More wonders from Daniyal Mueenuddin
Pak Punjab remains at the core of Daniyal Mueenuddin’s new book, much like ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’
In 2009, Daniyal Mueenuddin breezed into the literary landscape with ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ to establish himself as a writer of prominence. It was the high noon of Pakistani writing. His first book was of short stories — notoriously hard to publish, even tougher to get noticed. He defied the odds. It was shortlisted for the Pulitzer. Seventeen years later, at 63, Daniyal’s new book — ‘This is Where the Serpent Lives’ — is proof that writing takes time, and writing of the kind he does, even longer.
This is not an easy read. It cannot be, for the stories that Daniyal weaves are gritty, real, and bleak, capturing the darkness of the Punjab landscape (think ‘Kohrra’ and ‘Paatal Lok’ — an exploration of a world in shades of grey).
This is Where the Serpent Lives
by Daniyal Mueenuddin.
Penguin Random House.
Pages 343.
Rs 799
There are four interconnected novellas, each offering a different facet of greed, violence, love, temptation and betrayal. The book is an unflinching look at Pakistan’s feudal elite, and those who inhabit and cultivate the land, tied in an uneasy relationship — and just how deeply entrenched the divisions are.
There are encounter specialist cops, the Sheikhs who have been muscle men for generations, Lahore-living elite who vacation in London, violence, infidelity, honour and the glitziness of an iPhone unleashing a tragic end.
Yazid is an orphan who was abandoned in the bazaars of Rawalpindi in the 1950s in front of Karim Khan’s tea and curry stall. He was dressed in a clean salwar kameez, clutching a pair of cheap new plastic shoes, writes Daniyal. The shoes caught Karim’s attention — the man who would shelter him, feed him and be family to him — “not only because they were brand new, but because children of the streets, those sparrows ran barefoot always”.
It is in detail, tiny but cinematic, that Daniyal breathes life into Yazid ‘The Golden Boy’. His attempts at bettering himself, buying grammar books with his own money — encouraged by a teacher who was a regular chai drinker — modelling himself on the boys who went to Sir Khwaja Nizamuddin Government High School, “acknowledged to be the best in the city”, and his skills at making the softest rotis.
It is set in the Rawalpindi of the ’70s when Yazid comes of age as Zulfikar Bhutto rises to power with the promise of “a new era of unimaginable possibilities” where elite power would be toppled and a new system established. Much like Bhutto’s promises, the promise that Yazid showed ends in tragedy.
Daniyal’s stories unfold slowly as they did on the farm in Punjab where he lived for years to write his first book. Like Rustom Abdalah in ‘Muscle’, Daniyal came back from America to manage his grandfather’s farm. Half-American, half-Pakistani, Daniyal grew up in Lahore till his parents split. He returned after college to live in Mueenabad, which was settled by his grandfather, to find that the head manager had quietly taken over large parts of his land. It took him five years to get control back. It is this experience that he channels in ‘Muscle’.
Like Daniyal, Rustom was an outsider who didn’t quite grasp the rules of Punjab. “But Mian Sahib, why not take my car? You’ll be more comfortable and it looks better. After all, what’s mine is yours,” munshi Zafar Hussein tells Rustom when they go to see the DSP. “Rustom left unsaid the corollary. What’s yours is mine. So much that belonged to the Abdalahs had through the years been tickled over with a catfishing guile to the munshi’s portions,” writes Daniyal.
There is more trouble as the local heavyweights challenge his authority. All Rustom wanted instead of dealing with the messiness of the farm was to write to Klara, his girlfriend in New York, longing for the clarity of America. It was 1988 and phone calls were limited to 10 minutes. Instead, he had to turn to the Sheikhs from Khirka, his family’s “muscle for a claimed six generations, called out when some land mafia threatened a property — force against crude force”.
Daniyal has conjured up a cast of characters that will haunt you much after the book is finished. The stories are set in sprawling family estates, in a world dominated by men where loyalty, honour, guns, justice and revenge are a way of life. The women exist on the margins. Their fate is determined by the rules set by men. Whether it is Yasmin Awan, studying to be a doctor, ‘beautiful and pure’, who Yazid falls in love with — very aware it could never be. Or Gazala, who defied odds to become a teacher and who marries Saqib. Except Shahnaz — ambitious, shrewd, but “hardly a catch” as her grandfather “lost it all at Partition… if only the Brits had drawn the map 50 miles to the east” — who chooses Hisham, the elder son of Col Khuda Baksh Atar, a landowner and politician, over his younger son Nessim. This calculation changes Shahnaz and her life, as well as the relationship between the brothers.
There are neat endings, no escape from the harshness of life, a portrait of the world where corruption is endemic, pervasive, seductive and perhaps inevitable, as it plays out in ‘This is Where the Serpent Lives’, with Saqib, who like Yazid was a golden boy. He’s the son of a gardener at Ranmal Mohra and a “pet” of Shahnaz and Hisham, his employers who wanted him to study. But Oliver Twist-like, Saqib wanted more. “Slight and tall and eager, soft and intelligent, sensitive, quietly humorous, Saqib had charm, a quality that was not often found in boys of his class,” writes Daniyal. “Charm ripens in the sun of youth, lineaments and colour — but for those millions of poor boys all over the country… it is a quality that withers. It is taken as proof of loving glittering things too much.”
‘This is Where the Serpent Lives’ is devastating and powerful. It is proof that the present is no different from the past — and disloyalty comes at a heavy price. The stories will keep you up at night, but some stories need to.
— The writer is a literary critic
