Silent Life: Memoirs of a Writer

Chaman Nahal

Description

From the small town of Sialkot in pre-Partition Punjab, through the bustling streets of Delhi, to the scholarly environs of Cambridge and the bistros of Turin - Chaman Nahal walks us gently through his life. A life rich in literary scholarship and discipline, but equally in humour and a cynical eye capable of looking as critically at himself as at the follies and foibles of other human beings. If his 'Rules' for subjects as varied as writing a full-length book while coping with a fulltime job, fighting depression or even addiction to drink, bring a smile to one's lips, his achievements as writer, teacher and litterateur, often in the face of great odds, can only induce respect. Nahal's delightfully candid accounts of his encounters with Nirad Chaudhuri, the great Sir Vidia, Manohar Malgonkar and others; his diatribes against the tardiness and indiscipline that marks so much of 21st century India; and his frank appraisal of the trials and tribulations he has faced as an Indian writer in English, both at home and abroad, make this a memoir significant in today's literary context, as well as an absorbing cameo of an earlier time and place.

Sujets

• Literature
• Azadi
• Non Fiction (song)
• Biography
• Manohar Malgonkar
• Khushwant Singh
• Memoir
• Writer
• Autobiography
• India
• OpenOffice.org Writer

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940661
• Langue: English

Extrait

About the book
From the small town of Sialkot in pre-Partition Punjab, through the bustling streets of Delhi, to the scholarly environs of Cambridge and the bistros of Turin - Chaman Nahal walks us gently through his life. A life rich in literary scholarship and discipline, but equally in humour and a cynical eye capable of looking as critically at himself as at the follies and foibles of other human beings. If his 'Rules' for subjects as varied as writing a full-length book while coping with a fulltime job, fighting depression or even addiction to drink, bring a smile to one's lips, his achievements as writer, teacher and litterateur, often in the face of great odds, can only induce respect. Nahal's delightfully candid accounts of his encounters with Nirad Chaudhuri, the great Sir Vidia, Manohar Malgonkar and others; his diatribes against the tardiness and indiscipline that marks so much of 21st century India; and his frank appraisal of the trials and tribulations he has faced as an Indian writer in English, both at home and abroad, make this a memoir significant in today's literary context, as well as an absorbing cameo of an earlier time and place.

About the author
Chaman Nahal was formerly professor and head of the English department of the University of Delhi, and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, UK. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977 for his novel Azadi . The same year, he received the Federation of Indian Publishers Award, also for Azadi . He again received the Federation of Indian Publishers Award in 1979 for his novel The English Queens . He was awarded the Medal of Honour by Turin University, Italy, when he was a visiting professor there in 1988. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the East West Center, Honolulu, while holding the Dai Ho Chun Chair at Hawaii University in 1998-99. He is the author of twenty-two books, including nine novels, among them: My True Faces (1973); Azadi (1975); Into Another Dawn (1977); The English Queens (1979); The Crown and the Loincloth (1981); Sunrise in Fiji (1988); The Salt of Life (1990); The Triumph of the Tricolour (1993); and The Boy and the Mountain (1997).
C RITICAL A CCLAIM FOR C HAMAN N AHAL’S F ICTION
‘Nahal’s work will take its place as one of the rare tragic narratives in Indian fiction, intensely felt, poignant.’
– Mulk Raj Anand on Azadi

‘A classic.’
– Diana Athill on Azadi

‘Full of the flavour of India, the Punjab and the time.’
– John Kenneth Galbraith on Azadi

‘Chaman Nahal is refreshingly unpretentious.’
– Amrit Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, on My True Faces

‘An encounter between love and death, free will and fate, collective obligation and personal desire.’
– The Statesman, New Delhi, on Into Another Dawn

‘A humorous and at times scathingly critical look at the way Indian society is evolving in our cities.’
– Indian Horizons, New Delhi, on The English Queens

‘The picture of Gandhi is most moving and unusually frank.’
– William Golding on Salt of Life

‘Chaman Nahal’s Quartet is likely to make literary history.’
– Financial Expess, New Delhi, on The Gandhi Quartet
Silent Life

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2014
First published in 2005 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © Chaman Nahal, 2005
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
eISBN: 978-93-5194-066-1
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TO
THE UNKNOWN FRIEND WHO EVER WALKS BESIDE ME
Contents
ONE Bejewelled City
TWO Partition and After
THREE Uncle Sam's Home
FOUR Eastern Shores
FIVE University Dons
SIX Spirit Worlds
SEVEN Organized Violence
EIGHT Native Origins
NINE Cambridge Frills
TEN Hills and Plains
ONE

