Blood brothers
A Hindi film called Mother India, made by a well-known director, Mehboob, released in 1958, became an unprecedented critical and popular hit of its time. Our parents took us to the theatre with the enthusiasm of missionaries escorting children to a moral science class. The Statesman reported that it almost won the Oscar for the best foreign film, losing to Federico Fellini's Nights of the Cabria by a solitary vote in the third round.
The narrative was constructed around the memories of an old woman, Radha, eponymous wife of Lord Krishna and therefore Mother of India, who had been abandoned by her depressed husband after he lost his arms in an accident. She had three sons: one drowned; the second was a good boy; the third, Birju, a rebel who grew up to become a dacoit. Impoverished Radha was a paragon of virtue, and spurned the attentions of a leering moneylender, Sukhilala, who demanded sex as interest on his loan. Whether this moneylender was a symbol of the World Bank or not was left unclear, but there were plenty of other allegories. In a climax that had father, mother, brother and sister India in tears, Mother India shot her dacoit-son Birju to save the honour of the village. It was an epic superhit, its peasant-patriotism and femme-nobility high on the approved agenda of a nation that still wanted to believe in itself.
Radha was played by Nargis, a Muslim. Jaipal, Kalyan Singh's slightly precocious son, thought this ridiculous. Mother Pakistan was a Muslim; how could Mother India be a Muslim as well? Could Muslims partition the motherland and still claim ownership of both nations? "You Muslims are greedy. You want everything. You take your own country, and then say India is your country as well."
"Yes," agreed Shyam Singh. "Muslims must make up their minds. They go to Pakistan when they like, they live in India when they want. We Hindus can't do that."
"My father was born in Pakistan, so he went to Pakistan. I was born in India, so I live in India," answered Mustafa, who had inherited his father's terse logic.
"Ha!" responded Jaipal, "you stayed back because you want the property that your father left behind! You go and see him whenever you want. What difference does it make to you? Only Hindus suffered in the partition of their motherland."
"What is there to argue about? Indian Muslims marry among us, so they are one of us," reasoned Kamala, who was always anxious to find balm in the most obscure cupboard, for he hated confrontation of any kind. "Nargis married Sunil Dutt just after the release of Mother India. Sunil Dutt was her son, Birju, who she killed. Sunil Dutt is a Hindu. She married a Hindu, so it's all right, isn't it?" Since Freud had not reached Telinipara, no other interpretation was made.
"You mean to say that I have to marry a Hindu in order to become an Indian?" asked Mustafa, with a touch of anger. "I will never marry anyone but a Pathan girl."
"Why are we taking film people so seriously? It's all fake. Which one of us is going to find anyone as beautiful as Nargis?" said Kamala, displaying his usual good sense.
"If it's all make-believe, why do Hindus keep saying Raj Kapoor is much better than Dilip Kumar?" asked Altaf, rising above his usual timidity.
Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar were superstars; the first a Hindu and the second, disguised by his pseudonym, a Muslim. Multiple identities stitched disparate imperatives, but loyalties were absolute. A superstar both borrowed and returned identity to his community.
I was bored by this conversation. My favourite star was Dev Anand, the third of the men who dominated the film industry in the fifties. Dev Anand lived on the street and beyond religion. If he had any faith it was in himself. He would gamble with thieves, dance with bar girls, drink to celebrate and win the day without trying to save the nation. Dev Anand was liberation, and gave our generation its first beautiful essay on love and adultery, forsaking the world for the gorgeous Waheeda Rehman in that wondrous classic, Guide. Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor carried the past in their eyes. Dev Anand wore the insouciance of the future.
I loved the songs of Dev Anand's films.
Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, Main fiqr ko dhooen main urhata chala gaya.
I dealt with life as it came, I turned worry to smoke rings.
I dreamt of the day I could start smoking.
Jo mil gaya usiko muqaddar samajh liya, Jo kho gaya main usko bhulata chala gaya.
What I got became my destiny, What I lost, I simply forgot.
