Tag Archives: Asia

India, Pakistan, Partition, Short Essays

What makes you feel nostalgic?

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Carefree Days with Pran Nevile, April 2016. © Pippa Virdee

Today’s daily prompt on WordPress was “What makes you feel nostalgic?” I of course immediately started thinking and letting my mind wonder into the past. The past that is often nostalgic and romantic; it is after all the 31 December! Immediately one memory came back like a flash.

I recall the numerous times that I went to visit Pran Nevile at his home in Gurgaon, where we would have meet, chat, drink and eat. And almost always there would be music playing in the background, the kind of music that transports you to a bygone era, along with the conversation. These “Carefree Days” are no more, but those precious memories remain.

Beyond the nostalgia I remember I wrote a tribute for Pran, which was supposed to have been published but I suspect it never was. I most likely didn’t follow up because of work distractions. Upon a keyword search (thank goodness for that!) I found the tribute on my laptop straightaway. I sat there with the melodic voice of Begum Akhtar in the background and re-read the piece, feeling sad but happy to have met someone like Pran at the beginning of my own journey. It makes a fitting post for today’s prompt, as I will always associate Pran with the nostalgia of a pre-partitioned Punjab that is no more.

Pran Nevile (1922-2018): A Tribute

I first met Pran Nevile in 2001, when I embarked on a new journey in my life of pursuing a PhD. He was recommended to me by my supervisor, Prof. Ian Talbot. We met, like on many subsequent occasions, at his favourite place in New Delhi, the India International Centre (IIC). I was beginning my research into the impact Partition had on Punjab, exploring this through first-hand accounts of people, who were forced to abandon their homes and leave during that tumultuous and violent time. Pran was born in Lahore in 1922 and thus could recollect stories from the colonial period thereby contextualising this impact on Punjab following Partition. At the time I didn’t know much about Pran, beyond that he had written a book on Lahore and that he had a previous career in the Indian Foreign Service. In many ways, I was an outsider to both the intellectual Delhi circle and academia, more generally. We sat in the café at the IIC and had tea, while chatting about an array of subjects. Almost straightaway we bonded as he radiated with an old-school genteel charm that belongs to a by-gone era; certainly not of the India and Pakistan today. He paid me a wonderful/witty compliment, by saying that when I speak in Punjabi, I sound like a Punjaban and when I speak in English, I am a mem. He would repeat this on numerous occasions. This was the beginning a friendship, which endured until he passed away on 11 October 2018. He was my connection to the pre-partitioned Punjab, and I was his connection to Lahore, exchanging notes and comparing the-then and now. 

Growing up in Lahore

Pran’s family lived in Nisbet Road in the walled city of Lahore, where his father had migrated to in the early 1910s from their ancestral village of Vairowal, in neighbouring Amritsar district. Following his education at the DAV School, he was successful in getting a scholarship and got admission to the prestigious Government College Lahore, from where he graduated in 1943 in MA Economics. He recollects many of his early memories of growing up in Lahore in his autobiography, Carefree Days (2016), recounting the days of “pastimes, fairs and festivals”, which would keep them amused all year round. His favourite pastime though was kite flying, as he writes: “I cannot recall anything more thrilling than kite flying in my boyhood” (pp. 10-11). Pran, like many others, lamented the later ban on kite flying in Lahore, which has seen the demise of the popular Basant festival.

Writing Lahore: A Sentimental Journey (1992), a book that instantly resonated with many Lahoris, enabled Pran to visit the city of his childhood. He was one of the lucky ones because he was able to visit Lahore with ease, a romance that he rekindled with this tribute to the city of his birth. He often recited, Jine Lahore nahin Vekhya oh Jamya hi Nahin (One who has not seen Lahore is as good as not having been born at all) (p. 193). Like many other people who left their ancestral homes (thinking they would be back), he had a photographic imprint of the city in his mind, remembering every nook and cranny of the congested Androon Shehr. Professor Tahir Kamran organised a two-day conference at GC University on ‘Punjab and the Raj’ in 2006 and Pran was invited to speak at this conference. I distinctly remember a moment from then, when another friend from Lahore, Bilal Ahmed was driving the car, and Pran was seated in the front and me in the back. We were in the walled city, trying to locate a venue and unsure about the exact location. Immediately, Pran started to navigate and provide directions. He said he can never forget the streets of his Lahore, despite all the changes since his he was a student in the city. It was a heart-warming and amusing moment we never forgot.  

