ems will have. When a Turk describes his growing years in a conservative neighbourhood thus, “I would go to school. And Ataturk was in school, just in school. Outside there was no Ataturk,” Taseer describes Ataturk’s modernised Turkey as a cemented patch of secular life surrounded by men of faith.

The anecdotes Taseer narrate to give us a keyhole view of the broad bandwidth in which Islam operates for the faithful are many. But none conveyed the reality as succinctly as the story he heard in Damascus. A priest when asked by a young man whether his wife can use nail polish receives an interesting answer. Yes, she can, but for every time she washes for prayer she must wash it off. After all the company that makes nail polish also makes nail polish remover! So, here it is – even the nail polish becomes a potent symbol of the ‘world system’ that the faithful constantly quarantine themselves from. 

 The Iran of the rabid fundamentalist Mullahs is revealed to us as a place where Islam is not religion but politics. The broad canvas that is spread before us reveals the diverse ways a conservative Islam impacts the culture.

For the Indian reader Taseer offers an account of growing up with  his grandparents, his religious identity (if he claims one), the sentiments harboured by the average Pakistani about the hostile Hindu neighbour, et al.

What did Pakistani mean to those who fled to India?  For those of whom Punjab on the Pakistani side was home for generations, the early rumblings of Partition meant a very innocent, harmless shift. The author quotes his great-grandmother who ultimately fled to India, “We thought, that first it had been the rule of the Muslims, then it was the rule of the British, and now again if it was to be the rule of the Muslims, what difference would it make?” But in the aftermath of Partition this lady who relocated in Karnal never recovered from Partition and her deep hurt surfaces when the newborn Taseer is brought to her, “Yes, he is lovely, but Muslim nonetheless.”

If some carry the bitterness, the love and longing for the land left behind is palpable when his grandfather hears the operator on the Pakistani side , “my grandfather heard the music in his accent, he gasped, ‘He spoke my Punjabi’.” Probably the first time he has heard it since he crossed over!

Does one doff the hat to the young man who travelled distant lands to understand the religion of his father, face the ignominy of an abrupt telecom with the father in whose search he had started the journey through many lands? A detachment in his approach has given us a good read on the culture of Islam, the politics of faith, and the notions of India as perceived by the Pakistani brethren.

 
At the end of this personal journey the definition of his faith lies in what his grandfather had to explain many a time when people asked whether he was being brought up as a Sikh or a Muslim. “ ‘A human being,’ my grandfather always asserted.”

<< 1 2