Naiyer Masud: Hefting the Stone of Pain

Whenever I look at sunflowers I think of Naiyer Masud. My father addressed him as Mir Sahib; for me he was Naiyer chacha. A tall, angular man with a gravelly voice that was strangely mesmerizing. I heard him before I met him. One afternoon as I crossed the front verandah of our rented house in Lucknow, an unfamiliar voice floated from the living room. Someone was singing a ghazal I recognized as my father’s:

Curious to see who the singer was, I peeked through the partially closed door. Sitting across from my father’s desk was a man singing in a low, oddly soothing voice. He had a long neck with a prominent Adam’s apple that agitated as he sang. An elongated, almost horsy face as arresting and distinctive as his voice. My father called me inside when he noticed me standing by the door. I was tongue-tied as I was introduced to Naiyer Masud and then fled from the room as soon as I could.

My father was posted in Lucknow through the 1970’s. Those Lucknow years were special and impressionable for me, a twelve-year-old, awkward and consumed with shyness. Lucknow’s milieu was quite different from Allahabad. The city managed to carry its colonial legacy, nawabi grace and headiness of democratic freedom all at once. It was modern, it was medieval, it had a special space for Urdu literary culture, a lingering Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb if you will. We lived in a house in River Bank Colony not far from the Gomti river. (I should clarify that the River Bank Colony house was more like a summer residence for me. My mother, a dedicated educationist, was the principal of a girl’s school in Allahabad. My sister and I continued our studies in Allahabad). It was a pleasant neighborhood. One could easily walk to the park gardens around the ruins of the British Resident’s house and explore its crumbling rooms. Evening walks by the Gomti river to the Shahid Smarak (memorial for martyrs) and watching the twinkling lights on the river are etched in my memory. Naiyer chacha’s family residence was in the heart of the old city, in a neighborhood known as Nakhkhas. It was a grand bungalow, aptly named Adabistan (abode of literature) built by his father, Masud Hasan Rizvi Adib, the renowned scholar of Urdu and Persian. Naiyer Masud’s parents and siblings lived in the spacious bungalow.

Naiyer chacha’s mode of transport was a motorized bicycle marketed as the “Vicki.” Sometimes he visited us with a friend, Dr. Kishore, who was big and jovial and a poet. He too rode a Vicki that sagged dangerously under his weight. They seemed a strange pair; the rotund, jolly poet and the lanky, scholarly Naiyer Masud. I can still visualize the Vicki, leaning against the wall of the narrow passage that led to our house. It alerted me that Naiyer chacha was visiting. Conversation floated from the living room through the summer evenings, culminating in dinner. Then, there were evenings spent in Adabistan ending with dinner.

The drive to Nakhkhas was through a sea of traffic. On both sides, the street was flanked with shops and road-side hawkers. The weekly market at the Nakhkhas was specially exciting because there were vendors selling birds and other small animals that could be kept as pets. Soon we had a large cage of chirping little finches with red beaks and flecks of red plumage called lalmuniya. A mountain mynah, orange beaked, sleek, ebony plumage with a startlingly yellow crest on her head joined the menagerie. She was named Shirin (sweet). Pigeons joined the growing bird population. A baby peacock chick named Mirzaji was allowed to roam the house. My memories of Naiyer Masud, the River Bank house and the birds all go together. He would announce himself by calling “Faruqi sahib” in his deep voice from the front verandah, and the birds would send off a musical response. Our cook would rush to the door and Naiyer chacha would step inside. I noticed that he preferred to carry his stuff in a large-sized pocketbook tucked under his arm. When tea was brought in and my father lit his pipe, Naiyer chacha might extract some papers from the pocketbook, or my father would bring something out, discussions would flow right up to dinner time.

Poetry flowed, stories grew and flowered, adabi mahfils scented with tobacco smoke filled the air. Naiyer chacha smoked an unfiltered brand, Charminar. Then the river overflowed; there was a flood. The Gomti river was in a spate. It inundated half the city. River Bank Colony was submerged. My father moved to stay with Naiyer Masud in Adabistan. In Allahabad, we anxiously watched the news. When the waters receded, it took a month before the house was habitable. Lucknow in the 1970s was susceptible to outbreaks of “rioting”. They were sudden and violent. Clashes between Shias and Sunnis. Whenever this happened, the old parts of the city were cut off from the rest and put under curfew. There was a time when Naiyer chacha was at River Bank Colony and curfew was imposed in the old city.

I can’t remember when I read my first Naiyer Masud story. I have a vague recollection of my mother giving me an Urdu journal and asking me to read a story. It was by Naiyer Masud. Maybe it was Itr-e Kafur (Essence of Camphor). I generally disliked the modernist Urdu fiction published in Shabkhoon perhaps because I was too young to understand or enjoy the heavy symbolism. I was pleasantly surprised when this story drew me in to the point that I couldn’t put it down without finishing it. I continued to think about it for many days. As I read more stories, I was awed by the beauty of narrative; the complex cultural maze through which the thread of the story winded without getting entangled; the slow but unremitting pace of its unfolding. 

The ’70s sped into the ’80s. Naiyer chacha’s presence in my life now was only as an important fiction writer. I occasionally translated fiction from Urdu. Once again, my choice was prompted by my mother. She read Ganjifa and passed it on to me. English translations of Naiyer Masud’s stories were published in the Annual of Urdu Studies. I found that his prose leant itself to translation because it was so uncluttered. I decided to translate Ganjifa for Sara Rai’s anthology, Imaging the Other. I worked on the story for weeks, maybe months, writing in long hand on foolscap sheets. Finally, it was done. I made a fresh, clean copy. Naiyer chacha had asked to look through it when it was done. I mailed it to him and waited for his reactions. A month or two went by before a bulky envelope arrived in the mail. It was my translation of Ganjifa, meticulously gone over by Naiyer Masud. He suggested changes in a few places, made comments in the margin where he felt the translation was good, or needed revision. Such precious feedback. The yellowed foolscap pages sit in my desk drawer in Allahabad. Since then I did a couple more translations of his fiction and wrote about my experience too, but the thrill of seeing his delicate, calligraphic handwriting with my own, cannot be replicated.

My affection and regard for Naiyer Masud was an unstated emotion. As a young teen, I was tongue-tied, but as an adult I found I could talk with him quite easily whenever I had the chance to meet him. I framed his calligraphic art and hung it in my study. When I last saw him some years ago, he was frail and walked with difficulty having had a hip replacement. He was in the front room of the house. For the very first time, I went through the front entrance. It was winter and a slanting sun rays dappled the verandah. The room seemed more crowded, even narrower than I remembered it.

It was a memorable last visit. He was surrounded by books. I took many pictures. I kept hearing bits and pieces about his deteriorating health. In the last few months he had stopped talking. The last years were a slow fading, a withdrawal from the mundane, a concentration, a focus on suffering. Finally, peace.