Other Days

Author: Arshad Waheed

Publisher: Jumhoori Publications

Pages: 312

Price: Rs 800

n the subcontinent’s history there have been many periods of upheaval and sociopolitical turmoil that coincide with creative vigour in art and literature. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Bulleh Shah, Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib and in the 20th century many including Manto witnessed great upheaval and mass trauma and wrote about it. At its birth Pakistan witnessed one of the biggest mass migrations and the ensuing violence. The effect is deep seated in the psyche of the first generation of Pakistan. The demons created by that experience have continued to haunt Pakistan and have resulted in a lack of peace and stability. Furthermore, socioeconomic changes, including urbanisation and the breakdown of community cohesiveness, have created a perpetual sense of rootlessness. Arshad Waheed’s uprooted characters live through this storm and struggle to anchor themselves. This perpetual lack of belonging severs the established order of relationships and creates a void.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the social and political chaos and disorder was a substrate that attracted the external military invasions from Iran and Afghanistan. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, the chaos and anarchy was indigenous as if society was at war with itself. Waheed’s novel captures this complexity with artistic finesse.

The novel documents an era starting with the 70s and ending after the turn of the century. His language is simple and friendly. The story flows smoothly but not blandly. His characters are representing generations living through a disorienting transitional period with resulting confusions, longing for an identity, and pain. They question the established value system of the previous generation but struggle to create a new value system commensurate with their time. The distress caused by this quest translates into attempts of establishing connections with the groups that appear to better represent the zeitgeist.

We hear the echo of the literary and philosophical debates of the time in conversations between the characters. They question the wisdom and sanctioned behaviour propagated in local classic literature. As an example, in one of the discussions the group discusses Heer Waris Shah and Heer’s dilemma: Heer has attempted to sever the bonds with the tradition symbolised in connection with her family but does not sustain that and returns to her family for approval after eloping with Ranjha. One of Waheed’s characters disapproves of the ambivalence shown by Heer. Her life is consumed by efforts to avoid a similar fate for herself. She pays the price of rebelling against the orthodoxy. The price is a loss of connections with her past world. The pain of living by her own morals continues to chase her, and her relationship with her new identity is never comfortable and smooth. A debate continues to rage in her soul. The search for new forms of relationships takes her to a wilderness. Finally, she loses her resolve and decisiveness.

The quest for identity is a recurring theme in the lives of many of the characters in the novel. The context could be different; migration from a village, country, being offspring of an Asian migrant in the west, or disillusionment with the revolutionary political movement. The diverse ways that they deal with this void makes the novel an interesting study of the impact of massive socio-cultural change.

At another level, in the face of newfound freedom, society is struggling for an identity. The old order is gone and there is a lack of consensus about the shape of the new order. The fear and anxiety resulting from this uncertainty has sprung everyone into an action. There are too many solutions to the ill-defined problem. This has caused multiple fault lines and in the absence of a space for reflection and conversation, violence has become a defining feature of the time. This is reflected in the novel. Some of the violence is underpinned and justified by high-sounding ideals but others are devoid of any apparent justification. All the violence is absurd but there are different levels of absurdity. One of the characters looses his life through a murder in the most absurd way. The bullet that hits him is not meant for him. This happens after he has attempted to connect with a past in his imagination. He discovers in that journey that the whole world he is yearning for is uprooted and no one can see any value and meaning in his search. He is lonely in his quest and no one is able to relate with his purpose. This gap in empathy engenders suspicion among the onlookers. Paradoxically this experience is illuminating for him and results in a coherence in the disjointed story he has been trying to write. The sense is born out of non-sense.

Violence, massive sociocultural turmoil and confusion about identity results in suspiciousness and paranoia. The scary web of these interconnected phenomena feed each other and assume an existence of their own. Everyone is trying to make sense of what is happening. Some do it with strong belief in an ideology and conviction to a cause and others by living in the moment. No one succeeds, all with different levels of awareness of their failure. This is the spirit of our time and its nuances are captured creatively and with an artistic dexterity in the book.

The writing style is deceptively simple. The ambience is familiar to many of us and characters chime with the experience of many in our age. Waheed has a grip on the technique of the modern novel. He is able to connect his reader with the internal and external world of his characters.

The reviewer is a poet, researcher, Senior Research Fellow at University College London, UK. He can be accessed at ayubawan@hotmail.com