strong tea!

  Dinner, in my parent’s home, was a serious business during Ramzan. It had combinations of the following: shaami/seekh/galauti kababs, aloo-gosht, matar keema followed by phirni or some other equally substantial sweet. Another family favourite that made an appearance during Ramzan was shahi tukdey – a rather elegant way of presenting stale bread by frying up the slices, dipping them in a strong sweet syrup, then pouring cream (Milkmaid, more often than not!) and topping the whole with strands of saffron and chopped nuts. A particular dinnertime favourite used to be nihari – a rich fragrant, flavoursome, full-bodied curry cooked overnight over a slow fire. This was invariably sent over by some neighbour, friend or relative who ‘specialized’ in making this labour-intensive dish. The meat would melt during the slow cooking and dissolve, and the marrow in the bones made the curry thick and gelatinous. This was ‘soul food’ at its best and strictly not for the queasy or the weight watchers. Other winter favourites eaten during Ramzan for their heat-giving properties used to be paaye, chuqandar gosht or shab degh.

  But, for a truly memorable iftaar dinner there was nothing to compare with the divine haleem – a meal in itself – made by cooking together pounded barley, oats and dehusked wheat kernels, rice, pulses and meat garnished with ginger juliennes, slivers of browned onions, chopped coriander, piping hot ghee. It had to be eaten with lots and lots of green chillies to make you go up in smoke and a small side dish of plain yoghurt to put out the fire. Incidentally, haleem was also an epicure’s delight and a one-dish wonder at special haleem-themed parties. Ironically, it means ‘modest’ or ‘frugal’ in Arabic. There are many apocryphal stories surrounding the haleem and every family has its own closely-guarded version of how best to cook and, equally important, serve it. The one story that most seem to agree about is the one about its origins: that it was a camp dish, comprising whatever scraps of meat and lentils were at hand for the small embattled group fighting the epic battle of Karbala in 679 AD. On the days that haleem or khichda, as it is also called in some parts of upper India, would be made in our home, the fasting faithful could ask for no more.

  Now, in my own home, when I gulp some tepid soya milk for sehri and rustle up a sandwich or tear open a packet of chips or biscuits at iftaar time or air fry some frozen McCains, I am reminded of the old days that were good to the fasting faithful.

  5

  THE BAD, MAD WORLD OF

  JASOOSI DUNIYA

  I REMEMBER MY FATHER HAVING a stack of dog-eared Jasoosi Duniya novels on his bedside table; he was a doctor. Several other older relatives too spoke of their addiction to these racy detective stories written not so much in chaste Urdu as in everyday Hindustani, robust with colloquialisms and flavourful with wit and witticisms, with a generous smattering of Urdu verses ranging from the peppy and popular to the plain pedestrian; they were university teachers, journalists or writers who normally read more sober and sedate tomes but confessed to an abiding passion for Ibn-e-Safi’s ‘pulp’ series. For many, these paperbacks evoke memories of long train journeys, the smell of burning coal, the cries of hawkers, bustling rail platforms and crowded Wheeler & Co. stalls. For it was at railway stations or on long train journeys that an ‘encounter’ with the mad, bad world of Ibn-e-Safi usually took place, an encounter that offered an escape into a world of adventure and fantasy.

  When not bought from the little kiosks at railway platforms or from second-hand bookstores, many a time they were simply passed down from older relatives. Made available now in English, they throw up unexpected challenges to the modern reader. Reading them in translation, I must confess to being somewhat bemused.

  I am struck more by the sociological import of Ibn-e-Safi’s creative cosmos than any intrinsic merit in the stories themselves for, frankly speaking, the concerns per se appear a trifle dated and nowhere close to some of the great detective fiction in the league of P.D. James or Agatha Christie. For me, reading them today, these stories evoke a syncretic and pluralistic ethos which is all the more remarkable considering (a) they were originally written in Urdu, and (b) Ibn-e-Safi himself migrated to Pakistan in 1952. Part Bombay, part Karachi and the rest an entirely fictional, marvellously cosmopolitan city, most Jasoosi Duniya (literally meaning, ‘the world of espionage’) novels were located in a world of the imagination that, going by the phenomenal popularity of those books and the near-cult following of their author, evidently held a strong appeal for their Urdu reader
s. For me, the setting and style hold more interest than the stories, for I am mindful of the fact that they were written at a time when Urdu fiction dwelt compulsively on the horrors of Partition or waxed eloquent on the nation-building project – neither of which find any mention in these escapist fantasies.

