Hasan Ki Surat-e-Haal: Khali Jaghain Pur Karo

Book Review: Hasan Ki Surat-e-Haal: Khali Jaghain Pur Karo
Author: Mirza Athar Baig
Pub­lish­er: San­jh Pub­li­ca­tions

[block­quote style=“2”]The event hap­pened to Hasan Raza Zaheer after his life­long exer­cise of glanc­ing at the state of affairs.

If we want to take the respon­si­bil­i­ty to know how and when Hasan got into this habit of glanc­ing at the state of affairs we will have to walk fur­ther with him in his life… In fact the more impor­tant thing is that we will have to ‘see’ with him because every­thing is about see­ing. And we have to expe­ri­ence what it is like to see.

( Hasan Ki Soorat-e-Haal: Khali Jaghain Pur Karo)
[/blockquote]

It rarely hap­pens that a nov­el comes this close to the word ‘nov­el’: being absolute­ly unique in the world it presents to the read­er. Mirza Athar Baig’s new nov­el, Hasan ki Soorat-e-Haal: Khali Jaga­hain Pur kero is one such piece of fic­tion which makes one think of the genre not as a descrip­tion of a world but a world in itself. The nov­el being a world in itself is very much like what a cos­mol­o­gist, Andre Lindy pro­pos­es in his the­o­ry of the infla­tion­ary uni­verse accord­ing to which our uni­verse maybe just one of many uni­vers­es each with its own gov­ern­ing laws. These self-cre­at­ed laws of coher­ence that a nov­el gen­er­ates for its life-world are brought togeth­er by the dynam­ic inter­sec­tion of social, polit­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al force fields of this mul­ti­di­men­sion­al enti­ty.

Baig’s new nov­el is like a cin­e­mat­ic jour­ney into a life dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed with its mul­ti­col­ored char­ac­ters and their unique sub­jec­tiv­i­ties. The sto­ry of Hasan’s State of Affairs (Hasan ki Surat-e-Haal) is as sur­re­al­is­tic as the film the ‘Sawang Film’ group in the nov­el tries to pro­duce. The film is called ‘This film can’t be made’. The novel’s frame of real­i­ty is mir­rored in the film’s screen­play and in the char­ac­ters who mul­ti­ply by this mir­ror­ing effect into mul­ti­ple pos­si­bil­i­ties of Being chal­leng­ing the read­er to keep the thread intact. In Baig’s own words: “…The pres­ence of almost a whole screen­play in the nov­el about a fic­tion­al sur­re­al­ist film is an inte­gral part of the nar­ra­tive. The activ­i­ties of the film group, bor­der­ing on bur­lesque at times, are intend­ed to mir­ror the mul­ti­ple lay­ers of the same events. What is hap­pen­ing in ‘real­i­ty’ is sort of redis­cov­ered in the screen­play and vice ver­sa.”

The dizzy­ing effect that the nar­ra­tive tech­nique of rein­car­nat­ing the same char­ac­ters, Aneela, Saifi, Saeed Kamal and Saf­dar Sul­tan in anoth­er stretch of space-time con­tin­u­um can also be seen as ampli­fy­ing the novel’s sur­re­al­ist ambiance reflect­ing an uncan­ny jux­ta­po­si­tion of seem­ing­ly dis­cor­dant and irra­tional images. The abun­dance of char­ac­ters and mul­ti­ple sce­nar­ios in which these char­ac­ters reveal them­selves cre­ate an incred­i­ble human dra­ma which is uncan­ny and enter­tain­ing at the same time.

It may as well be noticed that along with its wit­ty tone and intri­cate nar­ra­tive pat­tern, the nov­el is writ­ten from the point of view of the ghost nar­ra­tor, who might as well be Hasan’s ghost who nar­rates the sto­ry after the sto­ry has actu­al­ly tak­en place. How­ev­er, the ques­tion remains: Who is the nar­ra­tor and why he/she intro­duces himself/herself as the Edi­tor of Won­der. The enig­ma con­tin­ues ad infini­tum and as the nar­ra­tor says: As opposed to a suc­cess­ful sto­ry, sto­ries (Kahaniya) where the res­o­lu­tion of an enig­ma is cel­e­brat­ed, the won­der-nar­ra­tive (Hairaniya) is a mourn­ing of the con­ti­nu­ity of this enig­ma. And this too is a form of cel­e­bra­tion. The inter­ven­tions of this edi­tor through­out the nov­el con­sti­tute anoth­er impor­tant per­spec­tive of see­ing things and talk­ing about them. It may as well be said that the sec­ond chap­ter of the book enti­tled Hairat ki Idarat (Edit­ing of Won­der) is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant one for any­body who finds him/herself inter­est­ed in the the­o­ret­i­cal aspects of any piece of fic­tion. The nar­ra­tor, how­ev­er, encour­ages the read­er to dis­card this chap­ter alto­geth­er as a ‘non-writ­ing’ or a dis­turb­ing night­mare. How­ev­er, rather than dis­card­ing it for being abstract or ‘philo­soph­i­cal’, this chap­ter should be read with great focus for here­in lies the craft of the entire book and var­i­ous sub­tleties of nar­ra­tive.

Hasan Ki Surat-e-Haal is a remark­able syn­the­sis of Baig’s cre­ative imag­i­na­tion and the con­tem­po­rary local real­i­ty. The nov­el offers a great poten­tial for exam­in­ing our his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al and cog­ni­tive exis­tence in inno­v­a­tive, schol­ar­ly and intel­lec­tu­al per­spec­tives.