Friday 19 July 2013

The Blind Mans Garden

Author – Nadeem AslamPublisher –Random House India
First publication – 2013
Rating – Great read
I said great read but there is a caveat...” ONCE ONLY”. The book is just too heavy... physically and mentally.  The writer has strung his magic though many inter-weaning incidents of the denizens of a country which though not at war, is fraught with war.
Anyway, the setting is Pakistan and I picked up this book because I wanted to know more about my neighbour. To get to know a people socially, a story is the best way.  After all fiction borrows from truth.
Author - Nadeen Aslam
The story is of a Pakistani household headed by Rohan. An idealist who, with his wife Sofia started a school where the glories of Islam would be taught along with modern education.  Pakistan is a country of strange beliefs – there is the bird pardoner; he traps birds. People pay him to set the birds free due to the belief that the helpless bird will say a prayer for it’s liberator. An ascetic goes around the country wearing chains. People add their own chinks to the chain. These chinks are their prayers. The holy man prays that the peoples wishes are fulfilled. As his prayer is answered that chink falls off.  Well beliefs are beliefs. The notion of the sacrificial lamb is not new. The Christians worship Jesus for agreeing to pay for humankind’s sins with his life. Its a cruel world!
This bipolar compassionate cruelty is in Rohan too. He withholds his wife’s medicines and tears her paintings while begging her to ask forgiveness from Allah for drawing life forms. This results in her premature death. Even after her death he prays and fasts that she might not bear the tortures of hell; never thinking he has erred.
All this human suffering seems mundane when fighting breaks out in Afghanistan and the Muslim world is moved to respond to this western threat. Termed Jihad – Holy war, the youth from Islamic countries are roused by their mullahs to fight for and alongside their Afghan brothers. Jeo, Rohan’s son and Mikal, Rohan’s adopted son decide to go to Afghanistan.  Jeo is a medical student and wants to treat the wounded in ground zero. Mikal only wants to ensure that Jeo is safe. However, the people who arrange for their transit into Afghanistan arrange for them to be sold to the enemy due to a grudge against Rohan. To complicate matters, Jeo’s wife Naheed was Mikal’s sweetheart before their marriage. Jeo discovers this while they are being held prisoner by an Afghani warlord. The camp is attacked by Americans and Jeo’s dying thoughts are of suspicion about his wife and friend.
Even in death, the good husband suspects his good wife!
Mikal is captured, he escapes and is captured again by Afghani warlords. From here begins his journey from one warlord to another searching for Jeo. The warlords sell captives as mercenaries to fight their wars, sometimes to do their sundries and sometimes for plain cash. Mikal is again captured by the Americans. This time he is interrogated and tortured but he relents only when his captives lead him to believe that they have Jeo. Mikal admits to everything that his captives ask him to save Jeo.
Ultimately  he is set free but with no knowledge of  Jeo. Mikal is confused whether the Americans have Jeo or have killed him or are taking him away to kill him. Survival instincts at high alert, Mikal reacts instinctively when his American captors turn around to free him. He kills both of them and flees. He gets asylum in a safehouse run by the family of his fellow inmate at the American prison.
However, America does not forgive. A manhunt is on for Mikal. One of the soldiers on this mission is the felled American’s brother.
Meanwhile Jeo’s body reaches home.  The family plunges into grief and Naheed dons a widow’s garb. The communalists who have taken over the school run by Rohan introduce new laws like restricting the entry of woman in graveyards.
The same fanatics capture the missionary school in which Basie, Mikal’s brother and Yasmin, Mikal’s wife and Jeo’s sister teach.  The communalists want to close secular centres of learning. Basie is killed by the captors in the encounter.
Rohan haplessly fights for a way to connect with his dead son when he decided to go on a daredevil trip with the bird pardoner to free his son from Afghani warlords. The price for the boy is too high and the atrocities in the prison too much to leave the poor boy. Rohan trades the young boy’s freedom for his wife Sophia’s ruby found on Jeo’s person at the time of his death. But for the affronity  of refusing to shake the warlord’s hand, the warlord crushes Rohan’s eyes.  This was Rohan’s last stand against the non-tolerance that has taken over his country. A non-tolerance from which he himself is not untouched when, he expels a student for being a prostitute’s son; withholds his wife’s medicines so she asks for Allah’s forgiveness. Such brand of exclusionism was practiced by his generation, the next generation has taken it further. Where is the line between right and wrong? It is only in one’s mind.
At this point Mikal re-enters the  household. Mikal at last learns of Jeo’s demise. He also gets to know that an unscrupulous man Sharif Sharif who already has three wives and is double Naheed’s age has spoken for her hand and has agreed to pay for Rohan’s eye operation expenses.  Desperate that Naheed not be snatched from him a second time, he takes his proposal to Tara, Naheed’s mother.  She had rejected Mikal’s proposal the first time in favour of Jeo and this time too, she does not see any security for her daughter with Mikal. Naheed and Mikal however enter into a physical relationship.
Local peoples fear and hatred for America
Suddenly, Mikal’s friend who gave him refuge comes seeking him. The Americans had stormed into the hideout. He is on the run and asks Mikal to deliver money to his newly married sister- Salomi, so she can start a new life. The sister was married to a Taliban leader and is on the run. Mikal cannot refuse one who has given him refuge and sets out to look for Salomi.  He can find no trace of the sister as the Americans completely razed the safe house. He comes across an almost dead American solider and takes him prisoner in the hope that he might be able to tell him about Salomi’s whereabouts.  Unknown to him, the soldier is the brother of American Mikal had killed; and is out for revenge. The people however, want nothing to do with an American and want o kill Mikal too for harbouring one. Mikal risks his life numerous times to save the American and in the end loses it to save him.  In the chaos of his rescue by his countrymen, the American could not to keep track of the Pakistani who risked his life several times to keep him alive. 
Back home, Naheed delivers Mikal’s baby but the family covers the truth and lest out that Yasmin, also with Basie’s baby at the same time, had delivered twins. The brothers grow up side by side as the woman and Rohan watch over them.
Naheed studies to become a teacher,  Yasmin begins to teach at Aligarh secondary and High school... and life goes on.
At the end of the story, all I could think of is “How can these people still be sane?”  Through all mindless cruelty, redrawing of moral and social codes, human merchandising, wars, bombing of towns.... But flowers still continue to flower and guardians still watch over their wards in never ending hope.
I contrasted this story to the teenage American saga I read earlier “The perks of being a wallflower”.  There are demons everywhere. From within or without. It is the individual who makes a choice. To succumb or rise.