For this blog post i'm going to look at the character of Zakir's father: Abba Jaan. In the beginning of Basti with the advent of electricity in Rupnagar, Abba Jaan protests against this to the best of his abilities. Abba Jaan has considerable agency as a character so far but when electricity is introduced in the mosque his life becomes restricted to his home. Before this incident Hussain tells us that Abba Jaan is religious but the furtiveness with which he starts praying afterwards is completely new for the reader. From there we see that Abba Jaan as a character slowly loses all agency and becomes very passive. When he leaves Vyaspur, we\re shown any pathos on part of the father. When he's in Lahore, another oddity on part of Abba Jaan is that he never leaves his home. People always come to see him such as Khwaja Sahab. When the 1971 war breaks out he also says that this life is temporary and we're only in this world as guests (page 225).
What I'm pointing to is that with the arrival of the British and following partition, every character becomes displaced and loses previous associations with his or her environment. Abba Jaan loses his home and is unable to recover permanence once he leaves Rupnagar Home signifies permanence in this novel, the Basti then becomes the symbol for a home. Once Abba Jaan leaves his Basti, he is unable to ground himself in Pakistan in terms of a home.
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