A Tale of Kashmir, War and The Elements of Business
Riyaz Masroor
To a whistle-stop reader, Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator may appear a great throwback to The Five Find-Outers and Dog. There is passing mention of The Famous Five (that is the most popular of children’s writer Enid Blyton’s mystery series) when the nameless protagonist is reminded of his friend Ashfaq’s wish to see all the five buddies cross over to Pakistan. Hold the novel up close and the work looks lot more than the kid-stuff, as few of
Mirza has doubtless indulged in extravagance of emotion, which many would find little upsetting, but this indulgence, it seems, helps the author to doubly emphasize the climax, which is the most powerful refutation of state-backed violence and state-backed counter violence: May your bones rest in peace, after they are licked dry by rabid, man-eating wolves.
For its bold indictment of ‘war’ in Kashmir, extremely graphic portrayal of tragedies, inestimable depth and a dash of literary innovation, the novel would sit comfortably amidst Earnest Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and more closely with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Robert Louis Stevenson’s In the South Seas. Mirza’s novel, first by any Kashmiri Muslim, seems a resounding invite that Kashmiris return to all the post-war English classics.
Captain Kadian carries a noticeable resemblance with Joseph Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz, who is a brute ivory trader on a colonial mission in the interiors of
This ‘war’ and its ‘elements of business’ and the colossal losses accrued thereof are the main staple of Mirza’s storyline, much like fine threads that are entwined in an intricately woven Kashmiri carpet. The ‘grandest bed’ adored with a Kashmiri chain-stitch piece in Captain Kadian’s apartment is the subtle representation of these losses. One is reminded of Mr. Kurtz’s chamber where the glittering mats, woven by natives, decorate walls and windows.
These losses become even more manifest in the remark of Farooq’s father – his younger son crosses over to
Set in a far-off LoC village, the novel has cast much-awaited spotlight on the life on border. Many in the world still assume LoC as a mere line on the map with no life, only skirmishes. The Collaborator tells us what life means when it is trapped in a 740 Kilometer long and 34 Kilometer wide Line of Control, where scores of villages exist, some of them divided between India and Pakistan, most of them weighed down by the ‘curfew within a curfew’. And, what it means when army is deployed to ‘cleanse this place of anti-f****** national elements’. This is valley strewn with skeletons, the Valley of death, defenselessly residing on the frills of Koh-e-Gam, the mountain of grief; or, Conrad’s Grove of Death. This, in the words of The Collaborator is a ‘no-man’s land – what happens here is off the record, means nothing to anyone.’ The Collaborator, it seems, is an attempt to unveil this invisible, off-the-record
This moving story also provides greater insights into the aftermaths of an armed movement and the near-colonial response it evokes from its adversary. It depicts the desolation of a beautiful land after it gets virtually de-populated in the name of brining peace or liberation. Over a light talk between Captain Kadian and his boss ‘Mehrotra Sir’, The Collaborator’s muted response bemoans this tragic aspect: Things have improved, f****** sir. People have left. People are killed. No people, no trouble, isn’t it? A professional colonist, as was Conrad’s character Marlow, considers populated areas as ‘blank spaces’ – people don’t matter, spaces do. Blank spaces…
Through The Collaborator’s love-hate emotions for Pakistan, armed resistance and militant groups, one gets a faint sense of why the narrator is nameless. Now there is thrill being part of the movement, now the zeal begins to wear off; now he draws a distinction between ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ militants, now he is told ‘they are all the same’; now he wants to kill his tormentor , now he learns Kadian is just a ‘blow’ of a ‘sister-f****** giant with countless limbs’.
The novel at times seems a shrill elegy punctuated with this bare sense of dilemma. For instance, The Collaborator tells us, ‘
The protagonist’s flip-flopish attitude seems reflective of the constant ambivalence of Muslim Kashmiris regarding a host of issues. Are we Pakistanis? If not, why this repression by Indian forces? Besides, there are host of Should-Wes and Shouldn’t-Wes hemmed nicely between the lines. Every Kashmiri would find himself in front of a mirror or a ‘thought-sensor’ while reading these lines: Why can’t they have another war instead … a proper war …why can’t they just have proper go and finish this damned unfinished business once and for all…come, come my Pakistani brothers, come inside, come right inside and then stay, don’t you dare leave this time, stay and let me sleep.
The author seems in full control of the plot and the characters through all the chapters. While highlighting abject poverty of Khadim Hussain (the recluse recruiter for militancy who starts with his son) the author introduces a charming Sopore boy Rouf Qadri, who despite prosperous upbringing, is sucked into militancy following arson and massacre by troops.
That Hussain and Ashfaq and Muhammad and Gul would often bunk those post-prayer meetings in the newly built mosque is a nuanced projection of
The whole point author seems to hammer is this: Pakistan, in her fatalist eagerness to ‘bleed India through Kashmir’ might have entailed a bonfire of people alaaw but the youth’s will to die owes itself to something else. Sadly, India through her ornamental peace missions has always failed, or wanted to fail, to kill this will to die in Kashmir even as this was easier than it would be in Palestine or elsewhere. Mirza has subtly reinforced this thought by pointing out the classic Bollywood numbers especially the ‘sultan of music’ Muhammad Rafi being the common favorite of both people as well as army.
Cover to cover, the novel gives out a long litany of losses and in the midst of every expression conveys, very forcefully, the dilemma of war-trapped people and their constant disdain for the ‘war’ and its ‘elements of business’. The horrid hold this war has had on the collective consciousness of
The chapter dealing with the foreign militants and their wrongdoings is enough to provoke introspection among espousers of the “cause” on both sides of the LoC. But the author has steered clear of the internecine battles among Kashmiri groups and their impact on youth psyche even as the novel is set in 1993, the peak of fratricide in Kashmir.
Matching the much admired style of Hemingway and Conrad, the author has employed multiple symbols to communicate the layered messages and his artful rebuttal of violence and counter violence. Death, blood, lacerated bodies and weapons are some important symbols besides water, fire, cold and sun. ‘Wind, wind and more wind’… ‘Cold air hung like a curse’… Cloud-bothered sun’…‘The sky had turned flaming red Qayamatuk Rang’ etc. A dagger-in-chest effect of grief, and what it means when bullet-ridden bodies crowd out flowers, is created when Khadim Hussain’s dead body is described as ‘red body’.
Whatever the scales to adjudge a pure literary work, The Collaborator appears a standard war novel much like Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind that recounts the American civil war or Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, the first novel to explore the origins of the Vietnam war in the French colonial atmosphere of the 1950s – the only difference being those were written when the war was over, The Collaborator came up while the ‘war’ and its ‘elements of business’ are going on.
(riyaz.masroor@yahoo.com)
