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Journalism of Courage
A storyteller meets a begum and fabulous fables follow
While ahmed shah abdali is wrecking havoc and plundering Delhi in the 18th century,a lonely and disillusioned Begum is exchanging stories with a bedraggled storyteller. Omair Ahmads second book,The Storytellers Tale,set in those turbulent times,is part fable,part fantasy and creates a romantic illusion of Delhi where the Mughals are fading fast and the wealth of the city is luring warlords from Afghanistan. Ahmad has adapted ancient traditions of storytelling,skilfully weaving history and the lives of ordinary people in a landscape of war and devastation. A note in the book refers to the authors fascination with Quranic and Biblical tales.
Divided into five interconnected chapters,The Storytellers Tale begins with a poet-storyteller,consumed with grief at the brutalisation caused by Abdalis army. After losing home and hearth,he finds himself near an isolated haveli. Unsure of whether the lord of the haveli is in cahoots with Abdali,hes about to move on when a chance encounter leads him to a hauntingly beautiful begum there are several cheesy moments and some grandiose feelings expressed here. The Begum disregards propriety and invites him in to entertain her with stories. So while the rampaging Afghans are busy looting and pillaging,the storyteller engages the lady of the manor with the story of an unwed mother raising a wolf baby alongside her infant son. Ahmad stops short of adding a moral to his fable,but the simplicity of his tender narrative has enough impact. The Begum,mesmerised by the startling story of filial love by this gripping stranger,responds with one of her own. During this dueling with stories,the discovery of quiet yearning between the storyteller and the Begum is gently brought out.
The Begums story,of friends whove been brought up like brothers,one rich,the other poor,has been explored in countless Indian classics and has elements from the Mahabharata. Ahmad deftly touches on illegitimacy,the falling out of brothers and the inevitability of war. The storytellers second story that takes off from the Begums own,about friends whose lives continue to intersect,despite their very different stations in life,is the most compelling in the book. And the storyteller and the Begum hurtle hopelessly towards a forbidden love,all under the guise of matching their narratives. Eventually,Ahmad succumbs to being a fabulist and the novella reaches an appropriate if not predictable climax; the theory of cause and effect has never come across more delicately. Read it for its flavour of myth,tinged with history,and all those fables that youre unlikely to read again.
