Paddling through the past

Ours is a conversational biography, Javed Sahib. I’m thinking about an autobiography that you might write one day.

I prefer the idea of a memoir, to write about specific events. I think talking about I, me, myself, is not important. If you reflect on life and find insights into why you did certain things—that’s worth talking about.

When I ask film practitioners about whether they would write an autobiography, they often give the same answer: ‘We can’t tell the truth because it might hurt too many people, so it’s better not to write at all.’ Do you think people in India avoid autobiographies for fear of offending others?

It’s easy to judge people, but we must put ourselves in their shoes. If someone writes about an extramarital affair, for example, it may be damaging, because today the person they’re talking about could be married with children or grandchildren and have a certain image in society. Or suppose someone behaved in a petty way towards you, and time has passed, should you dig up old bitter feelings—dig up those graves and find skeletons? Should you do that? There is no one in the world who has not made serious mistakes in their lives. How to own up to this? How to take responsibility? And when?

The two biographies I have personally liked, one is Mahatma Gandhi’s—I think he has spoken so truthfully about himself. Objectivity of that kind is difficult and inconvenient. I don’t think most people have the guts to write as honestly. Then there’s Maxim Gorky’s My Childhood, In the World and My Universities. They are brilliant books. I was only thirteen when I first read Gorky’s novel, Mother, and later I read his Tales of Italy.

What about the Urdu poets? Are there many autobiographies in Urdu?

There is Josh Malihabadi’s Yaadon ki Baraat—it’s not exactly an autobiography, it’s more of a memoir. Manto did not write an autobiography, although he has written several articles about his work and has talked about his life. The great Urdu writer Qurratulain Hyder has written a fascinating autobiography titled Kaar-e Jahan Daraz Hai. It’s such a fine portrait of a family.

I’ve mentioned Sabir Dutt to you. He was a distant cousin of Sunil Dutt’s and a close confidant of Sahir Sahib. He used to live in Sahir Sahib’s house and looked after his affairs. In Sabir Dutt’s magazine Fann aur Shaksiyat [Art and Personality], he has highlighted the work of several authors. He had also edited a special issue entitled: ‘Aap-beeti Number’ [autobiography/in first person] that featured some 150 writers and poets writing about their lives in 10-15 pages. Obviously, they are not complete autobiographies, but they are first-person accounts.

My pyschoanalyst brother Salman once commented something on the lines of ‘When you read those accounts, you realise that everybody was wronged at some point in their lives. Now, if everybody was wronged, then who was doing wrong to them? If everybody is a victim, then who is the victimiser? The fact is each one of us is a victim and a victimiser.’

That’s an interesting thought.

Sometimes, I wonder how thoughts are formed in our brain. Some people believe that ideas and thoughts are sent to us by an unknown force, then why don’t they come to us in Latin or Chinese? Such esoteric ideas are nothing but superstition. I believe when our conscious, pre-conscious and subconscious mind work together, a new idea takes birth, which takes even us by surprise.

I think the mind is one big house. Our immediate memory and thoughts—the conscious mind is like the drawing room or perhaps an office, while we have other rooms, attics, basements and bedrooms, and even empty rooms. Maybe even a library.

Carl Jung wrote something to the effect that the psyche was made up of many interacting systems—something like the rooms in the mind that you speak of.

I hope he did not also say there’s a no man’s land between our conscious and subconscious mind. [smiles]

The conscious mind does not always help us when we’re creating something. When I’m writing a song, I listen to the tune many times and go to sleep for an hour or so. I find the song words come to me more easily when I wake up. I have renewed energy because my unconscious mind has been allowed to work.

Poetry or any creative act takes place in this no man’s land between our conscious and subconscious mind. All art is a paradox. Art means getting lost in your imagination and emotions, but you need craft along with those instincts. Craft means being objective, judicious, and sometimes even manipulative. All these things happen simultaneously. I’ll borrow Ghalib’s words to describe what I think you need to create art:

Saadgi-o purkaari bekhudi-o-hushyaari

[Simplicity, intricacy,

forgetfulness, awareness]

Besides Ghalib, who are the writers you most admire?

