Tales From Birehra by Rafi Mustafa
Reviewed by Susan Waggoner, Foreword Clarion Reviews
Clarion Rating: 4 Stars
There is much to savour in this affecting and well-written Indian collection.
In Tales From Birehra: A Journey Through a World Within Us, author Rafi Mustafa blends accomplished storytelling and real history to deliver a poignant and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of a small, isolated village in north central India.
This collection of twenty interconnected stories features characters who tumble forth with life and vitality. The first dozen stories, comprising Book I, depict several generations of life in Birehra, stopping at the conclusion of the Second World War. Book II, titled Paradise Lost, stretches from the end of the war to the present, covering the move to independence for India and the high toll, in blood and dislocation, exacted by the partitioning of India and Pakistan.
The stories in Book I are not linear, but move back and forth in time, linked by location and recurring characters. The picture painted is of an insular but self-sustaining multicultural community. The inequality between upper- and lower-castes is honestly depicted. The microcosm reveals an ordered world in which wealthy employers care for their lower-caste workers, ensuring that everyone has food and shelter. Cultural boundaries stretch to accommodate necessity, as in the tale of an upper-class grandmother who must choose between letting her orphaned grandson die for want of milk or allowing a low-caste Hindu to nurse him, thereby obligating her to honor the wet nurse for the rest of her life.
Stories also show how deeds of past generations grow to mythic proportions as lore is handed down through generations. Descriptions and metaphors are vivid—a local landlord who maintains peace by sheer demeanor is “armed with a pair of long moustaches pointing upward”; the rush of time in a world without clocks or calendars is likened to the slow flow of a river turning imperceptibly to the rush of a waterfall. Each story moves at a brisk pace, luring the reader on.
In Book II, the timeless, sleepy, sometimes magical peace of Birehra is shattered by the events of the day, first by independence for India and rumors of partition, then by an influx of strangers bent on inciting Muslim-Hindu riots across the subcontinent. The author’s careful building of Birehra and its inhabitants brings the conflict home, creating a palpable sense of loss as characters and families the reader has come to know are tested, pitted against each other, and scattered.
The cascade of unfamiliar names and generations can be confusing at times, and a genealogy or index of characters to accompany the helpful glossary of terms at the end of the book would have been useful. However, this is a minor flaw.
Ultimately, Mustafa’s Tales From Birehra delivers a better understanding of the cost of partition than many history books, and is a memorable look at Islam before it became associated with political radicals. Of interest to anyone intrigued by India, twentieth-century history, or a time when religious coexistence was more than a pipe dream, there is much to savor in this surprisingly affecting and well-written collection.
Author’s Note: The issue of unfamiliar names, especially for western readers, is being addressed by including a list of characters in next edition.
Tales From Birehra by Rafi Mustafa
Reviewed by Karamatullah K. Ghori, Dawn: Books & Authors
They say in every adult there is a child fervently kicking at the barrier of time to break the glass and re-enter the paradise of early childhood. Most don’t succeed in their effort. But those who do, often come up with a hefty scoop of reminiscences to light up their world of fond memories and enrich the intellectual landscapes of many an uninformed onlooker.
Rafi Mustafa, a chemistry professor by training and a man of varied interests and tastes — teaching, social and humanitarian work and, of late, heading an information technology company — is a prodigal son who managed to not only revisit his cradle of birth in undivided India but also rediscover the paradise he thought he’d lost forever.
Tales from Birehra: A Journey Through a World Within Us is supposedly a work of fiction, but its matrix is that versatile and eclectic historical culture nurtured and honed through at least a millennium of Hindu-Muslim co-existence and socio-cultural interaction in northern India.
A work of fiction that is much more a reminiscence of a real syncretic identity
That hybrid, vibrant, and — until the great divide of 1947 cut it asunder — coyly-pulsating culture acquired a permanent foothold in the subcontinental psyche as the Ganga-Jamuni culture, alluding to the fertile plains fed by India’s two great rivers. That was the locus, the terrain, where the Muslim conquerors of northern India first put down roots and sowed the cultural and religious seeds they had brought in their baggage. Of course, those seeds were fertilised by the already rich soil of a prolific Hindu culture that had flourished in the lush plains for millennia. The harvest couldn’t be more fulfilling, and quickly became the envy of the world.
That Ganga-Jamuni culture may now sound unfamiliar to those never exposed to it. Mustansar Hussain Tarar, a stalwart of Pakistan’s contemporary Urdu literature, openly disdained and disowned it in his remarks at this year’s Karachi Literature Festival. He said it was alien to him. Well, it should be to one born on the banks of the Ravi, but also intent on not knowing it.
To Mustafa, that supposedly alien cultural heritage is his identity, his persona, his asset of pride. He opened his eyes to the world in its lap, inhaled its fragrance with his first breath and pined to return to it, if not physically then intellectually at least, to put to rest his hankering to know his defining identity. He roamed the world as an expatriate, as an immigrant in search of a permanent abode. Ironically, the adult in him decided to make cold and frigid Canada his home, but in the process he didn’t forsake the child in him whose moorings are tethered, for good, to the embracing warmth of his defining Ganga-Jamuni culture.