Could philosophy be more enchanting than this? […]
The best warren for a loaf was the great Anarkali bazaar, named after the dancing girl in the court of the Great Mughal, Akbar, who won the heart of his son and heir, Prince Salim. The magic of myth burnished these names from history. Anarkali, blossom of the pomegranate, made an empire tremble with the flick of an eyelash, lost her prince but won her legend, and found an immortal home in a grave in the heart of Lahore. Akbar, lord of the world, picked up his sword against a cherished but obstinate son who preferred the love of a slave to the demands of empire.
Happily, while Anarkali and Akbar heated my perennially warm imagination, they also resolved those nitpicking dilemmas of Mother India in a film called Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal).
I saw Anarkali reincarnated in the exquisite poise of Madhubala, the actress who defined beauty for a generation. Lahore, mesmerized by the movie, sparkled with her image. She soared above the Mughal skyline of Lahore on dozens of huge billboards as other faces faded in deference to her grace. At Shah Alam Gate, Anarkali looked up in prayer towards God, mysterious, haunting, bewitching, her face framed by a black dupatta and lit by the soft touch of a candle. She lived again in the protective embrace of Salim, glancing around the hem of a white muslin dupatta, her lips parted in a smile that was both a challenge and an invitation, her eyes dancing to a silent melody. And there again, alone, unencumbered by pretenders: she lifted a shimmer of a veil with fingers dressed in jewels; a large nose ring, swaying slightly, was held by a thin bridge of pearls that swept into her hair; her eyes spun gossamer traps that floated and disappeared and her succulent lips – the arc of a bow above, and lush heart of a melon below – destroyed all the laws that kept this world in place: morality, order, obedience, fear.
I saw the emperor through the looking glass of an enchanting slave.
But it was the emperor who gave me back my identity when we went, a cluster of cousins, to see the film. The curtains rose above a dark screen on which, slowly, a map of united India appeared. A deep regal baritone spoke three simple words: "Main Hindoostan hoon!" I am India! I am Mughal. I am Muslim. I am India. My India is not a part of India. It is the whole of India. I am not just Pakistan; I am this vast Subcontinent that sprawls from the rough-diamond mountains of the Hindu Kush in the northwest to the turbulent waves of the Bay of Bengal and the sweet rhythms of the Indian Ocean beyond the shores of sultry, sunburnt Kerala. I am Muslim. I am everywhere.
Through two hours of epic narrative I found myself, my past, my culture, my language, my flirtations, my loves, my rebellion, my poetry, my music, my intrigues, my art, my suffering, my sacrifice, my oath, my father, my mother, my present, and perhaps even my future. Who else could have made this film except an Indian Muslim from Bombay, K Asif, who distilled history in a dewdrop and squandered a fortune in pursuit of an elegant glance? Who else could have been Anarkali except Madhubala, shy and erotic, in life and on screen the quintessential Indian Muslim lady? Life and art overlapped repeatedly like the streams of Muslim and Hindu cultures. Akbar's son, Salim, was played by Dilip Kumar, named Yusuf Khan at birth. Salim's mother and the emperor's wife, Joda Bai, was a Hindu: Salim's blood fed from both Mughal and Rajput genes. Prithviraj, a towering Hindu Pathan from Peshawar, acted the part of Akbar, an empire-builder with bloodshot eyes and iron will who bowed before Allah while his queen worshipped Krishna. Salim's childhood friend was Durjan, the son of Raja Man Singh, who gave his life to save Anarkali. Anarkali, a Muslim, danced to an ancient Indian Hindu beat, while the immaculate voice of Tansen floated, paused, rose and fell, went back to the Hindu shastras and then moved four centuries forward to become the music of a contemporary genius, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan.
They did not toss their heads in the Mughal court, they merely raised their eyes. Anarkali destroyed her nemesis when she looked an emperor in the eye before being led away to death, and passed an immortal judgment: "Yeh kaneez Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar ko apna khoon maaf karti hai!" This slave forgives Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar for takingher life!
In that summer of discovery, Anarkali turned me into a teenager.
'Elsewhere' is a section where Himal features writings from other sources that the editors would like to present to our readers. This selection is from M J Akbar's book Blood Brothers: A family saga, published in 2006 by Roli Books, Delhi.