Confessions of a Dead Soul

Under the yoke of the British as we were, we had to be smitten by all things English. Imperial traditions and courtly manners swept the Brown Saheb off his feet. The legacy of the legal system still holds supreme. The Royal family continues to be a abyss of envy. Even the accent inspired awe - whether it's Hugh Grant wooing Bridget or some cockney doggerel. But worst of all I find the devotion to our erstwhile masters literary achievements. Fair enough, Mother England had it's fair share of geniuses in the fields of poetry and prose, but it doesn't mean we neglect the corpus of literature belonging to other regions. Indeed, Dickens, Hardy and company should be held in good steed, but the fascination with Elizabethean novels is sometimes sickening. Shakespeare might not have a peer but Marlowe wasn't a queer. But let's step off the Island.

The romanticism of the French, the efficacy of the Germans, the wisdom of the Greeks, the courage of the Nordic, the Spanish armadas and the ambition of the Portuguese are oft forgotten as the miniature Island of the English becomes the barometer for all things European.

All these nations are rich in culture and traditions; literary and otherwise. Flaubert and Diderot are important figures in the evolution of the novel. Stendhal's wisdom shines through in each passage. Balzac and Maupaussant were masters of the art of the short-story. The prolific Zola was as much commercial as he was suave. And these are only just a few Frenchmen.

While German thought was less expressed in novels and more in the form of Critique (of Pure Reason etc..), it too has literary heavyweights who had far reaching impacts on literary techniques. The Divine Comedy is a timeless classic, so is Goethe's work. Thomas Mann, Gunter Grass, Bertolt Brecht and more that I need to discover.

And then there is the master of it all, Franz Kafka, whom I considered a Slav, but I've been told he wrote in German.

Which brings me to the whole body of Russian Literature, a victim of unfortunate neglect as the Czars' incompetence made Russian forays into the Caucus a failure, or else we might have had troikas and drozhnys, instead of royal carriages. It's another matter if the Russian forces would have been able to overcome the Afghans, who repelled the British when colonial expansion blanketed the entire subcontinent; and even the Russians but that was thanks to the US-Israel-SaudiArabia nexus faciliated by our very own General Zia sahab, although a conspiracy is brewed in Hollywood to have it credited to Senator Charlie Wilson. But us intelligent ones can sift fact from fiction.

The Pakistani exposure to Russian Literature seems to be limited to two authors and three books; Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' and 'War and Peace', and Dostoyevskey's 'Crime and Punishment'.

Impressive pieces of literature as they are, the mere size of the novel is enough to scare the novice - while the digressions, that the authors take liberties to, can make things slower than (our) Little Master's vigil against the West Indies. (A pint-sized Hanif scoring a triple hundred against the gigantic quickies from the Carribean.)

Merited as they are a place in the highest echelons of Literature, the above mentioned books are surely not the most apt choice for the representation of such a vast array of literary talent.

Even I, with my Golgothan like appetite for the written word, the legendary veracity that even devoured Gone with the Wind, not to speak of other atrocities, was left askance by Tolstoy's musings on the Russian serf and agrarian techniques. I have since been told that the man was a visionary and even came up with Non-Violence before Gandhi. Interesting snippets, but I still prefer his short stories.

Tell me, you shareef mussalmans, or even the hindoos, for your allegiance should lie with the subcontinent first than any other morsels of land, would you feel safer approaching Anna Karenina, or Haji Murad? Especially when Ms Karenina appears a blown up version of Anna Nicole, while the Haji is extremely nimble on his feet. Think, decide & act.