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Celebrating 28 Years of Excellence
62 | INDIA CURRENTS | February 2015
Rajesh C. Oza is a Change Management consultant who also facilitates the interpersonal development of MBA students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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course of writing discover—no, not discover, not quite, not even learn or understand, but simply sit and listen and fully embrace the risk of disrupting one’s precious outlook on the world that such listening entails.” The wonder about reading Zia Haider Rahman is not only his masterful and melancholic blend of the wholeness of life, of life’s moments of sweetness (sugar), savoriness (salt), and bitterness (pepper), but also his outsider’s view, his understanding of the world from the periphery. Despite the autobiographic parallels between Zafar and Rahman, this highly personal and at the same time universal novel does not accept any worldview as a given, especially not that of the protagonist-cum-author; Rahman is neither the voice of a certain segment of the world, nor an intermediary like many South Asian authors who write for a Western audience. He is simply an individual finding his way, a seeker attempting to know the world and, in the process, inviting his reader into an engaging dialogue of self-understanding and mutual discovery. n
those without, those with privilege and those without, those from Bangladesh and those from Pakistan, pre-figures much of what follows. The narrator is of landed, elite Pakistani origin; Zafar is of soiled, unknowable Bangladeshi origin. They are “brothers,” but there is a vast distance between them, just as at Partition in 1947, newly formed independent India separated Pakistan, united only by its Islamic faith and the ego of its founding father. Toward the end of the novel, there is redemption of a sort. The reader is led to believe that Zafar, this tormented soul, might have experienced happiness once upon return to Bangladesh, and the narrator’s search for the meaning of his friend’s life finds some closure: “The thought pleases me that at some time in those years he disappeared, my friend might have paid a visit to that area of the world, to the place he had been the happiest, as he once said, with the woman who had loved him.” In the end, what the narrator observes in writing the story of his friend’s life is relevant to a careful reader making sense of a challenging and highly satisfying novel: “Writing this has helped, this effort of looking in while looking out. That is what it is to consider the life of another, someone who made an impression, and in the
inevitable.” The last is a heated dialogue between the two friends after discussing the dissipation of Zafar’s love for Emily and remembrance of Zafar’s feeding the homeless. Zafar: “Listen. I’m talking about why I noticed the homeless guy. You can’t understand it because you don’t know what it’s like.” Narrator: “Why are you having a go at me? All I’m saying is that when you see a homeless guy and give him food, that’s a commendable act of charity.” Zafar: “You said it yourself. I always noticed them. I noticed them because I couldn’t help it. Only from the inside can you know what it’s like from the inside. Understanding isn’t just knowing or learning what it is but knowing what it’s like.” Narrator: “Do you think you might be confused a little?” Zafar: “I think I might be confused a lot.” Narrator: You say love is about actions, and all I’m saying is that your actions were quite loving.” Zafar: “What? Giving some sod on the street the leftovers that would have gone in the bin?” Narrator: “Yes.” From the early parts of the novel, the relationship between those with power and
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