  Voluptuous, often blonde-haired, women in tight dresses with plunging necklines, and gun-toting men in natty suits and felt hats graced the covers of these mass-produced, inexpensive paperbacks. Inside was a wonderful world of cafes and bars with evocative names such as Rialto’s, Sing Sing, Arlecchino, High Circle Nightclub, Shabistan, Chinese Corner, and so on. And the characters who frequented these places thought nothing of zooming off on thrilling motor-launches to island hideouts called Tar Jam; or hobnobbing with mysterious and alluring women, some of whom were college students or high-society ladies, yet others who worked for a living as typists and teachers; and grappling with masked villains who used lethal arrows and poisonous gases with great aplomb.

  A whiff of internationalism pervaded the proceedings, with stray references to foreign names and places, topical events from the global arena, ballroom dances in foreign consulates attended by women of every possible nationality, and the recurring presence of a villain named Dr Dread, an American criminal with headquarters in San Antonio, New Mexico. A policewoman called Rekha Larson, a diminutive crook called Finch, places named Arjun Pura and Gertrude Square, bartenders called Gasper, and the suave Oxonian Colonel Faridi assisted by the madcap Captain Hameed combined to create a wonderful world that was neither fully India nor Pakistan, yet exuded a distinct third-world feel. The world of Jasoosi Duniya, then, was a make-believe world that was as pluralistic, as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-what-have-you as we would want our real world to be. What is more, it was a marvellously secular world - for crooks and cops have no religion.

  The original Urdu versions, dismissed as pulp fiction by literary connoisseurs, were liberally sprinkled with Urdu verses and colloquialisms. They conjured a world that was at once real and unreal – the readability and easy diction of the prose made it real, whereas the complete suspension of disbelief that these impossibly convoluted plots required made no attempt whatsoever at realism. The Jasoosi Duniya novels were unlike anything being written at the time since there was virtually nothing in the whodunit mode in Urdu that came anywhere close to these cult pocketbooks. Possibly the only other series that, in any way, resembled the Jasoosi Duniya series were the Rumani Duniya (literally meaning ‘the world of romance’) or the Mehakta Anchal (‘the fragrant veil’) which were like an Urdu version of the Mills & Boon romance series and were usually to be found in the bookshops at railway platforms and bus depots. I am inclined to believe that literary historians would do well to study these series for the very real possibility of a secular, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society these held out within their cheap, mass-produced pages. The Jasoosi Duniya books, all written by a man who teetered dangerously on the brink of madness for much of his adult life, are especially delightful. The odd-couple pairing of Colonel Faridi and Captain Hameed yields a rich lode of humorous situations bordering on the absurd and the fantastic.

  Four of these marvellously wacky books, translated into English by the eminent Urdu critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, showcase this mad, bad world with great panache. The sleekly produced English versions use the luridly colourful covers from the Urdu originals as well as the trademark logos and numbers of the serialized books to recreate the old magic. While they fall short on every conceivable yardstick of a gripping detective novel for the English reader - especially if one is habituated to the darkly intense Swedish writers such as Henning Mankell or Stieg Larsson who create tersely gripping narratives of broken men and women and a moral landscape that is as sterile as it is stark - the Ibn-e-Safi books are nevertheless useful. They remind us of an innocent time not so long ago when it was indeed possible – and given the popularity of these books, even acceptable – to be pluralistic. Set aside the lurid covers for a bit, I urge you even to set aside the improbable situations, and you will find yourself in a world that is deeply, intrinsically secular, a world where religion plays no role whatsoever. And it is in this evocation that Ibn-e-Safi and his mad, bad world scores over all else, for I am hard pressed to find any Indian writer doing that for me today.