Tales from Birehra is Mustafa’s epic journey back to his roots, but it could be the same for anyone of his generation. It was a long and arduous journey. It had to be so for one lost — for all intents and purposes — in the humdrum of a life dedicated to pursuits of things that had no truck whatsoever with his roots and, in its chemistry, happened to be poles apart from the somnolent life of his cradle.
It was said that Phagna was born feet first. According to the local superstition, if you had a bad back, you would get someone who was born feet first to kick you in the back; your backache would be gone instantly! People with bad backs went to Phagna regularly and requested him to give them a kick in the back. That was the only time he showed any courtesy to them. He obliged everyone, regardless of their race or religion — Brahmins, Muslims, untouchables — and he never asked anyone for money. Even though some people tried to pay him for his services, he always declined the offer, saying that it was a God-given gift and he would surely lose his power if he started charging them. —Excerpt from the book
The urge to know his past kept him going for 14 long years, by his own admission, making this labour of love possible. It is of little surprise that he dedicates his book to Rumi’s intro to his acclaimed ‘Masnavi’: “Listen to the flute, what it is saying/ It is complaining about separation/ Whoever is plucked from his roots/ Is always longing to return one day.”
Mustafa’s book is a rich tapestry of that culture in which the lines of different traditions, beliefs, practices and ethos were always visible, but never crossed. They weren’t faultlines, but boundaries. It may have been a stratified cultural milieu, but it held itself well without any conflict. Hindus and Muslims lived side by side, as they do in Mustafa’s fabled Birehra, a quiet, colourful village in the heart of the then United Provinces (UP) of British India, and gladly embraced each other’s diversity.
The key to that eclectic cultural ambience was not tolerance of each other, but a profound acceptance of the fact that their diversity was a source of strength and not division. Both communities were wedded to the same patch of land that nourished them. So, beholden to the bounty and benediction of their common land and remaining faithful to it, they blissfully partook of each other’s festivals, wedding and burial rituals. They shared each other’s sorrows and rejoiced in moments of joy, while inexorably holding fast to their roots.
Tales from Birehra is a rich cornucopia of that remarkable Ganga-Jamuni cultural ethos and of the practices that generously fed its growth. Mustafa has painstakingly portrayed its core strength anchored in a remarkably hospitable cultural mix.
Birehra had both Muslim feudals, wedded to their proud ancestral heritage, as well as Hindu Rajputs equally proud of their Aryan roots. Yet each respected the other without looking down upon them as inferior or unacceptable. How remarkable that the newborn son of a titled Khan-bahadur is breastfed by a wet nurse from the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system. The child grows up to revere the wet nurse as his own mother because she had nurtured him as though he were her own child. Can anybody, in either India or Pakistan of today, imagine such an effervescent cross-fertilisation of communities?
Birehra is rich in vivid portrayals of Hindu-Muslim festivals and celebrations. Mustufa has meticulously suffused his portraits of the characters with every conceivable detail. His characters come alive as people living their simple lives with the dignity and composure that comes to them from the earth they have inherently sworn to honour.
It’s a remarkable paean to a civilisation gone missing. Mustafa has come up with a gem for those not feeling shy to own, with pride, the edifying Ganga-Jamuni culture of their ancestors.
The reviewer is is a retired ambassador with nine published works of prose and poetry
Tales from Birehra: A Journey Through a World Within Us
By Rafi Mustafa,
Friesen Press, Canada
ISBN: 978-1460296479
324pp.
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 2nd, 2017
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Tales From Birehra by Rafi Mustafa
A Reader's Synopsis by Pavitar Singh,
Canadian Asian News
Rafi Mustafa’s book, Tales from Birehra, touches the soft side of people & completes the story of India’s partition.
In my mind, Tales From Birehra by Rafi Mustafa is like a sequel to We the Living by Ayn Rand, which had been sitting unread in my library for the past 25 years. Finally, I picked it up as I left for a trip to Toronto recently. On my way back to India, I had Tales From Birehra in my hand. For me, the transition from Rand to Mustafa was seamless. They both managed to connect me to my roots and nourished my intellectual and emotional appetite.
At first, Tales of Birehra appears to be an autobiography but progresses as a biopic. The reader roams through the streets of Birehra, peeps into homes, and talks to the village folk. The narration is so strong and picturesque that sometimes you are walking with Karmoo the Water Carrier, and suddenly you find yourself standing at the doorstep of Khansaab, eager to listen to his words of wisdom.
