Intizar Husain
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Intizar Husain
Farah Yameen , Passed master “India Today” 11/9/2017
In an offhand remark, Intizar Husain famously credited his nani as his literary inspiration, only to say later that Anton Chekhov was a primary influence, but the Russian master's name had escaped him. But it's the image of his grandmother, as a repository of the oral tradition of India, that the stories of the late Urdu master evoke. Husain died in 2016. Shortly before that, his work had finally begun to get the recognition it deserved, with the shortlisting of the English translation of his novel Basti for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. In January, Yoda Press offered a quasi-biography in the form of Mahmood Farooqui's A Requiem for Pakistan, and in July it released two new translations, in Hindi and English, of his much-admired Dilli tha Jiska Naam-one of the most definitive works on Shahjahanbad of the 1900s.
Born in Dibai, near Aligarh, Husain became one of Urdu literature's greatest names after his somewhat accidental migration to Pakistan. He had followed his mentor, the renowned critic and writer Hasan Askari, to Karachi, without realising that he would never again be able to call India his home. His stories talk of loss and exile to the extent that Qurratulain Hyder once accused him of making a 'racket' out of it.
This nostalgia pervades Once There Was a City Named Delhi, translated into English by Ghazala Jamil and Faiz Ullah. Though never a Dilliwalah himself, Husain longed for another Delhi, much like many of its older citizens, one cannot help but feel. The translation adds an excellent primary source for readers who formerly depended on Khushwant Singh and William Dalrymple to describe the city for them.
When the Progressive Writers' Movement was at its zenith, Husain continued to write fiction that was steeped in the folkloric tradition of the subcontinent-eschewing the mordant realism of contemporaries like Manto and Chughtai. That preference is evident here, too. Husain repeats anecdotes and stories he has already told, revealing the influence of the dastanic tradition on his writing. He incorporates legends like the tale of the iron pillar at the Qutub Minar complex-ostensibly planted to hold the serpent Basak within the kingdom and ensure eternal prosperity-illustrating the importance he placed on fiction in religious and cultural discourse.
Husain has written both copiously and well. Once There Was a City Named Delhi is as good a place as any to begin reading his work.