Never-ending Retirement

Pran graduated during the political and international upheaval of World War Two. His desire was topursue a PhD at the London School of Economics, but the uncertainty of that period prompted him to take up an opportunity at the Bureau of Public Information in 1944 as an assistant journalist. After a series of different posts, he was selected for the Indian Foreign Service Board in 1955 as second secretary (commercial) (Carefree Days, p. 46). He joined the Ministry of External Affairs as an attaché in March 1959 and subsequently was posted in Warsaw (1962), Belgrade (1966) and Moscow (1969). By 1974, he was back at the Ministry of Commerce as deputy secretary (East Europe). After that came the opportunity to go to Chicago in 1977, which he recalls ended his “eventful official link with the socialist world of East Europe” (p. 148). During this period, he also had a short stint in Geneva which allowed him to develop his links with the UNDP, which ultimately paved the way for a second career. Soon after in May 1979, he took premature retirement, leaving after 35 years of professional life. He was now the programme coordinator for the UNCTAD, based in Geneva and this allowed him to rekindle his relationship with East Europe until 1985, when he returned back to India. One of the highlights of this stint surely was when he took on the role of a priest and performed the marriage rites for one of his friends in Geneva; a story he often shared with relish.

For a conventional diplomat, Pran was more austere and radical in his personal life. As he recalls in his autobiography, he developed an “abhorrence for this ostentatious tamasha and meaningless jubilation” (p. 49) that surrounded elaborate engagements and wedding ceremonies. In this endeavour, he developed a friendship with Savitri (daughter of an uncle who was married to Pran’s father’s first cousin!), often acting as her mentor and encouraging her towards the pursuit of knowledge and education. He first noticed her in July 1941, as a young man discovering his own self, and by January 1947, they had eloped and had a civil ceremony in Delhi. Early reservations against this marriage were put aside by their families, and he remained with Savitri until she died in 2013. A spark in him went after that.

The Last Calling

After his retirement from work, he decided to embark on yet another career, but this time, it started as an unplanned script. It was in 1987, when he first started making frequent trips to the IIC, spending his days in the library and often using this as office space for his writing. Initially, he only ventured towards his expertise area and wrote on economic matters, but it was not long before his real passion emerged and he turned his gaze towards other subjects, which included his hometown Lahore, nautch girls, dance and music. Feedback from these early forays in small articles gave him confidence to continue with this newfound passion; although one of his earliest writings dates back to 1949, when he wrote ‘Problem of the Mother-in-Law’ which was published in Caravan magazine. His first full-length literary work was inevitably on Lahore, as he recalls: “My desire was to take the reader on a pilgrimage to my Lahore of a bygone era of peace and plenty” (p. 171). The idea for the book was actually conceived way back in 1963 in Hotel Astoria, Geneva. On his seventieth birthday he received the advance copy from the publisher of his first book, Lahore: A Sentimental Journey.

This journey led him to write prolifically on the era of the British Raj. Being a product of that era, he imbued the character of the Brown Sahib and carved out a niche for himself, focusing on the social and cultural history of the British Raj. His fascination for visual and performing arts led him to unearth a vivid and richer history, which he energised many around him with. During the last few years of his life, he reserved his love for K.L. Saigal, the “immortal singer and superstar” (p. 189). My own recollections of Pran were always of visiting him in Gurgaon, chatting at length while nibbling on namkeens, and with the nostalgia of 1940s and 1950s music playing in the background. Those days are no more nor are those, which is his own words read:   

“I belong to the vanishing generation of pre-partition days who were forced to leave their homeland but carried ‘Lahore’ in their hearts like the memory of a first love. Overpowered by nostalgia, we still recall the days when Lahore had attained the reputation of being the ‘Paris of the East’ where people of different communities live in harmony in the sunshine of their common heritage, historic bonds and flamboyant Punjabi culture.” (Carefree Days, p. 194).

