Echoes From The Past: As Fresh As Today- Review Of When The Dawned By Som Nath Zutshi – Reviewed by Z.G. Muhammad

Book Review

  Echoes From the Past- Fresh as Fresh as Of Today

By Z.G. Muhammad

Lull and literature cannot coexist. Literature is like water from a gushing natural spring, finding its way even by slicing through stones. It eventually bursts like a volcano when forced into a lull. Once literature breaks the shell of inertia, imposed or otherwise, it travels through decades to challenge and reform. As someone rightly said, wordsmiths “always could shift paradigms, define eras, and impact broader society with their craft.” These thoughts swirled inside my mind when I received the book ‘When The Day Dawned’ from Kalpana Zutshi, my university friend—a collection of short stories written by her father, Som Nath Zutshi, decades ago and now translated into English.

Literary movements also have their troughs and crests. Our society has been no different; literary activities have reached their peaks, and there have been periods when they were at a nadir. At various points in our history, literature in different languages has flourished. Sanskrit and Persian literature enjoyed golden periods due to the patronage of the court and the elite. Nevertheless, the native language, Kaisher Zaban, without any patronage, emerged as a language of literature—particularly poetry—due to its inherent strength; it outlived the language of the elite.

For quite some time, our land experienced a literary lull; this is not to say literature ceased to be created, but literary activities took a backseat. The kind of literary movement in the 1940s, in which Zutshi was a prominent figure, has not been witnessed for long. However, some bright streaks are seen here and there on the cloudy literary firmament. One of them has been the activities of the Jammu and Kashmir Fiction Writers Guild, a Srinagar-based literary organization with 2.8 thousand followers on social media. It meets every Saturday to hold a short story session. The beauty of these sessions is that they do not suffer from linguistic chauvinism; recognizing short stories as a literary form, writers can present their stories in Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Dogri, Punjabi, Pahari, Gojri, English, or any other language the participants can understand.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to attend two of its sessions. I saw its activities as a small step towards a literary renaissance in Kashmir, akin to the change that the appearance of Abdul Ahad Azad and Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor affected the literary scene of the land. The new trends kickstarted by these two poets caught up with the Progressive Writers’ Movement in India and caused the birth of the Quomi Cultural Front, which later became the Progressive Writers Front. That metamorphosed the literature of Kashmir, more particularly in content and form.

However, it would not be fair to believe that the literary scene in Kashmir before Mahjoor and Azad was barren—there were many illustrious poets with fertile and bright imaginations on the scene, enriching Persian and Kashmiri poetry brimming with mysticism—Sufi poetry. They held a dominant position in the popular imagination—a position they continue to have despite some literature finding fault with their prosody. Samad Mir, Shamas Faqir and Ahad Zargar continue to be most favourite among folk and modern singers—and with YouTube, the fan following of these poets of yore has multiplied.

Mr. Zutshi, whose collection of short stories caused this writing, was Secretary of the Progressive Writers Front of Kashmir. Like similar organizations in the Indian Sub-Continent, this organization was also driven by the Marxist ideology. One of the movement’s primary objectives was to promote purposeful art and literature inspired by the Writers’ Union of the USSR. Premchand, the founding President of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in India, in his presidential address, emphasized the need to renounce religious revivalism and create works that would devote all of man’s energy to “economic and political freedom.” Since 1937, the Communist ideologues from the British, from Kanwar Mehmood Ashraf to B.P. L Bedi and Freda Bedi, have immensely impacted Jammu and Kashmir’s political struggle, giving it a new content—they redirected it. In reality, they were sitting on the keel. Members of the Progressive Writers’ Movement of India, from Sajad Zaheer, one of this movement’s leading spirits, and many others frequented Srinagar. Like moths to the taper, the ideology behind the Cultural Front and Progressive Writers Front attracted young poets and writers of the times. Scores of big names, from Dina Nath Nadim to Rehman Rahi, Mirza Arif Beg to Amin Kamil, Akhtar Mohi-u-Din to Som Nath Zutshi to Ali Mohammad Lone, who catapulted to the central stage of Kashmiri literature and hold an iconic place, had their grounding in this movement. Whatever genre of literature they used as a medium to vent their thoughts and feelings, the central thread was human beings and the issues confronting them. Subsequently, many of these writers followed globally dominant literary movements and post-modernism; nevertheless, the grains of the Marxist influence remained in their works.

Like many of his contemporaries, Som Nath Zutshi’s literary predisposition flourished during the peak of the Cultural Front/Progressive Writers Front activities. He earned an iconic position in storytelling with his “Yeli Phol Gaash,” the first short story in the Kashmiri language published. This story translated into English, “When The Day Dawned,” is the title of his collection of short stories translated by Shafi Shouq, one of the preeminent scholars and poets of Kashmir—known for having authored and translated over a hundred books—published by Vitasta Publishing Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, and priced at Rs 495.

The book spreads over 187 pages; the hardbound book carries lucidly translated sixteen stories by the author, a foreword by Prof. Neerja Mattoo, an author and translator, and an exhaustive introduction by Shafi Shouq.

Many stories like “When the Day Dawned” and “Fez, the Grandma” were written over seven decades back, yet their content and social relevance are as fresh as if written just today. The poignance in the life of Rasul, the protagonist of “When the Day Dawned,” also reflects the pain and agony that afflict the ordinary man of today. Shafi Shouq rightly says, “All his stories are based on ordinary events of the ordinary life of common people.” Every story is quite engrossing, and on many occasions, even the reader connects himself with one or another character in the story. I would not shy away from saying that Zutshi’s stories narrate the social history of Kashmir. Every story for it being very near to the readers’ sensibilities, for its grips hold one glued to the book.

Shafi Shouq’s introduction is brimming with scholarship—it is not a routine introduction but a scholarly critique of the stories and a commentary on the socio-political conditions of the land the stories are born. One would agree with Shouq: All eighteen stories are remarkable for not following any particular style; each has its own technique.