Pakistani literature as a reality distorted or rewritten

The Pakistani literature is rewritten ;ideas are presented as they are .The Pakistani
literarture have no novelty , no new idea .the state of being as they are imagined or
twist out their natural ways. Pakistani literature in English dates back to the earliest
years of independence is widely believed as reality distorted but in the last decade,
it has grown and developed rapidly and to great critical acclaim. This has
coincided with a rich cultural flowering of a new Pakistani music, poetry, art and
fiction writing. At the same time, the country has become the epicenter of
geopolitics and subject to urban violence and religious extremism. This issue
showcases Pakistani English writing to capture the essence of rewritten or reality
distortion and complexities of Pakistan today. The contemporary Pakistani writers
and poets revise and reality imprecise in their works , while discussing social,
political ,economic and cultural issues.

The creative works of Pakistani writers and poets ,like Muniza Alvi’s The
Country at my Shoulders, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and
Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows, Muhammad Hanif’s Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti
and A Case of Exploding Mongoes, Babsi Sidhwa’s The Crow Eaters, Ice Candy
Man, Sorraya Khan’s Noor and City of Spies , have captured the pulse of Pakistani
society in their fiction. It is observed that some Pakistani youth have myriad
psychological problems, resulting out of youthful indulgence, forced marriages,
drug addiction, poverty, lack of education and violence in the nation. This has led
in some instances to mob-mentality and collective opinions and habits. Lack of
stability in government and frequent terrorist attacks have shaken the economy of
the country and have given birth to class-conflict in Pakistan which is subtly
captured by the poets, novelists. All these works of literature reflect the
kaleidoscopic images of the society.

Narratives Rewritten in Pakistani Literature ,The Ice Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa,
Sidhwa’s portrayal of the Partition is not influenced by the official ideology of
Pakistan . However, Sidhwa is conscious of the divisive forces and factors between
the Hindus and the Muslims, in the form of social and cultural difference and
biases. She shows, among other things, the Brahmin ideology of purity
contributing towards Partition of the sub-continent. She makes it clear, that in spite
of the co-existence of Hindus and Muslims for centuries, the mountain high social
and cultural barriers separating the two communities remained as insurmountable
as ever. A Hindu would not even touch his food in the presence of a Muslim. A
Muslim entering a Hindu kitchen would pollute it. Lenny, the child narrator in Ice
Candy Man describes one such incident when the food of a Brahmin priest is
polluted by the shadow of non-Hindus (116-117). This reflects the deep hatred and
disliking of the Hindus for the Muslims, who were driven by their ideology of
purity. The Brahmin thrust on the ideology of purity made Muslims conscious of
their own separate identity. This contributed to the Muslim demand for a separate
homeland. In this novel Sidhwa represents a series of female characters who have
survived in a chaotic time of 1947 in India, which can be registered as a period of
worst religious riots in the history of humankind. The whole story has been
narrated by Lenny who relates the horrors of violence and her personal observation
and reactions. She not only observes but analyses man’s lascivious and degrading
attentions towards women, voraciousness of male sexual desires, women; as they
are reduced to the status of sexual objects and relates the peculiar disadvantages,
social and evil, to which they are subjected. Ice - Candy- Man is a saga of female
suppression and marginalization. It projects realistically women’s plight and
exploitation in the patriarchal society. It exposes how men establish their
masculine power and hence fulfill their desires by brutally assaulting women.

While as on the other hand, it poignantly depicts how women endure the pain and
humiliation enacted upon them"The Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 is
one of the great tragedies, the magnitude, ambit and savagery which compels one
to search for the larger meaning of events, and to come to terms with the lethal
energies that set off such vast conflagrations."

Aradhika observes: "Like some ancient Satanic rites of witchcraft, the power to
destroy, springs forth from an unsuspected fount within and the sheer pleasure of
humiliating and massacring the victim is so great that one forgets one's own
mortality." Bapsi Sidhwa in her novel Ice-Candy-Man delineates his characters and
their antecedents with fidelity and with a feeling of contemporaneity like other
novelists on Partition, Sidhwa also describes the ugly and terrifying face of
Partition by recollecting the traumatic and agonising memories of those moments.
Sidhwa also has tried to recreate history in emotion-laden and poignant scenes. The
rumblings of Partition are felt in the beginning of the narrative and the atmosphere
proper to the kind of a tale is gradually created. The colorful streets of Lahore look
ominously dreadful and deserted. The Hindus are still reluctant to leave their
ancestral property where their generations have lived and prospered. Now they
visualise a future devoid of any hope. These painful experiences are like the
agonising throes of a new birth. It is still painful to recollect those trauma. The
inter-community marriage is at the core of Sidhwa's novels like Ice-CandyMan, An
American Brat and the Crow Eaters. Her handling of the theme of inter-community
marriages is relevant and contemporary. This sensitive issue arouses acrimonious
debates in Parsi Community. In Parsi faith, it is believed that a Parsi could be one
only by birth. In mixed marriages, the children lose their right to be members of
Parsi community. The Parsis have a patriarchal society. While dealing with the
theme of marriage, Sidhwa maintains a balance without revolting against rigid
social codes.

