An inner wakefulness that directs the dream
Learning is an eternal quest, and the path of seeking will hopefully lead the individual to “truth”. Guided by this philosophy, Muzaffar Ali is perennially in learning mode. His varied pursuits have ranged from vintage cars, painting and filmmaking to poetry, music, couture, Sufism and social work. In his autobiography, Zikr: In the Light and Shade of Time, the septuagenarian eloquently plays out his journey in a linear fashion.
The book can be divided into three parts. The first comprises chapters in which Ali traces his royal lineage, unlocks his childhood memories of growing up in
Kotwara House, Lucknow, reflects on the humanism of his father Raja Syed Sajid Husain Ali and their shared penchant for cars and horses, recalls summer vacations in Nainital, the enduring romance with poetry cultivated at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), his years as an advertising professional in Calcutta, and the remarkable years in Bombay working with Air India.
Next, he writes about his filmmaking career and offers a glimpse of how his unreleased film Zooni, on the life of the Kashmiri poet Habba Khatoon, was affected by the 1989 insurgency in Kashmir. After that setback, Ali found solace in Sufism.
The last phase of the book eulogises the lives of Sufi saints such as Rumi, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Hazrat Nizamuddin
Auliya and his disciple Amir Khusrau, among others.
Every chapter begins with a verse or a couplet by an Urdu luminary such as Mirza Ghalib, Faiz Ahmad Faiz or Bahadur Shah Zafar. Poetry is such an intrinsic part of Ali’s thinking that every other anecdote invokes the poems of the aforementioned greats or of more modern ones such as Rahi Masoom Raza, Shahryar, Javed Kamaal and Makhdoom Mohiuddin.
The author opens up about his weakness for trusting people blindly, which was first pointed out to him by his father. His wife Meera and daughter Sama too continue to caution him about this. This gullibility has made him prone to exploitation on a few occasions. Ali laments having to part with his favourite car, the Isotta Fraschini, which he was tricked into selling to a car dealer.
The Leftist ideals of his then-wife, the politician and activist Subhashini, helped him see the meaninglessness of such symbols of ostentatious living. These were ideas that paved the way to his first film, Gaman. But Ali found himself taken for a ride once again when he forayed into politics and contested elections from Lucknow. This time, the oceanic love of Rumi helped him retreat from the muck of caste and communalism.
His compassionate nature has led him to form several longlasting relationships. He reminisces about the lip-smacking delicacies of his cook Tahir who stayed with him until his death, the graphic designer Jolly Barua who designed the graphics and posters for his films Gaman and Anjuman, and the poet Shahryar, who became his default lyricist.
Ali has extensively used the local artisans and craftsmen of Kotwara and Lucknow for his films and has developed a sustained employment model for them through the initiatives of his couture brand, House of Kotwara.
Muzaffar Ali now heads the New Delhi-based Rumi Foundation and has been organising the Annual World Sufi Music Festival, Jahan-e-Khusrau, since 2001. His plans to make an international film on Rumi with acclaimed Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro met with casting hurdles.
“Working with stars doesn’t allow dreamers like me to dream,” he says. But then, Ali was schooled in the pitfalls of the star system early in his filmmaking career when he approached Amitabh Bachchan to play the lead role in Gaman. Bachchan, who knew him from their time together in Calcutta, had con
fessed then that he couldn’t risk drifting away from his popular image as a fighter.
Although the world of moving images might not have done complete justice to his potential, the author has been channelling his creativity into painting, music and couture and has sur
rendered himself to Sufism. In the end, readers come away with the impression that Muzaffar Ali is like a river with multiple streams flowing into an ocean of beatitude.