Pakistan, Short Essays

Remembering Faiz: thirty-five years on…

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Faiz Majeed
Faiz Kamal Hasan
Faiz biography

When Faiz passed away at the age of 73, Dawn described him as:

The greatest Urdu poet of his time, Faiz became a legend in his lifetime for his intrepid struggle against what he himself once described as “the dark and dastardly superstitions of centuries untold”. He understood the agony of the dispossessed and the disinherited and he sang of them and for them to the last.

While these songs and poems need no introduction, he also wrote enduring prose. On his 35th death anniversary, pasted below are some selections:

‘The Role of the Artist’, Ravi (Lahore) 1982:

‘Who are we – we the writer, poets and artists and what can we contribute, if anything, to avert the moral calamities threatening mankind? We are the offspring, in the direct line of descent of the magicians and the sorcerers and music makers of old…They found for the hopes and fears of their people, for their dreams and longings, words and music that the people could not find for themselves. And by blending their collective will to a desired end, they would sometime make the dream come true…In our part of the world through long centuries…the magician of old became the post-mystic or the mystic poet, the forerunner of the modern humanist, who defied both emperor and priest to articulate the ills and afflictions of his fellow beings, to expose the injustices of their masters and their master’s collaborators, who taught them to believe in, and fight for, justice, beauty, goodness and truth, irrespective of personal loss and gain…So that is who we are, inheritors of this magic…And never was the power of this magic more devoutly to be wished than in the world of today when so many powerful agencies are at work to deny the validity of all ethical human values, to obliterate all refinements of human feeling…by extolling cynicism, insensitivity and brutishness as the hallmark of a he-man and a she-woman…’

Source: Coming Back Home: Selected Articles, Editorials and Interviews of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, compiled by Sheema Majeed, introduction by Khalid Hasan, Karachi: OUP, 2008, pp. 40-1.

 

‘The Writer’s Choice’:

‘Literature like science is a social activity…Literature unfolds in a similar fashion…the unexplored or dimly lit complexities of social reality, the given human situation of a given time. The impact…however, more insidious, more subtle and at the same time more direct…. The writer is directly manipulative and formative of the consciousness of the audience…He cannot plead, therefore, that he is unaware of, or unconcerned with, social implications…A writer may be tempted, coerced or bribed [by] vested interests to ignore, emasculate, or pervert the basic realities of social existence under various specious pretences, ‘pure’ literature, art for art’s sake, ‘pure’ entertainment etc., a mechanistic repudiation of these ‘purities’, however, poses another danger. In creative writing to ignore the demands and essentials of artistic creation can be inexcusable, although perhaps not as reprehensible, as the moral and social imperatives of reality. It is but another form of escapism…There is still considerable confusion in most African and Asian countries regarding the function of literature, the role of the writer and the modalities of literary expression. This confusion is partly a legacy of the colonial past, partly a recent import as a product of neo-colonialism…Whatever his social status, his intellect and education will automatically place him in the ranks of the elite minority…He will be called upon to make a choice of his audience – to write for his own class or to transcend the class barriers…’

Source: Coming Back Home: Selected Articles, Editorials and Interviews of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, compiled by Sheema Majeed, introduction by Khalid Hasan, Karachi: OUP, 2008, pp. 43-4.

 

‘Decolonizing Literature’:

‘When the process of colonial occupation got underway in Asia and Africa the literature and languages of the subject peoples were among the first victims of foreign cultural aggression. Its impact hit different communities in different ways depending on their level of social and cultural development, thus confronting each one of them with a different set of dilemmas in their quest for identity after liberation…(1) The study of Asian and African literatures should be incorporated in the relevant schemes of higher learning…Even language teaching in European languages need no longer be confined to European authors. (2) …publication and marketing of important Afro-Asian writings in still the monopoly of a few Western publishing houses…such publications are only marginal to their main business interests…The high cost of Western publications is another inhibiting factor…Efforts are needed for a re-orientation of the publication trade in Asian and African countries. (3) For many Asian and African writers, ‘international recognition’ still means some notice by the Western media. Some of them are thus induced to set their sights while writing on Western rather than their national readership…There are enough nations in Asia and Africa to make any writer ‘international’ without any Western certification…This needs some rectification not only in the outlook of the writer, but also of his readers’.

Source: Coming Back Home: Selected Articles, Editorials and Interviews of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, compiled by Sheema Majeed, introduction by Khalid Hasan, Karachi: OUP, 2008, pp. 49-52.