Sunday book pick: In ‘Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures’, an author laughs at himself

Pakistani writer Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s famous novel of the Karachi neighbourhood of Chakiwara, along with other short stories also set in the same place, have been collected through English translations in Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures. The book can inspire great envy for any writer – Akhtar’s rip-roaring humour, and translator Bilal Tanweer’s formidable skills in recreating it in a new language stand out.

A truly autonomous state

Chakiwara, a forgettable corner in Karachi’s Lyari – yes, the same Lyari which has shot to infamy after Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar – is bustling with bumbling fools, odd beauties, and fearsome djinns. From this mix, one can pluck out starving novelists, dubious doctors, cheating out-of-work actors, and a Buddhist Chinese dentist who has washed up on the locality’s unenviable shores. Karachi might be Pakistan’s financial capita; but Chakiwara is untouched by its glamour or economic prosperity.

The decrepit state of the neighbourhood makes one thing clear – the good folks of Chakiwara are desperately poor and live substandard lives. The resident doctor, Ghareeb Muhammad, started off as a land registrar and has been responsible for sending more patients to the grave than restoring them to health. The blockbuster novelist Qurban Ali Kattar has written scores of detective novels but has nothing to call his own, not even the clothes on his back. Chakori, an out-of-work comedian and actor, joins dentist Ah Fung as an apprentice, hoping to pick up on his skills. Chakiwara, as Akhtar writes, is a “truly autonomous state where anyone can pass themselves off as anything.”

The memoirist of this pitiable lot is IH Changezi, the owner-cum-director of Allah Tawakkul Bakery, who is somewhat better off than his mates and prides himself as a man of taste. He has his perceptive employee, Taj Ahmed, to thank for his successful bakery and spends his days in nobler pursuits of life – that of writing and being friends with custodians of Urdu literature, such as the likes of Qurban Ali Kattar.

Life in Chakiwara, full of excitement as it is, is interrupted by the arrivals of djinns and the spotting of comely beauties. Shahsawar Khan, a professor of doubtful repute, promises great wealth and fortune to whoever will wear the lucky rings he is selling. It’s not any piece of jewellery – inside the ring sits an amiable djinn, who will grant every wish. Qurban Ali Kattar, desperately poor and in love with a butcher’s daughter, buys it to fix his life for once and all. Changezi, out of friendly duty and affection, gets involved in uniting Qurban Ali Kattar with his beloved, leading to many crossed connections, misunderstandings, and much confusion. Briefly, the beloved is forgotten – such is the pandemonium, and when the hour comes for the fateful union, even Qurban Ali Kattar’s all-seeing djinn would not have imagined his beneficiary’s fate.

Love is rare in Chakiwara but misadventures are not. Changezi, who seems to be a more accomplished litterateur than the best novelists around him, keeps a meticulous account of the locality’s goings-on. Chakiwara, which has traditionally been home to Balochs and Gujarati Muslims, is a very different picture from perhaps what our preconceived ideas of Pakistani urban life might be. Changezi’s narration brings to life a world which is as fascinating as it is mysterious.

The frogs and lizards in Ghareeb Muhammad’s clinic or the dirty restaurants frequented by Shahsawar Khan and his disciples raise a crawling sensation on the skin. The djinns are incomprehensible forces and even though they’re nothing but superstition, one cannot help but be fearful of them. The romance – “balcony love” as Changezi calls it – is severely restrictive, giving more of an effect of sexual foetidness than effervescent sweetness.

Chakiwara seems to have fallen off the radar; it is neither affected by Pakistan’s perpetual political instability nor has religious fundamentalism poisoned communal harmony. Here, a Hindu Seth plants terror in the hearts of the poor Muslim traders, a Chinese immigrant runs a successful dentistry business, and, in the name of romance, women take men for a joyride. In one sense, Chakiwara exists in a cultural bubble; its only relation with the state at large being poverty.

A perpetual deep end

Here too, Akhtar makes light of the matter with self-flagellation. Much of the book circumscribes the literary profession, especially those writers who have no particular critical or commercial success. The likes of Qurban Ali Kattar are marvellously prolific – writing up to two novels a month – and widely read but none of this translates into respectability and financial stability. In fact, he has to hide his profession while pursuing his beloved, lest his destitution prove an obstacle to her approval. There is back and forth about the merits of being the cultural type, of being vanguards of Urdu (or any) literature, but all high debates are punctured by one unsavoury fact – that there’s simply no money to be made for those who want to be professional novelists.

In the author’s note, Akhtar writes that Faiz Ahmed Faiz called Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures the “greatest novel in the Urdu language”, while Sa’adat Hasan Manto told Akhtar frankly that the novel was “utter rubbish.” It is strange to think that the same book inspired such extreme opinions from two literary greats – and yet neither is incorrect.

Chakiwara is exemplary in its humour and the truths it espouses about certain ways of life. Its observation of the literary career is abrasive, and to a large extent, is true to this day. But it is also an extremely unserious novel, fully aware that it has set out to play pranks and tell jokes – it makes fun of every character it allows to inhabit its pages, not once taking their grievances seriously. It does well to imagine Chakiwara as an impish teenager, easily impressed by djinns and chattering monkeys and thinking little of lovelorn adult men and fleecing guardian angels. Akhtar has told us one grand joke – its humour tart and maturing well with age – and it perhaps elicits such delight because the author is laughing at himself. If his fingers were pointed at us instead… then it surely wouldn’t feel as funny.

Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures, Muhammad Khalid Akhtar, translated from the Urdu by Bilal Tanweer, Picador India.