Ashok Chopra sees India and Pakistan as still one seamless entity. That is not to say he does not acknowledge the creation of both countries in 1947. He is too astute for such wishful extremism. He has crossed the border from India to Pakistan and back again all too often to not be reminded every time of the barbed reality of a border that snakes from Kashmir to Kutch. To him, the only borders that matter are the borders of his mind, and these are limitless.
Ashok belongs to a diminishing genus in India that can still distinguish between Faiz and Faraz, that can appreciate the poignancy writhing in Munir Niazi’s lament ‘Hamesha Der Karta Hoon Main’ and that can tell whether the khatais are from Lahore’s Khalifa Bakery or from some other taste-alike. He belongs to a rare species that can keep abreast of Pakistani politics and Islam without weakening his own religious convictions or his Indianness.
Memories of Fire Ashok Chopra Penguin/Viking, New Delhi 2018 420 pages
His latest book Memories of Fire (2018) is a hexagram of his mind in which his imagination flies free from corner to corner, across time, across borders. He speaks through the voices of his forcefully etched characters. He experiences the turmoil of political events and traumas in both India and Pakistan – the division of the Punjab first by Radcliffe and then by Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the emergence of the renegade Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the desecration of Darbar Sahib in Amritsar, Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh guards and then the crimson revenge perpetrated on Sikhs in cities that had last seen blood in the street during the events of 1857. He is equally sensitive to Pakistan’s political quirkiness that oscillates between confusion, chaos, murder and military mayhem.
Ashok Chopra’s skill lies in his ability to weave a story that tests the tensile strength of contemporary events and attitudes pulling against traditional determination siding with history.
Memories of Fire can be said to have multiple heroes and a few heroines. In the main, five young men provide the pentacle of interest: Deepak Kumar, an intellectual with a smouldering passion for English literature; Balbir Singh, a Sikh who fulfils his father’s ambition to become a FRCS and then vapourises it by turning his back on his family and settling down in London with a Chinese immigrant; Syed Reza Khan, a Pakistani bureaucrat-cum-aesthete; Radhe Shyam Upapadhay, the hapless son of a staid Chartered Accountant from Rasoolpur who then finds himself in prison for an act of unspeakable compassion; and Vijay Thakur, dull as a child who grows up in a dilapidated haveli.
Chopra belongs to a rare species that can keep abreast of Pakistani politics and Islam without weakening his own religious convictions or his Indianness
Other characters stroll across the pages: the avuncular Brother Walshe who taught all five when they were his students in St Edward’s School near Simla; the generous and understanding Bansi Bua who has a place in every home and sees Ram in every Rahim and humanism in every religion; Khemkaran Busari, a Bishnoi from Jodhpur; Adarsh the photographer from Chandigarh; and the uncontrollably priapic Balli Singh who claimed that he had bedded 500 women and could show his album containing clippings of their pubic hair to prove it.
Two characters dominate the book. The first Vijay Thakur – at school ‘as thick as the desk he sat upon’ – uses his natural gifts of expression by winning the national essay-writing prize. He can do nothing, though, to arrest the reversal of his family’s’ fortunes nor reverse the job-lot sale of the antiques in his family haveli. That haveli, we discover, had more than sentimental value for Vijay. It was where he was seduced by the buxom maid Rani. She is not only earthy but worldly-wise – and too sharp not to realise that their liaison is doomed. She leaves. He remains, wedded to her memory. One day, by chance, during a stop at a dhaba in Katarpur, he spots a young boy whose features are undeniably similar to his. Of course, he is the son from Rani. Vijay traces her and with her permission, he adopts the boy. In time the boy from the dhaba makes better by graduating in Hotel Management from Switzerland.
The core of the book is the tender relationship between one of the St. Edward’s students – the Hindu Radhey Shyam and a Muslim teacher Aneeze Karim who joins the school and then provides him with the sort of education that parents fear.
Although Ashok Chopra might have been tempted to narrate the relationship between Radhe Shyam and Aneeze through the device of Radhe Shyam’s prison diary, he succumbs to the genteel, lilting movements as their relationship moves through the swings of initial passion, rejection by both their very orthodox families, the sublimity of their married life, until the tragic denouement of Aneeze’s death and Radhe Shyam’s submissive incarceration.
Chopra’s narrative is grouted deep in sensitivity. Buy the book if only to read the description of the 97-year-old Brother Walshe on his retirement sorting through a lifetime of possessions. Or the reaction of Seth Raja Ram at seeing the Darbar Sahib after the havoc caused by Operation Blue Star. Or the lyrical passage when Radhe Shyam and Aneeze tour the Chambal Valley:
“After a ten minute rest, they walked along the river to the embarkation point. The boat man drew the boat close to her. By now the sun was setting over the horizon, changing colours and then settling down to a fiery orange. A few clouds that floated in the evening sky were touched by it, in a variety of shades that were a marvel to behold. Flights of birds in tight military formations streaked across the sky, all homeward bound. A more serene and sylvan setting was difficult to imagine.”
Memories of Fire is undeniably a love story. It is the love story between the author and his characters. For only the deepest and truest of emotions could have created such finely etched images of kinship, camaraderie and enduring friendship. Ashok Chopra has allowed us to watch them set slowly, gradually in amber.
