of one’s will that distinguishes work from pleasure. I was thinking
of it especially because Ibne Safi was a great favourite
when I was young but I was now re-reading him after years, at great speed,
foraging the novels for ideas.
In part because I was meeting a deadline and in
part because I was reading him for a particular purpose, desiring a
result, the reading gave me little enjoyment.
That is a shame, because Ibne Safi of the
Jasoosi Duniya fame was one reason why I never developed a taste for
western detective/mystery fiction. Almost all his novels, however flimsy
the plot, displayed great command over characterisation and dialogue.
Although he plagiarised his plots from many
well-known masters, he so Indianised them that they became a genre of
their own in the new language.
More mature than Rajan Iqbal and more
sophisticated than Vikrant, nothing in Hindi could compare with Ibne Safi’s quality, even if one includes dubious translations of James Hadley
Chase, which were only ever sought for the ‘hot scenes.’ In addition, his
wit and comic ability earned him accolades and attention even from the
literary establishment of Urdu.
I had once thought of doing a serious study of
Ibne Safi and the idealised world, his fiction represented. He grew
popular in the years immediately before partition although his novels
continued to be set in a politically neutral terrain long afterward. I was
especially keen to tease out the lineaments of the utopian and the secular
state that emerges in most of his early novels. The country’s head is
never mentioned by name, nor are any other international facts or names.
Unlike a Forsyth or a Le Carre, Ibne Safi is not
after verisimilitude; instead he invents his terrain with great confidence
and boldness. In his work, India stretches from the Hindu Kush to the Far
East, though South India is rarely invoked.
There is an international dimension to the
battles and there is a too palpable desire to show the goras their place
and uphold India’s greatness and integrity.
Ibne Safi was born as Asrar Ahmad in Nara,
Allahabad, India and migrated to Pakistan in the later part of his life.
The Chronicle of Pakistan, an official site so commemorates him,
‘A huge
section of the population is estimated to have become hooked to mystery
stories. Ibne Safi, presently living in Karachi, is supposed to be the
father of this new cult since he launched his monthly Jasoosi Duniya from
Allahabad (India) in 1952. It is not unusual for Safi’s books to be sold at
black market prices in Pakistan as well as in India, where they are
originally published every month’.
His lead detective Imran is a gawkish, garrulous
and an inept agent in his apparent life, complete with an equally
eccentric team of housekeepers Suleiman, Gulrukh and the burly Joseph.
Covertly though he is the menacing and invisible X-2, the voice being his
only identity for the team.
Like Ibne Safi’s other set, Colonel Faridi and
Captain Hameed (a desi-ised Holmes and Watson duo) Imran is in reality an
undercover secret agent who both works in and runs his own outfit for the
intelligence bureau of the foreign office.
Religion rarely makes an overt presence, nor does
the community. Imran happens to work for the good of India where,
incidentally as it were, all the top posts are occupied by Muslims.
Inter-alia his eccentrities, verbal duels
especially with women (over whom he has a BOND-ish hold) and his run-ins
with the obese and filthy rich Qasim, always escaping from his bullying
and shrewish wife, take up much of Imran’s time. There is a lot of
flirtation but little sex, much action but most of it realistic.
In the later novels though, especially ones that
are in print today India is replaced by a mysterious Islamic Republic,
without significant changes to the geography or atmosphere.
While I have always wanted to write on Ibne Safi
the timing of this piece and the manner in which it was published was not
exactly of my own choosing, though I cannot deny that I enjoyed writing
it. But does this lack of control and the compulsion to deliver mean that
it was a chore?
No, because the controlling element, the desire
was of my own choice, and perhaps it is this right to chose that frees me.
Eventually.