  And now for the plots: of the four books available to English readers, The Poisoned Arrow is a complicated tale of good-looking, educated young women being employed as honeytraps by a foreign embassy engaged in dubious espionage activities to ensnare politicians and civil servants. The American criminal Dr Dread is behind the elaborate charade of drug-dealing, prostitution and spying to destabilize a country and its government. Dr Dread reappears as Charles Brown in Smokewater which again sees Faridi and Hameed solving the mystery of the delusional industrialist, Sir Fayyaz Ahmad, who is being administered psychotropic drugs by a coterie involving his best friend and illegitimate son to seize control of his platinum mines. The Laughing Corpse uses the staples of crime fiction – the beautiful Saeeda eking a living as a typist until one day she is left a large estate in Jamaica by a long-lost uncle and finds herself swamped by greedy suitors – to once again set the duo from the CID on a chase of Dr Dread and Finch. And finally, in Doctor Dread, the nemesis catches up with the arch-villain, but not before Faridi has displayed his astuteness and Hameed provided flashes of comic relief with his inveterate goofiness. Interspersed with the suspense are moments of light-hearted banter, harmless flirtation between Hameed and the damsels in distress, snatches of Urdu poetry spouted by various edgy and eccentric oddballs, and bizarre characters such as the ‘gigantic blubbering fool Qasim’. Being a series, several characters reappear and the narrative too refers to incidents and characters from previous stories.

  The fact that the Jasoosi Duniya books – the last being written in 1979 - continue to enjoy mass popularity is evident from the number of websites dedicated to Ibn-e-Safi; tributes and accolades are piled up in virtual space to a man widely regarded as the greatest Urdu detective writer. The ‘official’ Ibn-e-Safi website is by far the most exhaustive compilation of views on the author whose real name was Asrar Ahmad, his two cult series (the Jasoosi Duniya series which included 125 books and the Imran series with 120 titles), scanned images from the original Urdu paperbacks many of which were illustrated, as well as biographical details about the author who was treated for schizophrenia at the height of his popularity.

  Read these books not for any insights into the criminal mind or the human predicament that forever grapples with good and evil; read them, instead, for a glimpse into a world that transcends time and circumstance. For, if Agatha Christie introduced us to the world of the serene Miss Marple and the evil that stalks the everyday and the ordinary through a series of murder mysteries set in rural England, Ibn-e-Safi holds us by the hand and takes us into a sophisticated world of urban crime. That the world existed solely in the writer’s imagination makes it all the more intriguing.

  6

  FROM AMMA’S RAZAIS

  TO JAIPURI QUILTS

  AMMA, MY GRANDMOTHER, MADE THE most unusual quilts. Each winter, they came to us with unfailing regularity. While the heavy-duty lihafs were taken out only in the deep, dark winter months, there would be the lighter dohar (no more than two sheets of lightweight pure cotton material stitched together for the early-morning chill of summer nights) and the razais that heralded the onset of winter. Ingeniously fashioned from old dupattas and saris, they came in a blaze of colours and intricate, closely-done hand quilting. The zari, gota or kamdani of some of the more ornate razais tickled and scratched, but the soft satins and buttery velvets and chenilles of others made them a delight to snuggle into. Then there were the colour combinations: the vivid purple of aubergines (baingani) matched with the flaming magenta of kites (rani rang) for brides, or the zard of fallen leaves with the tender green of paddy (dhani) for young girls; the brown of catechu paste (katthai) offset by earthy tones of coffee or m
oss green would be deemed perfect for men or elders.

  During school holidays when we visited Amma’s home in Aligarh, I remember witnessing the discussions that went into the assembling and hand-stitching of these colourful creations. Much thought and imagination went into each component of the razai and while Amma’s will held sway over all others, visiting relatives or elderly family retainers were allowed to express opinions regarding which material was best suited for which part of the razai. For instance, the abra or the main, outer part could be showy and colourful; the astar or inner lining had to be soft and gossamer enough to allow the cotton to stick; and the gote or the narrow border (often no more than a hand’s width) was invariably cut from the voluminous skirts of old ghararas for, being bias cut, these strips fitted perfectly and snugly, especially at those tricky corners which had to be folded in just so!

  With time, Amma’s sight failed and her fingers grew less nimble; the retinue of retainers, whom she used to rope in to do the painstaking hand-quilting, too thinned out. Our steady supply of quilts dwindled. My mother valiantly made the odd razai or two – to keep the tradition going - but there were no ghararas to cut up for borders, and fewer zardozi dupattas to recycle. Moreover, with the cotton carder (dhunna) who used to make the rounds of our childhood home when the first nip was in the air with his string and bow contraption for fluffing old cotton and transforming it into a cloud of fresh-smelling ‘new’ stuffing becoming an extinct species, there was the problem of finding the right fillings for the right shells. Gradually, a new sort of quilt replaced Amma’s razais in our homes, one that was brand new and – horror of horrors – bazaar bought! We, too, became a part of the silent revolution that had been taking place, unnoticed and unheralded, in beds and closets across northern India. We, too, switched to Jaipuri quilts.