Between Clay and Dust

Nov­el­ist Mushar­raf Ali Farooqi is out with a new book called “Between Clay and Dust”, the drafts of which he laboured over for ten years.

The cov­er is intrigu­ing enough on its own, show­ing a man cov­ered in dust – mak­ing one won­der if he is caught in a dust storm or has just emerged from the earth.

How­ev­er, the con­tents of the book throw light on the cov­er. The sto­ry revolves around a wrestler Ustad Ramzi and a cour­te­san Gohar Jan — both proud, ambi­tious and well-known in their hey­day — who are now deal­ing with the strug­gles of grow­ing old as they try to come to terms with mod­ern times and the changes that Par­ti­tion has brought to their unnamed town. The town is sim­ply called the Inner City, leav­ing the read­er to make his or her own deci­sion about whether the book is based in India or Pak­istan.

It is, in Farooqi’s own words, a sto­ry about “two peo­ple faced with sim­i­lar chal­lenges… one of them is able to make good choic­es with­in that sit­u­a­tion and the oth­er is not.” It is also “a love sto­ry, and a sto­ry about missed chances and redemp­tion.” In words of renowned Indi­an film star Naseerud­din Shah:

“A priv­i­leged peek into the mind of the Pahal­wan and Cour­te­san, the Subcontinent’s most intrigu­ing sym­bols of romance. Sto­ry­telling at its best.”

The two main char­ac­ters face dual chal­lenge of los­ing their age and vig­or, and the chang­ing social norms. The prospect of dimin­ish­ing rel­e­vance brings shat­ter­ing con­se­quences for them who were habit­u­al to admir­ers from a wide social cir­cle. Through these chal­lenges Farooqi has con­struct­ed a pen­e­trat­ing study of human nature in terms of hon­or, love, redemp­tion and strength. The book is worth read­ing for both its grip­ping sto­ry and its “spec­tac­u­lar imagery”.

Farooqi is a man of many tal­ents; he also writes children’s’ books and is well-known for trans­lat­ing Das­tan-e-Amir Hamza into Urdu. His ear­li­er nov­el “The Sto­ry of a Wid­ow” has been short­list­ed for South Asian Lit­er­a­ture Award 2010. “Dust” is already being crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed on both sides of the bor­der for “telling a sto­ry fraught with emo­tion­al­i­ty” and telling it well.