All That146;s True in Fiction

In a family saga inspired by his own beginnings, M.J. Akbar captures the intersection of individual lives and transformative history. A powerful cast of characters keeps the narrative neat and evocative

TRUTH IS GENERALLY UNTIDY, fiction brings some order to it.8221; That was M.J. Akbar, in full and fine flow at a question-and- answer session following the Mumbai launch of Blood Brothers. An overawed audience listened to his evocative responses to fairly mundane questions. Naturally, nobody had read the book at that point. Even so, the read-ing had provided a flavour of the contents, and it seemed to be a book worth buying. And defi-nitely, a book worth discussing. After all, how many readers of Akbar8217;s prose were aware of his fascinating family saga, starting with his grandfather Prayaag, born to Hindu parents, adopted by a Muslim family, and given the name Rahmatullah after converting to Islam. 8220;My Prophet was an orphan at six?8221; Young Prayaag asks the Maulvi, who replies, 8220;Yes, and he was brought up by his grandmother.8221; Akbar isolates the next sentence, and the single line reads simply: 8220;Prayaag felt a sudden affinity with his new faith.8221;

To read Blood Brothers as a transparently wri-tten autobiography would be a mistake and do the book a great disservice. Akbar is the first pe-rson to deny such a claim. So, whether it8217;s his grandfather8217;s circumcision or, later in the book, a telling encounter, the reader is expected to be informed and sophisticated enough to realise the difference between reproducing a factually accurate history of a family saga and using it as a take-off point for a deeper purpose. In this case, a safe guess would be to say, Akbar has mined his own memory bank and culled what-ever he thought to be relevant/important/ provocative/necessary to the telling of his tale.

Since he is a superb storyteller, let8217;s not quibble over details and ethos exaggerations. Let8217;s free him of the burden of accuracy at all times. For it is obvious fromthe first few chapters that Akbar has his own agenda, it8217;s just the packaging that has changed, perhaps to make the book more accessible and reader-friendly.

Take the line, 8220;Any old woman can pray five times a day. To be a man you have to have something more,8221; which begins Chapter 4, aptly titled 8220;Pleasures8221;. It is attributed to Bauna Sardar, the lord of the mill hands of the Victoria Jute Mill where Prayaag/Rahmatullah finds employment. Does it matter whether or not Bauna Sardar actually existed? And who was there to record that revealing quote? 8220;Faction8221; frees a writer from such niggling, annoying de-tails.

But adds a lot to the narrative. Besides, it serves to showcase the writer8217;s perspective. Blood Brothers is replete with such insights and gems, and frankly, I don8217;t really care if they8217;re made up. I was far more interested in racing along with Rahmatullah as he discovers conjugal bliss with Jamila, expands his tea shop to an eatery, discovers pornography and finally winds his way to Telinipara.

It is from this point on that the narrative gets dense and detailed, where history marries histrionics, and the cast gets crowded with Gandhi, the wily Brits and several other charac-ters, who line up like they are auditioning for an Ashutosh Gowarikar multi-starrer, this time set in Telinipara. Akbar weaves in all the stories with the skill of a village puppeteer and the flair of a nautankiwala. 8220;A good bullet makes no more sound than the snapping of a dry twig in the silence of a forest,8221; he writes, at the brutal killing of Syed Ashfaque. Strife and terror, sepa-ration and loss are handled with a rare deli-cacy: 8220;Grandfather seemed in awe of his des-tiny: he had been reborn twice.8221; And the lovely line that ends a chapter titled 8220;Brahma8221;. Young Akbar asks his grandfather why he8217;d returned from Pakistan after witnessing the brutality of communal violence in Telinipara: 8220;There were too many Muslims in Pakistan.8221;

But does Blood Brothers hang together as a great unforgettable, powerful book? Sorry, but it didn8217;t, for me. The last few chapters seemed like value add-ons 8212; the sort glossy magazines provide gratis in order to attract yet another market segment! From the chapter tantalis-ingly titled 8220;Bikini8221; 8220;I survived 1967 thanks to Sharmila Tagore8217;s bikini8230;8221;, to the rather tame concluding one titled 8220;Brothers8221;, they are like works-in-progress for a memoir-in-the-mak-ing. But, so what? I would much rather read M.J. Akbar8217;s superlative prose in a so-so book, to someone else8217;s clumsy, insincere attempts packaged as the real thing. And yes, I8217;d recom-mend Blood Brothers for one marvellously acute, deeply profound line that says it all: 8220;Famine had no caste.8221;