PRODIGAL
Abdulkadir, Irshad
PRODIGAL - 1 - New Delhi Picador 2019/01/01 - 303
Akbar on the other hand is a brilliant polyglot scholar, educated in the best institutions of Pakistan and the U.K., and born in an erudite and rich family. His father is the chief justice of Sind High Court and his mother the daughter of the vicar of Avebury, Wiltshire, England; his uncle a learned professor, with roots in Sufism as well as Cambridge. Endowed with natural brilliance, Akbar walks easily in all these possible and possibly parallel worlds.
As the novel proceeds, we discover through a series of ‘flashbacks’ what has brought Akbar to FATA. He is following up on his instinctive feeling for “God,” which led him from secular studies to a career in Islamic studies, including modern and classical Arabic, in both of which he is fluent. In FATA, he joins the seminary of the Sufism-influenced Jalal Baba, a man whose learning, devoutness and tribal connections protect him from too much interference by the Taliban. But all that is going to change when sometime later Akbar falls in love with the ‘wrong’ woman... and Bairam re-enters his life, this time as the local Taliban commander.
Twists and turns
The story takes other twists and turns, Akbar and Bairam meet once again, this time in England, but I have no wish to spoil the pleasure of those who read a novel for the twists in its plot. This novel contains quite a few twists, of which perhaps the final confrontation between Akbar and Bairam stretches belief, but is obviously necessitated by the fact that the two are meant to be two sides of the same coin of Islam.
Akbar’s side reminds me of cultivated supporters of Hindutva: people who talk of the Ramayana or the Gita with such sophistication and humaneness that one forgets the mobs out there beating up men — and denying them water when they are dying — because of some crime of commission or omission against the Hindutva ideology.
Akbar too delves into Islam: a firm believer, motivated by a spiritual experience, he sees in his faith the multiplicity, openness and beauty that some of the deeply religious associate with God, Ram, or Allah. Bairam, of whom we hear only when his path crosses that of Akbar, reminds me of a lynching mob of Hindutva supporters.
9789389109054
Purchased Prism Books,Kadavanthra
Fiction
Manners and Customs, Pakistan
F / ABD/PR
PRODIGAL - 1 - New Delhi Picador 2019/01/01 - 303
Akbar on the other hand is a brilliant polyglot scholar, educated in the best institutions of Pakistan and the U.K., and born in an erudite and rich family. His father is the chief justice of Sind High Court and his mother the daughter of the vicar of Avebury, Wiltshire, England; his uncle a learned professor, with roots in Sufism as well as Cambridge. Endowed with natural brilliance, Akbar walks easily in all these possible and possibly parallel worlds.
As the novel proceeds, we discover through a series of ‘flashbacks’ what has brought Akbar to FATA. He is following up on his instinctive feeling for “God,” which led him from secular studies to a career in Islamic studies, including modern and classical Arabic, in both of which he is fluent. In FATA, he joins the seminary of the Sufism-influenced Jalal Baba, a man whose learning, devoutness and tribal connections protect him from too much interference by the Taliban. But all that is going to change when sometime later Akbar falls in love with the ‘wrong’ woman... and Bairam re-enters his life, this time as the local Taliban commander.
Twists and turns
The story takes other twists and turns, Akbar and Bairam meet once again, this time in England, but I have no wish to spoil the pleasure of those who read a novel for the twists in its plot. This novel contains quite a few twists, of which perhaps the final confrontation between Akbar and Bairam stretches belief, but is obviously necessitated by the fact that the two are meant to be two sides of the same coin of Islam.
Akbar’s side reminds me of cultivated supporters of Hindutva: people who talk of the Ramayana or the Gita with such sophistication and humaneness that one forgets the mobs out there beating up men — and denying them water when they are dying — because of some crime of commission or omission against the Hindutva ideology.
Akbar too delves into Islam: a firm believer, motivated by a spiritual experience, he sees in his faith the multiplicity, openness and beauty that some of the deeply religious associate with God, Ram, or Allah. Bairam, of whom we hear only when his path crosses that of Akbar, reminds me of a lynching mob of Hindutva supporters.
9789389109054
Purchased Prism Books,Kadavanthra
Fiction
Manners and Customs, Pakistan
F / ABD/PR