An area of darkness

I no longer bother to read bestsellers or books touted to have earned their authors advance royalties in millions of dollars or pounds. When I read them, I felt let down. The Brazilian novelist, Paulo Coelho, is one of these writers. Some of his novels made it to the top of the bestsellers list. Though I was disappointed, I was able to understand why he is so widely read. He writes very simple prose, chooses unusual themes, gives the story aspect top priority and interlaces his narrative with observations on matters which are of interest to the average novel reader. This is true of his latest book, The Witch of Portobello. I would not have bought it myself, it was given to me as a gift. I would not have read it but for the fact that I occasionally went to Portobello Road on market days during my years in London, when second-hand goods were on sale at knock-down prices. I still have an ancient pair of binoculars I bought more than 50 years ago. Portobello is a low-grade district of the city.

The story is as contrived and convoluted as Coelho’s others. An unmarried Romanian gypsy woman has an illegitimate child, who she hands over to an adoption centre because she is too poor to look after her. A Lebanese Christian couple from Beirut, who have no children of their own, go to Bucharest and adopt the girl and bring her to Beirut. Her first language is Arabic. When Beirut is invaded by Syria from one end, and Israel from the other, they migrate to London. They are a well-to-do happy family. The girl gives up her Arabic name and takes on the name Athena (after the goddess of learning). As she grows up, her adoptive parents are advised to tell her that she is an adopted child.

As one would expect, she gets obsessed with the idea of locating her womb-mother. She flies to Bucharest and finds her mother living in acute poverty. She spends a few days with her before returning to London. She has a good job, marries, has a son, then divorces her husband. She has business in London and Dubai, which she gives up to find her real self. She discovers she is clairvoyant, that she can read people’s mind and heal them by her touch. A cult grows up around her. She derives power from dancing. Her followers dance wildly, at times strip off their clothes and make love with redoubled energy. They meet every Monday in an empty warehouse on Portobello Road. Orthodox Anglicans take umbrage and try to disrupt the dancing sessions as pagan rituals of Satan worship. Confrontations end up in fisticuffs. Then suddenly Athena is found raped and murdered on Hampstead Heath. The culprit is a Portuguese, who escapes to Portugal and commits suicide, leaving behind a note owning up his crime. He was in love with her. Can a plot be more convoluted?

However, there are passages — on happiness, love, wealth and so on — the reader may ponder over with profit: “After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield.... Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.”

“All right then, peace. Peace? If we look at the Mother, she’s never at peace. The winter does battle with the summer, the sun and the moon never meet, the tiger chases the man, who’s afraid of the dog, who chases the cat, who chases the mouse, who frightens the man.”

“I spent a lot of my life looking for happiness, now what I want is joy. Joy is like sex — it begins and ends. I want pleasure. I want to be contented, but happiness? I no longer fall into that trap.”

“When I’m with a group of people and I want to provoke them by asking that most important of questions: “Are you happy?” They all reply: “Yes, I am”. Then I ask: “But don’t you want more? Don’t you want to keep on growing?” And they all reply: “Of course.” Then I say: “So you’re not happy.” And they change the subject.”

Witty, charming and poetic

Of the Urdu poets I have read, the one whose compilation I am most familiar with is Akbar Hussain Khan Ilahabadi (1846-1921). He was undoubtedly the greatest humourist of his times. Also, delightfully full of contradictions. He sprinkled his verse with English words. He was an ardent supporter of education for all Muslims, a strong supporter of Syed Ahmed’s Aligarh Muslim University and at the same time opposed to Westernization, ardent believer in the institution of hijab, that is women wearing burqa and Muslims retaining their distinct, separate identity from Hindus. He supported the Muslim League rather than the Indian National Congress. In a truly biting satire of the Raja of Mahmoodabad, who was Shia and switched his loyalties from the Muslim League to the Congress and back to the League, he wrote: “Muzakkar ko ‘He’ kahtey hain/ Muannas ko ‘She’ kahtey hain/ Yeh mard-e-mukhannas/ Na heeon mein na sheeon main”

(They call the male gender a he/ The female gender a she/ This castrated male is neither/ Amongst the he’s or the she’s.)

On the partition of the country in 1947, the not-so-poor Raja-cum-Nawab of Mahmoodabad fled to Baghdad. It was left to his son Suliman, married to the beautiful Hindu girl Vijaya, daughter of Jagat Mehta, to successfully claim his inheritance. I am not sure if Akbar Ilahabadi was a drinking man: however, I am charmed by the way he wrote about it: “Jo kahaa mainey keh pyaar aata hea mujh ko tum say/ Hans kay kehney lagey ‘Aur aap ko aata kya hai?/ Aam ilzaam hai Akbar peh key peeta kyon hai/ Iss kee pursish nahin hotee keh khaata kya hai?” (I said, “I have fallen in love with you/ She laughed and said, “What else do you do?”/ The general complaint is, “Why does Akbar drink?”/ Why he eats, no one bothers to think.”)