Mysterious, melodic Urdu to tantalise
THE next episode of Game of Thrones does not excite me as much as waiting for Muhammad Umar Memon’s selection of The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told. The 372-page book will roll off the presses late next month.
The 25 pieces of hand-picked short fiction will be in English. My great wish is to read them in the original. I fell in love with Urdu as a child, listening to the melodic, operatic manner in which Aunty Beebee scolded Khalida.
The seven-year-old was a porcelain doll with a pink tongue and the scent of jasmine in her wispy auburn hair. In my mind, she was the one true goddess of beauty in my beloved Bangladesh Market district in Chatsworth.
When she was naughty, her mother would throw rose petals at her. My five-year-old heart fell head over heels in love with Khalida. However, it was her mother’s mellifluous Urdu that still tinkles in my ear.
Imagine my joy one mild winter’s afternoon in Delhi 20 years ago when I saw a slim volume in a busy book shop window. The cover carried the name Khalida Asghar.
I rushed into Balraj Bahri Malhotra’s iconic Khan Market store and asked after the author. It turned out she was born in Lahore and there was little chance I could meet her on the other side of the chapati curtain.
One of the stories in that volume was The Wagon, now reproduced by Prof Memon in the new anthology. It is about three men from a neighbouring village who diligently watched the mysterious redness of the sunset from the Ravi Bridge, looking over the marshes and the river.
The rich imagery and unpredictable turns in the prose had me sold on Urdu literature. I recall that Zakhiya was the wife of the main character. That sticks in my mind, as it is also the name of the wife of the great Urdu scholar and poet, Ustad Saffee Siddiqui, who I had promised to go to for language classes.
Alas, that did not materialise. Each time I pay homage at Brook Street cemetery in Durban’s city centre, I whisper to the master that I wish I had taken him up on his offer.
The advance publicity from Memon’s publisher promises the Marxist Munshi Premchand’s masterpiece The Shroud from the 1930s.
There is also Naiyer Masud’s Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire, which is quite a salacious title. Saadat Hasan Manto writes about the horror of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Laajwanti also features in the book.
In the days before television, we would trek to Ajmeri and Madressa arcades and Victoria Street on a Saturday, in the hunt for just-released vinyls from record bars like Kazula’s. The anticipation I had for The Manhattans’ Kiss and Say Goodbye is as urgent as the one I feel for Memon’s book.
Find Higgins on Facebook as The Bookseller of Bangladesh, at #Hashtagbooks in Reservoir Hills and Books@ Antiquecafe in Windermere.