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 Dakiya Aur Jolaha
Product Details:
Author: Mustansar Hussain Tarar | ISBN: 969-35-1676-1 | Format: Hardcover | Pages: 304 | Weight: 1.08 lbs | Pub. Date: 2005 | Publisher: Sang-e-Meel
DESCRIPTION
Mustansar Hussain Tarar's latest novel seeks to entertain his fans in very much the same way his travelogues and memoirs have all these years.
REVIEW
"Tarar, the novelist, happens to be an utterly different soul from Tarar, the travel-writer. The only thing common between the two, perhaps, is that their respective outputs tend to move rather quickly off the shelves, leaving the man perched merrily on the list of national bestsellers. Going by the trend, there can be little doubt that his latest offering, Dakia Aur Jaulaha (The Postman and the Spindler) would only increase the volume of his fan-mail ... and, indeed, the coffers of his publisher!
Tarar fans would recall the episode in K2 Kahani where he had come across postman Mohammad Ali in remote Hashopi, and had asked him jokingly if he had any letters addressed to Tarar who at the time was on his way to the famed K2 base camp. For those who may struggle to recall the scene, he has reproduced that brief portion from the travelogue, setting the context of the novel which is an imaginary tale of how Tarar might have reacted had that postman replied in the affirmative, and who might have been the sender.
Written in the first-person narrative, the author has himself played the spindler, weaving a gold-and-silver tale of high-pitch ideation that takes the reader through the vignettes of social and cultural life not only in the country, but also abroad. Included in the tale are Pir Mittha and Aastana-i-Rumi on the one hand, while Nasir Bukhari and Dara Shikoh, an out-of-the-closet effeminate Pakistani-American, lie on the other side of the equation.
The manner in which Tarar has dealt with the issue of same-sex marriages in the novel will be taken note of by his fans. There are others who have done this, but Tarar has raised the issue from a mother’s point of view in the context of a Pakistani family bringing up children in American society. The reference is merely occasional in the text, but it is pretty emphatic, and would earn for him a nod of approval and appreciation from the readers. The text, to be honest, is riddled with such keen observations and their pithy expression.
Though the spindler’s story is very much in the manner of a patchwork, for most part of it, the novel is an interaction between Natalya and Rudin — first through correspondence and then, years later, face to face. The names have been adopted from 19th century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev who, in the novel, happens to be an author read and enjoyed by the two main characters penned by Tarar.
Though the novel carries an explicit note at the very outset to the effect that all characters and correspondence between them are “fictional and imaginary”, there is a whole lot in the text to suggest otherwise. In a way, the fact that Tarar needed to make a clarification on this point makes it all the more revealing.
Further in the text itself, Rudin happens to be a writer who also appears regularly on television. This is indubitably Tarar’s own profile. Natalya starts writing to him as an admirer of his writings, which is just a simple case of fan mail. The reference to ‘the dead poetess’ and ‘the contemporary poet with glasses’ are self-explanatory. The scene of accident on a highway between Istanbul and Teheran is an episode right out of an earlier Tarar travelogue. And, while the mention of ‘the dictator who hangs people’ needs no explanation, a quote from the fan mail has not only named him, but, in doing so, has also given away a possible timeframe of the story. The references are too biographical and recent to be missed by the readers.
Talking of biographical novels in Urdu, Mumtaz Mufti’s Alipur Ka Ailee comes to mind almost instantly. It took a few years for Mufti to own it as an autobiography after first publishing it as a work of fiction. Let’s see how long it takes Tarar to follow suit." - Dawn, Books & Authors
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