A Society Doomed By History

Moth Smoke

Mohsin Hamid

Penguin

Rs 250/245 pages

"You have to have money these days. The roads are falling apart, so you need a Pajero or a Land Cruiser. The phone lines are erratic, so you need a mobile. The colleges are overrun with fundos who have no interest in getting an education, so you have to go abroad." It goes on and on. This is Mohsin Hamid's Lahore in the 90s where anything goes, provided you have money and a bit of clout to go with it. Or it could be Delhi in the 90s or at the turn of the century where an af fluent and well connected boy mows down a few persons, driving a new BMW after downing a few pages at a party, or a skating in structor crushes a person who has dared to argue with him and says he did it in panic.

 

Moth Smoke is a book that the Indian reader relates to at once. The scenario is so similar in the metro cities on either side of the border. After having heard mem bsrs of the recent women's delegation, who have come on a peace mission in the Delhi-Lahore bus, speak on various aspects of life in Pakistan, one is convinced that middle class people lead similar lives in both countries, give and take a few differences brought on by ethno-religious conditioning. While this is partially responsible for the appeal of the book to the sensitive reader in the subcontinent, there is much more to it.

Mohsin Hamid's debut novel started as a project for a creative writing workshop conducted by Toni Morrison in America where the author studied law at Princeton and Harvard. It took him more than two years to give the book its present shape. Interestingly, he persuaded his professor at Harvard to let him present the novel, based on a trial, as his thesis.

The historical strains woven in the narrative, give the book its unique allegorical slant and a per spective.

The novel opens in 1998, the summer af Pakistan's nuclear tests and Darashikoh Shezad (Daru to friends); the protagonist of the novel, has just lost his job in a bank in Lahore. His father had died of gangrene during the Bangladesh war and his mother in a freak accident, killed while sleeping on her terrace on a sultry night with power cuts by a stray bullet from a Kalashnikov fired during wedding festivities. Sounds convoluted? Not really. Bizarre, yes but makes sense once the reader comprehends the method behind the seeming madness. So Daru is brought up by his father's friend Khurram Shah who sends him to Lahore's best school with his own son Aawangazeb, Ozi to friends.

Daru and Ozi grow up like brothers, but not quite. Ozi is sent abroad after school but Daru has to study in GovernxnenYs College, Lahore. Ozi comes back with a beautiful wife Mumtaz and Daru cannot take his eyes off her when he meets them, though he cannot look her in the eye. It is a doomed relationship between Daru and Ozi like its historical parallel with adultery thrown in as Daru and Mumtaz have a passionate affair. Daru, too proud to ask for help for his family and desparate for money, sells herion, attempts to rob a boutique at gunpoint, kills a boy and is arrested.

Is he to blame for all that has happened? Why wasn't Ozi punished when he ran over a boy in his Pajero? The accusing finger clearly points towards the inequalities of the social system where money can buy everything, including justice. A society in which the rich and powerful become richer and more powerful while others like Daru are like parwans, months attracted to the shama, glitzy life, and are reduced to ashes - moth smoke of the title. All this is a frightening prologue to a setup where an aandhi sweeps over the city after the nuclear explosion, leaving everything in shambles. The reader is left knowing that nothing will be the same again and the grandeur of socio-cultural heritage will be reduced only to Mughal names, something that applies to India as well.