Darkness, death, deceit, all follow up

Shiva

April 2013, Karachi — in this time and space begins Shandana Minhas’ Daddy’s Boy. Afsandyar Ikram’s father, Anis Nabi, is long pronounced dead by his mother, Jehanara. This being so, the death when it actually happens brings anything but shock to him. Having rehearsed loss and melancholy, Afsandyar is equipped to deal with death but not with the three beguiling uncles who have preposterous demeanour, predilection for alcohol, and a pandora’s box of instructions from the dead man. Hostage to these last wishes, he must stay in Karachi and, in all innocence, set a trap for himself. Consequently angst-ridden, he mulls over, ‘How long would it take for the smell of death to leave him?’ 

Subtly balancing morbid with flippant, Minhas sets out to serve a piquant recipe without edging on absurd. So engrossing is the sharp-witted style that the reader readily postpones prognosis only to be caught off guard by devastating intrigue.

Afsandyar, a riveting mix of glumness and gullibility, reveals his inner life to the reader through slanting world of italics. He is sad, annoyed, indifferent, torn — his ingenuous self keeps no secrets from the reader. Might the same be said of the three uncles? With their considerable ingenuity, uncles mask their intents and purposes under gun-fire quips, puns, and non-sequiturs. Their repartee resembles nothing so much as the game of squash, in which Afsandyar is sometimes the spectator, but mostly the front wall of the squash court. 

Through these quick exchanges, Minhas achieves what is her best accomplishment in the novel: Tremendous pace. Pages turn in top gear till Shaukoo, Gullo and Ifty are in the scene; however, that is not going to be forever!

Bidding adieu to the uncles and Karachi, Afsandyar returns to the serene, tranquil landscape of Lahore. It is only after his homecoming that telling contrasts begin to haunt him: Contrast between Ikram, his mother’s surname and Nabi, his father’s; caress of his fiancée, Lalarukh and touch of A mystery woman, Alina; and naiveté of Lahore and deception of Karachi. 

Minhas exploits the last one to imbue the novel with texture, tone, and mood. If the three uncles are analogous to the three witches in Macbeth (only that the uncles are amusing, albeit artful), then it would not be, by any means, an exaggeration to call Karachi — Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Here is the evidence: ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’ is echoed in lines like ‘… the only lesson you could learn from the city was not to believe too strongly in the sanctity of anything.’

It is to Minhas’ credit that she manages, with an effortless ease, to weave many a laugh line in a novel bookended by death. Her gift to us is the relentless vigor, with which she triumphs in the first half but toils away in the second. Just as Afsandyar, beset by death and deceit, loses control in the second half, so too plot succumbs to recklessness. To a fault but also to a virtue, this restive energy is the very lifeblood of Minhas’ work and to sway on a sinuous road is no sin!