Musharraf Ali Farooqi's Favorite Urdu Writers

Has Musharraf Ali Farooqi’sBetween Clay and Dust gotten you excited about other Pakistani and Indian literature? The novelist and preeminent Urdu-English translator shares his top ten recommended Urdu writers, both classic and contemporary.

1. Afzal Ahmed Syed

Afzal Ahmed Syed remains for me Urdu's greatest living poet and prose-stylist. A selection from his poetry Rococo and Other Worlds is available from Wesleyan University Poetry Series.

2. Muhammad Khalid Akhtar

Humorist, essayist, novelist, and travel-writer Muhammad Khalid Akhtar was one of Urdu's great men of letters who lived his later life in near anonymity. A writer's writer.

3. Shafiqur Rahman

Shafiqur Rahman was the master of light humor. I grew up with his books and still long for their innocent world, which was not unlike the world of Wodehouse in the sense that it was both unique and familiar, but ultimately unreal.

4. Ibn-e Insha

Few writers in Urdu possess the mastery on fluid prose like Insha did. He was an essayist, travel-writer, poet, and translator.

5. Khalid Toor

Khalid Toor's Kani Nikah is one of the two most memorable novellas I have read in Urdu. Read this review of his other novella, Mirchi.

6. Abul Fazal Siddiqi

Siddiqi has captured the feudal world of Northern India in his novels and short stories. One of Urdu's great writers but by no means celebrated enough. Read more about him here.

7. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

The highly acclaimed critic, translator, and fiction-writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqi has produced the best novel written in the Urdu language, Kai Chaand Thay Sar-e Aasman (The Mirror of Beauty). Do read this review.

8. Naiyer Masud

The master of the haunting and the abstract, Urdu scholar and short story writer Naiyer Masud will be remembered in Urdu literature as one of the great masters of the short story genre.

9. Farhatullah Baig

An essayist and humorist, he is rightly considered one of the classic writers of modern Urdu prose.

10. Ghulam Abbas

One of my favorite Urdu short story writers, whose plot and structures were masterful.

Listening to the Courtesans

Musharraf Ali Farooqi'sBetween Clay and Dust tells the story of a culture in decline. Through the inner turmoil of two protagonists—a wrestler and a courtesan—we witness the private tragedies of two once-revered artisans whose skills are no longer in demand and who no longer enjoy a privileged position in their society. Though the cataclysmic Partition of India and Pakistan in 1948 is the historical backdrop, these characters are above all casualties of time and change. In bringing these characters to life, Ali Farooqi draws on rich traditions that span the subcontinent but which will be unfamiliar to most readers in the West, and even many younger people in South Asia today. 

Courtesans (we will explore traditional wrestling in another post) have existed in Indian culture since at least the Vedic times (1000 BC). Gohar Jan, one the novel's protagonists, is a tawa'if, an elite female entertainer who excels at music and dance, poetry, and social etiquette. Their homes, called kothas, were both brothels and salons.They embodied both courtly refinement and erotic allure. Ali Farooqi writes:

Gohar Jan was an accomplished singer whose raga recitals were renowned. Once a celebrated beauty, she was known for her haughty airs and capricious treatment of her lovers. Like other prominent tawa’ifs of her time, she maintained her own kotha where trainee girls or nayikas received instruction in the arts of musical entertainment. Gohar Jan’s kotha in the inner city was the largest and most famed.

A popular Indian film of the early 1970s, Pakeezah, captures the sounds of the kotha and the complex position of the tawa'if in a society that honors, fetishizes, and scorns them.

For a more authentic sound, the haunting recordings of Gauhar Jan are among the first recorded music from Far East. First captured in 1902 in a makeshift studio in a Kolkata hotel room by American and English engineers, the recordings were labeled "First Dancing Girl, Calcutta." Her real name was Angelina Yeoward. Her father was an Armenian Jew who married an Indian, and they trained their daughter in music and dance from an early age. Between 1902 and 1920, she recorded 600 records in ten different languages.

Though the tawa'if have mostly faded from fashion, their musical innovations and traditions have had an enduring effect on classical Indian culture. Kathak, a major form of dance from North India, has a strong connection to the courtesans. It is a form of narrative dance, of storytelling through movement. In the kothas, the once devotional form shifted to a kind of light popular entertainment.

In Between Clay and Dust, Ali Farooqi captures the mystique of the courtesan, their stewardship of tradition, as well as the harsh realities for the women who lived that life, despite the glamour and status. He writes:

The young men frequented the kothas to learn the bearings of polite society, the older men to socialize, or rekindle the memories of their lost youth. Whenever one of them fell in love with a tawaif or a nayika, his affairs provided a spectacle and entertainment to the rest of them, until he was cured of his passion. Those who could not survive it did not return. A tawaif who fell in love had only two choices: she could either put an end to the association, or leave the kotha to pursue a life outside—if one was offered her. Implicit in the latter choice was the understanding that she would never be readmitted to the kotha if the promise of the new life failed her. There was a universe of failed unions, dreams, and abandoned hopes that started in the kothas and trailed off into the anonymity of the city’s dark alleys. It was said—with some justification—that only the fickle survived in the kothas, and only the pitiless prospered.

The Metaphysics of Pakistan

A fantastic image from our friend and author Musharraf Ali Farooqi, who writes:

"A picture from Pakistan which perfectly captures the poetry of the place. Also the metaphysics."

We recommend that you follow Musharraf on Twitter and Facebook for more images and insights. 

Musharraf also gave a lovely interview to The Rumpus recently, discussing his recent Restless release, Between Clay and Dust. He tells them:

For me this novel was about the common culture of the Indian subcontinent as it existed before the Partition. The Partition does plays a part in how the resultant abolition of princely states affected the fortunes of the two artists, and how there is a breakdown of values once the society’s common values are questioned by a political event. This vagueness allowed readers in both India and Pakistan to imagine the story in their own immediate worlds. I’ve heard from readers in both countries, and it is gratifying for me that Indian readers think the story takes place in India, and Pakistan readers think it takes place in Pakistan.

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