In her novel An American Brat, Sidhwa has also tried to redefine Jinnah's role in
history. She feels that most of the Indian and British writers have dehumanized
him, holding him responsible for the Partition. While Nehru has been portrayed as
a "sly one," Jinnah is lauded for his intellectual capabilities. The off duty sepoy
remarks during one of the discussions held regularly at Queens Gardens, "Don't
underestimate Jinnah. He will stick within his rights, no matter whom Nehru feeds!
He's a frustrate lawyer and he knows how to attack the British with their own
laws!" Jinnah is portrayed with a sympathy not showed for any other political
leader. He is depicted as "austere, driven, pukka-sahib accented, deathly ill,
incapable of check kissing", past the prime of his man-hood, he is "sallow, whip-
thin, sharp-tongued and uncompromising." Sidhwa also quotes Sarojini Naidu to
substantiate her portrayal of Jinnah. As the story unfolds, she introduced not only
Jinnah, the political leader, but also to Jinnah, the lover of an eighteen year old,
breathtakingly beautiful Parsi girl, who had braved the censure of her wealthy
knighted father to marry a Muslim. Lenny feels sad on learning her premature
death, but her sympathies clearly lie with Jinnah: But didn't Jinnah too, die of a
broken heart? And today, forty years later, in films of Gandhi's and Mountbatten's
lives, in books by British and Indian scholars, Jinnah, who for a decade was known
as 'Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity', is caricatured, and portrayed as a
monster(91)

Memory plays a pivotal role in Sorayya Khan’s debut novel, Noor (2003), shaping
the identities of the main characters, both victims and perpetrators. It is also
rewritten reading in relation to the Liberation War of 1971 and the recent emphasis
on the ‘memory boom’, the author will examine the theoretical and textual nexus
between history and memory, tracing the shift in analytical focus from the
historical to the psychological and how personal memory of public events is
transcribed into the larger collective memory of the nation-state. The analysis of
the novel will demonstrate how the trauma of 1971 resides both within and outside
the individual. Claire Messud said about Noor ; Rich, resonant and lyrical, Noor is
a novel which tackles, unflinchingly, the legacy of war and makes of great
suffering a work of beauty. Sorraya Khan has written a powerful and haunting
novel ,and complete shift from diverse absolute reality to diverse and relative
truths in Pakistani Literature.

Daud Kamal talks of poor men and their hardships in a simple manner. He creates
a counter narrative of common folk in his poetry responding to the so called
aristocratic refinement and cultural superiority. In his poem “An Ancient Indian
Coin” he talks about the tyranny of lords upon poor men. He says:

“The king’s hunting-dogs are better fed

than most of his subjects.”

These lines show the depth and anger of a sensitive heart towards brutal kings who
seem to betray their own people. They are so cruel that they consider dogs better
than the human beings. In the same poem Kamal talks about the poor system of
division of wealth and the ill use of it. He says:

“But a piece of gold

does not take one very far.”

What he means to say is that money is nothing to be proud of if you cannot help
the needy and poor, after all it won’t stay forever. Money cannot buy moral values.
In his poem “Floods” Kamal talks about the cruelty of natural disasters and
weather. He says that the nature can be very tyrant at some times:

“How can one forgive

the treachery
of blind rivers.”

He describes the situation of poor rural people after the floods. In this way he uses
the social themes in his poem. His poem talks openly about the problems we face
in rural areas.

Hence, it can be concluded that Pakistani literature is engaged in the historic

discourse and responds to either official ideology of partition of Indian
subcontinent, reimagining the role of founding father with the nation, narrative of
the Bengalis in context of civil war of 1971, and stance of the common folk against
rural aristocracy and feudal elite. Besides, these three texts, discussed above, there
are certain other narratives and their counter narratives that are seen in the works
of other contemporary fiction writers, dramatists and poets in Pakistani writings.