July 16 , 2010

English Version of Yousufi’s Remarkable Memoir ‘Zarguzisht’

 

An English version has just been published of the highly popular memoir of Mr. Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi, the foremost writer of humor in Urdu language. A memoir in Urdu is called ‘sarguzisht’ but he named his account ‘Zarguzisht’ as it relates to his initial induction into the field of money, i.e. banking.

He had been for three years a member of the elite bureaucracy of British India, the Indian Civil Service (ICS), before M.A.H. Ispahani, owner of several large businesses including the Muslim Commercial Bank, persuaded him to migrate to and serve Pakistan. That is how he found himself entangled in the banking business - a vocation for which he had little inclination. Also, he nurtured compunction about a business whose main objective is to keep expanding the accrual of ‘interest’, which Muslims generally believe to fall in the category of ‘Riba’ (usury) that is prohibited in Islam. Hence, the English title of his memoir refers to his vocation as a “Flirtation” with banking. Yet, being a high-achiever and gifted with the infinite capacity to take pains, he rose up during his flirtation with banking to become the Chairman of two banks as well as of the Pakistan Banking Council, which controls all banks in the country – the highest position a banker could aspire to achieve in the country.

“What greater misfortune can there be for a person to adopt the wrong profession and continue to be successful and rise in it? And so that which was wrong gradually became right”, the author laments.

The book covers the first six years of his career – perhaps the most difficult of his life. He had to work past mid-night at the bank and put up with the absence of creature comforts at home in the ramshackle Pir Ilahi Buksh Colony of Karachi. Yet, his joie de vivre, his inherent sense of humor and his persistent optimism kept his company even when he had to walk past mid-might, through rain and puddles of water, all the seven miles from office to his quarter in PIB Colony. His uncanny subtlety of intellect enabled him to see the reality behind the façade, the actual man beneath the garb he wore. He unveils the hypocrisy in a humorous manner to avoid, as much as possible, offending the subject’s susceptibilities. That is the mark of his unique style.

In his introduction to the book, he clarifies: “The humorist, with the whole of his existence, sees, hears and endures with composure what life and the world throws at him. He then scatters in the sky all the colors he has synthesized from the composite of his experiences, loses himself again in search of a new horizon and a new dawn.”

Before we touch on the characters parading through the book, we may consider briefly the quality of the translation.

Four years back when I read the book in Urdu, it occurred to me that if it were to be translated into English, it would lose its texture and taste, its literary merit and verbal attraction and excellence. I thought it impossible to retain in translation its excellence as a piece of literature. And, Mr. Mushtaq Yousufi too held a similar view. But, as the saying goes in Persian “Aanke pidar natawand pisar tamam kunad” (the son accomplishes what the father couldn’t), Arshad Yousufi has accomplished what was thought to be impossible. Evidently, in his vocabulary, the word ‘impossible’ stands for something that is a bit more difficult than ‘possible’.

The translation leaves little to be desired.

Arshad Yousufi has resorted to a “literary” translation that reads seamlessly but has only a tenuous relationship to the original, while a “literal” translation faithfully reproduces the meaning of the original but lacks the smooth flow. Arshad could accomplish the almost impossible task owing mainly to his full command on both languages, their idiosyncrasies, nuances and niceties. An engineer by profession, he must have inherited the unusual taste for the written word from his high-achieving forefathers, in particular his father.

“The original ‘Zarguzisht’”, he maintains, “is considered a masterpiece in its use of the Urdu language, hence the translation has severe intrinsic shortcomings because it cannot convey all the literary and cultural allusions, expressions, idioms, puns, nuances and turns of phrases of Urdu, or the word-play that is the hallmark of the writer’s style; hence the translation is but a pale shadow of the original.”

I think that the translation has, instead, succeeded in capturing the theme, texture and thrust of the original; hence, it is quite laudable.

Although the book covers the period 1950-56, it was published 20 years later in 1976 and has since gone into several editions. This along with the other three publications, Chiragh Talay (1961), Khakam Ba Dahan (1969) and Aab-I-Gum (1990) secured for Mr. Mushtaq Yousufi the highest awards of Pakistan for literature - Sitara-I-Imtiaz and Hilal-I-Imtiaz. It is not in my knowledge if any other writer has been so profusely decorated.

Zarguzisht is no work of fiction; it is based on the impressions gained by the author of the characters around him in his first banking assignment and the shape of things in the early years of Pakistan in the country’s premier city - Karachi. In the preface of the book, the author says that his intention “is to offer a glimpse of the small world (of the bank) every corner, pigeon hole, niche, nook and cranny of which is occupied by a diverse assortment of arrogant tyrants of the time who have the same sort of regard for their little fiefdoms as a genteel woman has for her private room in the house.”

Foremost of these unusual characters was the General Manager of the bank, a divorced, middle-aged native of Scotland badly addicted to the bottle. A foul-mouthed martinet, a loose cannon, he treated with disdain his staff and they nurtured the same sentiment towards him. Anderson, writes the author, remained in a state of perpetual rage. His anger was absolutely pure, meaning it was baseless and without reason. If a fly committed suicide in his teacup, the Inspector of Branches (one of the four assignments of the author at the same salary) would be called to account.

The man who kept dreaming of a British Knighthood, whose wife divorced him accusing him of an inability of maintaining his conjugal obligation, who bullied his subordinates and stammered talking to his superiors, was infatuated towards the tail end of his service by a cross-bred woman who had fallen in love with his Provident Fund money. The martinet fades into retirement in his native Scotland, unsung and unwept.

The book is a potpourri of literally scores of other characters that join the author’s narration of the state of affairs at the bank and in a city suffering the onslaught of hordes of immigrants from India converging in Karachi in pursuit of an idea whose time had come. Many of them were honest and hardworking, but the twists and turns in whose lives had created laughable situations providing fodder for the humor mill of the author. By any measure, it is a must read work.

The English translation of Zarguzisht has the title “My Long Flirtation With Banking” and is available with Amazon.Com, Barnes and Noble, and Kindle eBooks.

arifhussaini@hotmail.com