“If I think of somebody telling a story, I see a group of people huddled together, and around them, a vast space… quite frightening. Maybe they’re huddled against a wall, maybe they’re around a fire. And somewhere, for me, in the very idea of the story, there is something to do with shelter. The shelter, perhaps of the voyager, the traveller who has come, who has lived to tell the story. Or the soldier who has come back, who has survived. So there is this an almost physical sense of shelter where the story represents a kind of habitation, a kind of home. But then, inside the story, there’s another kind of shelter, because what the story narrates and tells is sheltered within the story from oblivion and forgetfulness and daily interference.”
This is how Berger broaches the subject, ‘To Tell a Story’, at the beginning of a discussion with his contemporary, Susan Sontag. The two writers take opposing standpoints while discussing the role of the storyteller in society, and its evolution from primitive times to modern writing. A Youtube ‘critic’ describes the conversation very aptly (in the comments section):
Berger: A passionate attempt to grasp an essence.
Sontag: A measured reflection on possibilities.
Berger’s a romantic. He ascribes to the act of creation and narrative transference, a kind of magic. He places it within the context of social relationships, as an essential link in the chaos of community and individual identity. This framing privileges the act to a strata of activity that is akin to farming, or cooking. He sees it as an essential activity, because of its ability to give shelter.
I wonder what the act of storytelling today has retained from this somewhat nostalgic evocation. Our audiences are huddling, not by the warmth and light of a fire, but by the screen. The act of reading or even listening has been relegated to something that you do in between other things. We engage with texts in a way that is less ‘sacred’, less communal. Perhaps we can liken our reading to sitting in a movie theatre, which in itself has acquired an aura of unfamiliarity nowadays - especially After Pandemic.
Think about it, most curators of content have an audience that will fill up many movie theatres. Our readers are cast under the spell of the feed. Their tiny screens are strung together in the darkness of an ever present (dis)Content haze. The only thing that brings them together is the essence that Berger is hinting at - the event that is the text. This theatre is walk-in, maybe more like a supermarket. The shinier the packaging, the more likely you are to claim the product.
I’d like to think, though, that we can still feel wonder as a community, exchanging virtual smiles. I’d like to believe that the word continues to be a doorway into different realms, a power stone that changes colour with each telling. I see the story emerge chameleon-like from metaphor. The story approximates experience. The storyteller, in turn, transforms reality into allegory in their narration.
In his own essays and fictional work, Berger has experimented with various kinds of material, as he went about building his stories. He meant to draw the reader into the room of his ideas. We continue to listen wide eyed to his varying registers of excitement.
I hold his stories with me like a ta’wiz (amulet). I will share with you my favourite one, as introduction to today’s text.
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
As I bid farewell to Hyderabad, I wonder what the character of this city is? The image of a cigarette seller between Attitude Pan Shop and Selfie Pan Shop comes to mind. He is a quiet fellow, who’s always smiling. As he passes me my cigarette one morning, he offers me tea. I stutter as I think of a way of telling him that I have no cash left. ‘Allah.. ’, he says, hits his forehead, and then passes a cup of tea without comment. I smile and nod with thanks as I taste it, and he laughs.
I would like to think of this city as a place where you cannot say no to chai…
***
The song I share with you today is a qawalli. I have listened to it many times before, but yesterday when I was listening to it, and singing along, I listened as if I was huddled by a fire, with a wisp of a voice curling in the air above me with longing. Even before I had left Hyderabad, I was starting to feel its absence.
Words that were written almost 500 years ago, by Akbar’s younger brother, Mirza Muhammad Hakim, gave me shelter; words from Tajdar-e-Haram composed by the Sabri Brothers’, in the voice of that charmer, Atif Aslam.
I warrant that you do not have a heart, if you do not pause for a moment when he unclasps his love in a dilfek zabaan, hands up in the air, asking the beloved for an audience:
Kya tumse kahoon aye Arab ke kunwar
Tum jaanat ho mann ki battiyaan
Darr furqat toh aye ummi-laqab
Kaate na katath hai ab rattiyaan
Turi preet mein sudbud sab bisri
Kab tak rahegi ye beqabri
Daah-e-ka pigan duzdi da nazar
Kabhi sun bhi toh lo humri battiyaan
In your separation, O you who are called the “Untaught” one
Our sleepless nights are so hard to bear
How long will this oblivion last?
Caste a stolen glance towards me sometime
Let my words fall on your ear sometime
The english translation I have shared is culled from the English version provided by Coke studio itself. It lacks the tenderness of the many natural and mystic metaphors that the poet uses. Some of them such as wine, tavern, wine-drinker and pourer are well established motifs denoting various parts of the courting of the divine beloved in some Persian and even Urdu Sufi traditions (The writing of Rumi and Hafez, for instance uses and improvises on some of these motifs).
Also: Maybe you can eat Raju Tai’s lovely little poem about Coke Studio Pakistan, as chakna, while waiting at a table in Atif’s maikhaana (tavern). The poem is a delightful piece of writing that references many other Coke Studio Pakistan gems as well.
P.S. Today’s post is a little tribute to a friend who is reading this, who has always accompanied me to the sanctuary of this song, a friend who knows every word without even trying, and never tires of singing along, as if he is telling the story of his own life. With gratitude and love, Kaththi.
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