Feasting, more feasting and then more feasting. As we plunge through flooded streets – amazing where that water comes from – and devour thousands of tonnes of fat dripping dishes, in public places and across homes, the faithful are locked in mortal combat with eating binges that suggest that food is disappearing from planet earth. There is a doctorate in here for the discerning scholar.
In this food heaven, I am riveted, reading some horrific events from the William Dalrymple book, ‘The Last Emperor’ that recounts in chilling horror the madness that turned Delhi into a bloodbath just a few centuries back. Following fast on the 1857 War of Independence – or The Mutiny, call it what you will – the East India Company’s military might unleashed terror on the Delhi citizenry. The reasons are many and too detailed to be covered adequately but Dalrymple’s account, a work of great scholarship and uncanny factual integrity, lays bare the myths and reveals the truth of that inferno.
As the world of the cultured and well-heeled Delhi citizenry fell apart so did the end the Mughal dynasty. With Bahadur Shah Zafar’s banishment and eventual ignominy of an anonymous burial in far off Rangoon, the dynasty created by Babar in 1526, came to an end. The death of thousands brutally slaughtered can be seen as mad descent into living hell. They were carting away corpses and dumping them – princes and princesses, men and women of noble birth and great learning – there was no distinction. And this was not just us and our forebears. The English paid a heavy price and lost men and women like flies. There were no winners in a manner of speaking.
Dalrymple’s account of that tragic time is mind-blowing but then so is most of his work. His stylistic prose takes you down a corridor you don’t really wish and the chilling details are laid bare. Amongst the many, I found that the poet Ghalib – there never shall be another – lost two complete manuscripts of his poetry. That jabs you like a spear. What indescribable beauty that surely soared from his pen will never be seen by us or millions like us. A war has many casualties but when it’s a work of art, it does hurt – and that too, topped by so many lives uselessly gutted.
People of my generation were fed on the work of P D Mahajan and grew up treating it as the gospel. I cannot remember how and where but that work was riven with flawed history. For us and those that are still to read, it is reassuring that a man like Dalrymple has chosen to devote his life’s work to unveiling the truth. I feel like Michael Woods, the fascinating narrator who brings history alive, an underlying sympathy with this Subcontinent and its people.
This is all very well but I wonder what, if any, interest the younger generation has with their history. I guess not much. History is not hip hop; it is stodgy and boring. They, of course, have little idea of the likes of Dalrymple – and a pity if this is true. A people without a past, someone said, are without a future – a thought that may not have quite made a mark on the youth.
Books seem to find little space in the lives of the young, barring a few. They also have no use or time to manage the tedious business of writing, trusting their iPads and other electronic devices to do the same. History will not mean much because even cursory knowledge of immediate history is missing. The Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report is a mystery, and to most the constitution is unfathomable. As for geography, places like Hunza or Shikarpur could be stars in another galaxy.
As for the overnight literati that throng all the book launches in the latest fashions and buy the book duly signed by the writer, whether they ever read it or any other is not a matter of guessing. I recall with some bewilderment the number of well-coiffed ladies and gents foregoing their afternoon siesta to be at the Noam Chomsky Memorial Lecture and an ‘aunty’ turning around and asking her sleepy companion, “But darling who is he?”
Equally galling was to be told with justifiable pride that a section dedicated to Mr Jinnah in a public building that showcased his law library turned out to be wallpaper. So I worry what resonance Dalrymple has with the ‘reading’ public. Sadly it is not the uneducated but the educated who in their own lives have done precious little to promote a love of books amongst their children.
So it was rather a mind-bending experience looking in Lahore for William Dalrymple’s ‘The Last Emperor’. The bookshop, one of the leading apparently, went into crisis mode. I was tossed to more than one computer whiz. I asked for ‘The Last Emperor’, a title the voice had no recall of. We got close at one time with ‘umperar’ but the shop lost the ‘thread’. “It’s about Bahadur Shah Zafar”, I said at which the voice wished to know if he was Pakistani. In some desperation I threw ‘William Dalrymple’ and dropped this line shortly after running into turbulent weather. So much for that.
But demoralising as this may be, it cannot take away the sheer brilliance of Dalrymple’s art and one should thank him for casting light on a past that’s remained hidden for so many years. One can only promise him – the good Scotsman that he is – a bottle of the best Single Malt any time he journeys here. In the meantime, ‘The Return of the King’ beckons.
The writer is a Lahore-based columnist.
Email: masoodhasan66@gmail.com

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