I’m very impressed with the work of Krishan Chander, Qurratulain Hyder, Ismat Chughtai, Manto and the Marathi playwriter Vijay Tendulkar. They were undoubtedly amazing writers. The books of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Balzac, and in non-fiction, Richard Dawkins and Yuval Noah Harari are also great. I loved Oliver Twist by Dickens and admired the work of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. I have a special place in my heart for Victor Hugo. Besides a formidable talent, he was the first author to fight for the copyright of writers.

I told you how it was thanks to Amma that I came to hear of Krishan Chander in my childhood. When I grew older, I became a big fan of his. At seventeen or eighteen, there were three people in this country whom I admired the most: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishan Chander and Dilip Kumar.

Years later, I even told Krishan Chander and Dilip Kumar about this. I have a photograph of the three of us sitting together. I was very fortunate to have developed personal relations with Krishan Chander. I spent hours with him and have even read some of his manuscripts. I noticed there was not a single word struck through or replaced by the author in some seventy or eighty pages. It’s remarkable.

He was a very shy and reticent person in personal life. You could never guess that here was a man who could write in such a romantic and passionate manner and with such an easy flow, poetic expressions and great wit. You never felt that if you met him. He could not speak three sentences in flow—he stammered, left a sentence midway and started another. He was a bit awkward, but undoubtedly a giant of a writer.

What did you like about his work?

I liked his tremendous sensitivity. His ideology was so progressive, his diction was magical. Ali Sardar Jafri once said that Krishan Chander was a dishonest poet who was hiding in a crowd of prose writers.

That’s a lovely description. Who were the other writers you got to know?

I knew Ismat Chughtai and Qurratulain Hyder well. They had very different personalities. The vivacious Ismat Chughtai was my mother’s very dear friend. We were like family and whenever we came to Bombay, we stayed in her flat. She lived on the first floor of Indus Court on A Road, Churchgate, bang opposite Jai Hind College.

Everyone called her ‘Ismat Apa’. She was witty and intelligent with a sharp insight. She was a grounded lady with impeccable values—a true feminist. She has been translated into English and other languages. Her greatness is now dawning on people. The kind of progressive thinking this woman had in her time was astounding. Her heroines are not perfect people. They are liars, cheats, two-timers, they’d sleep around, even steal, but you fell in love with those women. They were no devis and Madonnas in her stories. They were real people with an ordinary sense of morality. Yet you could tell the core of her characters was different and worth respecting, which is a great achievement. Ismat Chughtai never sympathised with her characters. Perhaps, she believed sympathising is deliberately humiliating a human being. Her writing touches your heart.

Her conversations, her short stories and novels were not different from the person she was. She talked the way she wrote and wrote the way she talked. She was the opposite of Krishan Chander. Ismat Chughtai rejected the idea that there was a planned thought or craft behind her prose. She did not take herself too seriously and would brush off any questions about her writing technique or her craft.

When I was 50 years old and an established writer in the film industry, Jai Hind College asked me to give a speech to their students at their annual function. I told them that just across this narrow road, opposite your gate, there’s a building called Indus Court, and I used to come there when I was five years old. It has taken me forty-five years to cross this road!

What about Qurratulain Hyder?

Her friends called her ‘Ainee Apa’. She was a monumental writer. It’s a pity that the world does not know her. She has written some very good novels. Her Aag ka Darya [River of Fire] can be compared to the world’s great epic novels. The book was released when she was 30 or 31. What a novel! The story starts from the Gupta period and ends at the Partition of India.

(Excerpted with permission from Javed Akhtar & Nasreen Munni Kabir’s ‘Talking Life’; published by Westland Books)