Bejewelled City

I was born in Sialkot, a small town which is now in Pakistan and lies only a few miles away from the state of Jammu & Kashmir. It has been my good fortune to travel a great deal in life, but this town continues to remain at the heart of my consciousness. Its freshness, the expanse of its fields, the cluster of huge trees that adorn its countryside, the hustle and bustle of its streets, its music and dance, the sanguine ambience that greets one as you get up in the day, have not been duplicated by anything that I have known anywhere else.
The year, I am told, was 1927, the month August. That makes me a Leo, if it means anything. All Leos can’t be lion-hearted, forthright and aggressive. Even though such astrological summings-up are flattering, they take the zest out of living – if I have to be one of a type. Each individual on this earth is unique and virtues that are bestowed on us collectively diminish the glory of our existence.
My father was a jeweller, a profession which unfortunately carried a stigma in those times. Goldsmiths, by what permutations in our history I don’t know, were not regarded as too high at the social level. Our father made light of this and pointed out what a gifted trade it was, requiring tremendous skill and care. He had a towering personality and no one could directly insult or attack him. But every now and then, we children continued to be reminded of our humble status.
As a child I must have watched these artisans so often, and if later I became a writer, I believe I owe the gift partly to my class origins. Every gold ornament has to be cut, moulded, soldered, set with precious or semi-precious stones, washed and polished with absolute precision. Nowhere have I seen such a collection of small hammers – some of them smaller than gravel – as in a goldsmith’s cluster of tools. Holding the gold nugget in one hand, with these hammers and his other implements, such as tweezers and teeny-weeny blowpipes into which he blows through his lips to divert the flame before him on that nugget, the man would transform it to shapes beyond the realm of probability – his shoulders bent, his legs crossed, his feet tucked under, his eyes focussed in line with the length of his nose. If gold is precious, a gold ornament is even more so, for it is altogether the brainchild of the artisan. Isn’t that what a work of art is, too?
My father never made those ornaments himself. He might have at some earlier stage, but now he only accepted orders and had them executed by his workmen who sat in another building. He was so highly regarded in his profession, people often visited him to have their ornaments evaluated. He rubbed them on his black stone and could instantly tell where they stood, how much of real gold was in them and how much just impurity such as copper. He made only a small scratch, longitudinally or horizontally, held the stone at arm’s length and knew. Often he made several scratches close to each other and made me point out the best one, I invariably making the wrong choice. ‘You’ll never get anywhere in life,’ he said with disgust.
He also acted as a banker and many people pawned their valuables with him. Local banks used his services too, to assess the ornaments and gold pawned with them. As he rose in status, he added the suffix ‘Saraf’ to his name, meaning a jeweller only but a dignified one, to set himself apart from the common run of goldsmiths. The word ‘Lala’ he had assumed years ago as a prefix, which was merely the Indian equivalent of a mister or sir. His full title, thus, became Lala Gopal Das Saraf, which seemed formidable enough to us children. If anyone asked us what our father’s name was, and we inadvertently left any part of it out, and if perchance our father came to know about the lapse, we were in for a severe reprimand from him which could even include corporal punishment.
All this might give the impression that we were rather well off; actually we were not. We had all the necessities, but not many luxuries. We lived in a rented house, where for a number of years we had no electricity; I remember reading by the light of a hurricane lantern initially. TVs had not yet arrived on the scene, but we had no refrigerator, no geyser, not even a petty radio or any other electrical gadget. We had a grandfather clock on one of the walls, but just one for the whole house, which my father personally wound up once a week, using a rickety stool to stand on and glaring at us if our hold of that rotten platform became shaky. My father walked to his shop on foot and walked back. If he had to go and see a dignitary – which included several Englishmen posted in Sialkot – he took a tonga.
We were not poor, either. We had always enough to eat and clothe ourselves. There was a telephone at our shop – which took a formidable amount of time to acquire in those days, eight to nine years at the least. Then a telegram arrived at our house each morning from Bombay, giving us the latest current and future rates of gold and silver in many varieties. My father dealt in forward trading; he and many of his clients bought now and sold later, or bought in anticipation at some time in the future but paid at the present price. Called ‘sitta’ in the local language, it was our equivalent of the stock exchange. People made quick profits – lost as well – in these deals, and my father had to have the newest rates before the market opened everyday. My father made a good deal of money this way, I understand.
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