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Journalism of Courage
Once upon a time,in not-so-far-away Lucknow,two rival storytellers Muhammad Husain Jah and Ahmed Husain Qamar wrote a fantasy epic in Urdu called Tilism-e Hoshruba. It ran into 8,000 pages as the magical kingdom of Hoshruba opened up,and ravishing sorceresses,warring princes and pitch-black giants began to inhabit the daydreams of Lucknawis. One hundred years later,Pakistani writer Musharraf Ali Farooqi is translating the once hugely popular tale,as part of his Urdu Project,a translation collective that aims to shine a light on Urdu literature of South Asia and Indo-Islamic myths.
The tale,says Farooqi,actually began much before Jah and Qamar. He points to a group of eager raconteurs,especially one Mir Ahmed Ali,who got bored with the Amir Hamza tales that had emerged out of Akbars court and decided to create a kingdom of their own,an occult realm where Lucknows costumes and courtesies thrived. The tales,which belong to the oral tradition of dastan,captivated the city. Crowds gathered around Ali and his disciples everyday at particular spots in the bazaar and came back for more the next day,some for the scantily clad sorceress Sandal,others for the moon of the constellation of excellence Prince Badiuz Zaman. The prince of the neighbouring Rampur finally made Ali his court storyteller and stole him from Lucknow,but the city did not let go of his fantasy which he called Tilism-e-Hoshruba. In the 1880s Munshi Naval Kishore of the famous Naval Kishore Press decided to publish the tales and got Jah to write them down. After four volumes,Qamar took over. He wrote the last three volumes.
Farooqi,40,has brought out the first volume of his English translation,Hoshruba: The Land and the Tilism (Random House India),and is planning 23 more. The Urdu Project,meanwhile,is preparing a standard Urdu version of Hoshruba,edited by Ajmal Kamal. The first volume should be out by the end of this year,and we will also make the text available electronically, says Farooqi.
He says he mulled over the formation of a collective while facing difficulties translating his earlier book The Adventures of Amir Hamza. I faced two problems: I did not have a standard,modern text to translate from,and did not have easy access to user-friendly classical dictionaries. Add to this the problem of introducing translated literature to western readers. The Urdu Project is looking at overcoming these problems, says Farooqi.
Next,the Urdu Project will bring out the translation of Indian writer Syed Muhammad Ashrafs novella Numberdar ka Neela as The Beast.
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