I came across this line in an article which sheds light on something I've always been somewhat curious about while reading Basti:
"The critic Muhammad Umar Memon has described Zakir’s friends as ‘shorn of physical traits and particularizing details,’ and it is true they are a collective presence, a kind of chorus commenting on events, themselves “swathed in an eerie half-light,” that they are hard put to understand and helpless to control. All they can do is talk, a reflection of the powerlessness of intellectuals but also of the people as a whole. “When a man can do nothing, what is his responsibility? Zakir and his friends wait in the cafe, defeated, it seems, before defeat." (from http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-6-184007-Intizar-Husain%20s-Basti)
It's an interesting way to look at their inactive nature, because really I find it hard to distinguish between Zakir's friends in the story myself, and this is an interesting technique that the author has used to highlight their powerlessness and ineffectual-ness. But I followed this line of thought to discover what else Muhammad Umar Memon had to say. Turns out he wrote the introduction to the English translated version of Basti, and here are some lines he wrote which give food for thought:
"Critics have often asked why Zakir and his friends do not act, rather than merely experiencing, why they do not move with zest and help their country during such harrowing times... But Zakir’s silences, and his apparent lack of overt political activism, stem not from some inherent flaw in his moral fiber, but from a particular view of history — one shaped in the crucible of Karbala. Seen as such, his behaviour is not failure. The novel is not about political resistance and activism. It is about how a personality survives in a morally corrupt universe by drawing on its own inner resources.
Zakir is a Shiite — which is to say that the events of Karbala belong to the deepest strata of his inner life... Outnumbered and outmatched, abandoned or betrayed by many of his supporters, Imam Husain marched against the Umayyad forces with all the odds fatally against him. Right from the start he had no illusions about the outcome of the battle; yet he did nothing to avert it. After Karbala, Shiism would seem to have given up faith in armed struggle as a viable means of achieving essentially spiritual and moral goals... Zakir, the historian, whose name means “one who remembers,” walks through his time and space with the graphic memory of Shiite suffering. The more the world around him crumbles into chaos, the more he withdraws into himself in what appears to be almost a scramble for a very private kind of salvation through the Shiite principle of the interiorisation of suffering. Being the person he is, Zakir is not likely to react openly to such temporal issues as the conduct of the government and the nature of political authority... Material events, instead of inciting men to physical action, can perhaps heighten their sense of suffering."
I'm not sure I entirely agree, but I do think that this internalization of suffering stems very much from the kind of person Zakir is. In any case, its worth reading the entire introduction here: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/basti/00_intmemon.html
"The critic Muhammad Umar Memon has described Zakir’s friends as ‘shorn of physical traits and particularizing details,’ and it is true they are a collective presence, a kind of chorus commenting on events, themselves “swathed in an eerie half-light,” that they are hard put to understand and helpless to control. All they can do is talk, a reflection of the powerlessness of intellectuals but also of the people as a whole. “When a man can do nothing, what is his responsibility? Zakir and his friends wait in the cafe, defeated, it seems, before defeat." (from http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-6-184007-Intizar-Husain%20s-Basti)
It's an interesting way to look at their inactive nature, because really I find it hard to distinguish between Zakir's friends in the story myself, and this is an interesting technique that the author has used to highlight their powerlessness and ineffectual-ness. But I followed this line of thought to discover what else Muhammad Umar Memon had to say. Turns out he wrote the introduction to the English translated version of Basti, and here are some lines he wrote which give food for thought:
"Critics have often asked why Zakir and his friends do not act, rather than merely experiencing, why they do not move with zest and help their country during such harrowing times... But Zakir’s silences, and his apparent lack of overt political activism, stem not from some inherent flaw in his moral fiber, but from a particular view of history — one shaped in the crucible of Karbala. Seen as such, his behaviour is not failure. The novel is not about political resistance and activism. It is about how a personality survives in a morally corrupt universe by drawing on its own inner resources.
Zakir is a Shiite — which is to say that the events of Karbala belong to the deepest strata of his inner life... Outnumbered and outmatched, abandoned or betrayed by many of his supporters, Imam Husain marched against the Umayyad forces with all the odds fatally against him. Right from the start he had no illusions about the outcome of the battle; yet he did nothing to avert it. After Karbala, Shiism would seem to have given up faith in armed struggle as a viable means of achieving essentially spiritual and moral goals... Zakir, the historian, whose name means “one who remembers,” walks through his time and space with the graphic memory of Shiite suffering. The more the world around him crumbles into chaos, the more he withdraws into himself in what appears to be almost a scramble for a very private kind of salvation through the Shiite principle of the interiorisation of suffering. Being the person he is, Zakir is not likely to react openly to such temporal issues as the conduct of the government and the nature of political authority... Material events, instead of inciting men to physical action, can perhaps heighten their sense of suffering."
I'm not sure I entirely agree, but I do think that this internalization of suffering stems very much from the kind of person Zakir is. In any case, its worth reading the entire introduction here: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/basti/00_intmemon.html
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