A common complaint, or lament, is that the book reading habit is dying out. It isn't. A lot of readers, especially the younger generations have switched to E-books, so they are invisible. More books, rare books, forbidden books, too-expensive-to-buy books are downloaded from a number of electronic sources. Actually there is a reading book. What has become a fading habit is re-reading favourite books.
Re-reading a book is a different kind of pleasure. It is as enjoyable as a visit to a friend after a long absence. You like the company, you talk about the same old things, the shared experiences. It is like listening to your favourite music over and over again. These days I have re-read a number of old favourites to take my mind off the troubles of Karachi. The joy which should have been the month of Ramazan, turned into a sad month with the deaths caused by heat, the massive power failure, the political witch hunt. I find solace in re-reading old favourites. This is no time to read a new book. The mind simply does not focus, it wonders into the sorrows and disappointments in which my beloved city is submerged.
Reviewing the number of old favourites I have re-read I find the books I selected to re-read were those which rare about cities and people with issues such as Karachi is going through these days.
Top of the list was 'Invisible Cities' by Italo Calvino. Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the cities in his empire. But none of them exist on the map. They are imaginary cities. Cities of Marco's dreams. Calvino's book is profound. It is about humanity's innate desire to imagine their city, their living space, closer to the hearts desire, not necessarily a utopia, not realistic but desirable. It is a wonderful philosophy of today's living space. I have so many imaginary Karachis. I think we all do.
My favourite humour writer is Ibn Insha. Each time I read 'Urdu ki akhri kitab' it makes me laugh. It is supposed to be a text book. It contains an upside down version of the subjects taught in schools: history, science, math etc. Interestingly, it was published by the West Pakistan Text-Book Board, Lahore, 1971. Each time I finish reading I cannot help noticing education is still a mess, still laughable and unrealistic. In Karachi we have so many types of basic education schools but the students remain ignorant.
I love the Russian classic novels. My favourite author is Ivan Sergeyevich Turgeneve. An aristocrat he spent most of his life in Paris, spoke French, preferred the French. He died in Paris in 1883, and was buried in Russia. Turgeneve's life is an allusion to the lives of people in Karachi's high society. They prefer English, they would rather live elsewhere than in Pakistan and look down on local culture. The difference is that Turgeneve wrote about Russia. He became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe and was a well-known figure in Parisian literary circles. Karachi's modern people look down on Urdu, in fact, take pride in their inability to read it. It is a trait that irritates me. I re-read nearly all Turgenev's novels. They are slim volumes unlike what one imagines Russian novels to be.
The Latin American writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's two masterpieces, the novel which won him the Nobel Prize 'One hundred Years of Solitude' and the novel which ought to have won the prize but couldn't, probably because it is a bit raunchy, are both worth re-reading. Critics praise Garcia's masterful handling of the exotic story of the Buendia family in 'One hundred Years of Solitude'. Little is said about the undercurrent of Latin American politics which is, or was, full of bloodshed, military dictaroships and the effect it has on corrupting human society. But a Karachiite cannot fail to notice it because it is something we know from personal experience. No city in Pakistan has suffered as much from military oppressions as Karachi has. In 'Love in the time of Cholera' a young Catholic girl is forced to abandon her true love and marry a wealthy suitor. It is the priests and nuns who pressurise the girl because they stand to gain financially. They do not want to antagonise their wealthy patron who is determined to marry the girl. It is a theme which is relevant to our world in which wealth and religious culture together dictate our politics, our social lives, marriages too.
The 'Tuzuk-i-Babari', the autobiography of the founder of the Moghul dynasty, is a book I can read many times over and over again. There are few history books one can read and re-read. The Tuzuk is highly readable. It almost reads like a novel.
The 'Tazkira Ghausia' is half a book of Sufi fables from the life and time of Ghous Ali Shah Qalandar Qadri, a 19th century Indian Sufi. The latter half is devoted to educating novice Sufis, which I do not care to read. But the funny, fantastic, real and imaginary stories in the first half of the book are worth reading and re-reading. You meet Ghalib, you travel with young Ghaus Ali and his father to the Punjab to deliver Queen Victoria's gift to Maharja Ranjit Singh, you meet fraud saints who have made Sufiism a commercial venture, and genuine saints. You learn tolerance of all faiths as you listen to English soldiers and Hindu Pundits. It is for me a book of wisdom, highly relevant to our life and time in Karachi.
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