Can self be projected as a living hypothesis of all travails, tragedies and triumphs at a time when it is being washed away in the ever rising tide of hyper reality or unreality and paranoia? Is self a big story drawing heavily on the emotional pains of an individual or is it a multitude of stories that go well beyond the self-idolisation and abstinence? Is it composed of stories that an author tells to himself and others so that the feeling of affliction and resentfulness can be put in the side? These consequential questions form a new narrative of expressing oneself that shrugs off commodified presentation of life in a traditional genre – autobiography. It is much admired genre of post truth period and in Urdu it is set in motion by none other than Javed Akhtar, a living icon of literature and the entertainment world.
Javed Akhtar’s memoirs and anecdotes filled narrative, “Apne Baare Mein” (About Myself) maps out new terrain of creativity that appeared in a journal brought out by Majlis-e-Farrogh-e-Urdu Adab, Doha, Qatar recently. Javed Akhtar got the most prestigious international Urdu Award “Farrogh-e-Adab Award and to mark the occasion, the organisation published a special souvenir.
An unsaid promise
Javed Akhtar needs no introduction but people, who have free access to almost all details about him, hardly know him beyond what has been created by the simulacrum. His memoirs are braced for making people realise that his name is not just synonymous to success, and a nagging sense of self-fulfilment still hacks him off. Blood still oozes out from the wound that was dealt out to him more than six decades ago. Javed’s mother died when he was just eight years old and an unsaid promise made at that moment subverts all his success.
Javed narrates: “Today, life has become very kind to me in all respect but I still vividly remember a day. It was January 18, 1953 and my wailing aunt took me and my younger brother (who was six-and-a-half years old) to a sprawling room, filled with a number of sobbing ladies and the body of my mother was lying on a cot. Her face was open and my bemoaning maternal grandmother sitting on the head front was being consoled by two ladies. My aunt took the two children, Salman and me to the place and said, “Just look at your mother for the last time”. I turned 8 only yesterday. I am matured enough to understand what the death is. I just fixed my gaze on her so that I could recall her face in the years to come. My aunt was saying, “Vow before us that you will become something and also give your word that you will excel in life.” I could not utter a single word. I keep my eyes fixed on her, then a woman covered the face of my mother. It is not that I have achieved nothing in life but I think whatever I did so far, is just one-fourth of my capabilities. It gets on my back continuously.”
Javed’s narration sets a new narrative of self-fiction and for Javed recalling the past is the most reliable route to self-inflicted misery. Javed’s self has nothing with Joycean and Proustian notion of existence, his differences with illustrious father Jan Nisar Akhtar reminds one of Kafka’s letter to his father. Javed smothers his inherent penchant for poetry as he does not want to tread the path of his father. In 1976, Jan Nisar Akhtar dies, and a poet in Javed emerges. His memoirs reveal that the stories we tell about ourselves and the narratives we are told, create a space that tends between birth and death. Notwithstanding Javed’s propensity with self-exaltation, the story he tells us, is not the story above all others, is among one many.
Javed got the award in a glittering ceremony held in Qatar which was attended by the eminent scholar Professor Gopi chand Narang and for him Javed conquered the literary and entertainment world with his indomitable wit and sense of humour.
In the whole world, the Doha Award, is held in high esteem for its intent on literary merits and according to Mohammad Ateeq, patron of the organisation, it honours one prominent prose writer of Urdu each from India and Pakistan annually. Poetry is usually preferred but Majlis gives equal importance to prose writers and no organisation of the world honours two exponents of a language that is greatly admired in two countries that are politically hostile to each other