The story serves as a tribute to all those who got uprooted in 1947’s partition of India. Mustafa has narrated the buildup to the midnight of August 15th so nicely, without mentioning any tragic scene, as if It was all a story told by a warrior, who does not blame anyone, not even himself, and takes every fortune and misfortune in his stride. It was very heroic when Khansaab tells his son at Lahore railway station, “You are asking me when we will get home, I am giving you an entirely new country.” It may be Birehra where Mustafa was born, or a village in Punjab where I was born, or any other village in India, this book touches the soft side of Indian people and completes the story of Partition.
Tales From Birehra has an empathetic hero in Khansaab, who is as assertive as Roarak of The Fountain Head, and his appearance revitalizes the storyline. As Lala Hardyal has touched all the disciplines of knowledge from history to chemistry, and civics to physics in his books, Mustafa has touched all the disciplines of the lives of rich and poor in a collaborating society of early 20th century. The style is very engrossing, stories told with amazing detail as history unfolds itself. One wonders how it all can be grasped by Khansaab’s six-year old son, Azad. The same stories looked to me somewhat happening in and around my village in Punjab, where I lived through my schooling.
The people of Birehra were neither too rich (except the owner of Mahal) nor too poor. Everyone was a well-integrated part of village life. Service was accepted with gratitude and offered with pride. There was a relationship of respect and ownership in each transaction beyond commercial value.
While all characters play their role with absolute honesty and flow with the plot, there are few exceptions too. Bhagwan Das, the milk brother of Khansaab is one such character, who dies in the beginning of the story after living a short life, but touches the reader’s heart until the end of the book through his son, Phagna, who himself plays a crucial role in the lives of the people of Birehra physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I feel that Phagna may be the only character in the plot, who travels over a maximum bandwidth of spirituality. Through Phagna, many other characters have made themselves immortal in the memory of the reader and one such character is Fattu, who spends his life taking care of Phagna’s grave.
Another character is Jumma, the first emigrant out of Birehra. I could not imagine anyone else in Birehra to match his courage. He seems to be the most alert person in Birehra, who senses the need to change and makes it a success.
The most thrilling is the case of Karmoo, the water carrier and the first entrepreneur of Birehra. At one point, it seems that he would soon commercialize the entire village, but then he becomes the victim of an every-change-is-resisted syndrome. He tries to build his own Rome but fails.
When Gulrukh entered the story, I had hoped that she would add some philosophical content to the plot since Khansaab was getting a wife, who was an equal match for him in thought and demeanor, but unfortunately, her story turns into tragedy in half a page when she dies during childbirth.
Thakur Baldev Singh and Rai Bahadur Pratap Singh seem to be the most fertile characters since even after 70 years, India suffers from the existence of many Thakurs and Rai Bahadurs. Angrez challe gayae poonchh chhod gaye, as people say. Mustafa has allotted the longest chapter to Thakur Baldev Singh out of courtesy.
Lala Ishvari Lal, the money-lender, is portrayed as a necessary evil. His role elicits the age-old emotions in the heart of readers, and he maintains the reputation of a banya. The episode of a fish getting trapped in layers of his accumulated fatty belly, sounds funny, but Mustafa has very skillfully symbolized the filthy life-style and dealings of money-lenders of that era.
There are so many moments of suspense in this book that the reader cannot put it down without finding the outcome; the killing of Bhagwan Das by a wild boar in the forest is one such event. The narration is so strong that it brings shivers in your spine, every time you read the chapter from the beginning to the end. The beauty lies in the fact that the reader is told upfront that Bhagwan Das has been killed by a wild boar, but the reader’s curiosity still remains at peak while the village folk go out into the forest to search for him.
The emotional peaks are touched when Khansaab gets a rakhi tied to his wrist by the widow of his milk brother, Bhagwan Das. Similarly. a very emotional scene is created when Preeti, the daughter of Thakur Baldev Singh, is sent off with her erring in-laws, and Khansaab reprimands them as if she is his own daughter. And finally, no hold of tears when Khansaab’s son, Azad, goes to meet sick Phagna for the last time.
Many of the incidents and happenings described in Tales From Birehra, such the concepts of untouchability, milk brother, cheel gadi, open-air operation theatre, impotent men, barren women and nuskhas to get them pregnant, maybe totally unimaginable by the urban teenagers of today but are still part of our society.
Phagna is the most fascinating character in the book. It is interesting to see everyone giving a dose of his home-made medicine to sick Phagna since it was considered to be rude for a visitor not to suggest a cure for an ailing friend. The most touching scene is that of the cremation of Phagna, once an outlaw, then turned into a smoking sardar, and ultimately died to become a saint.
The book engages readers until the very end when they are relieved to find out that young Azad reaches his new country with his caring mother and wise father.
Title: Tales From Birehra
Author: Rafi Mustafa
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBNs:978-1-4602-9647-9 Hardcover
978-1-4602-9648-6 Paperback
978-1-4602-9649-3 eBook
Available from Amazon, Indigo, Chapters, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Googleplay, iTunes and other outlets.
Pavitar Singh is an avid reader and an entrepreneur. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Precisione Centre, which is a well-known manufacturer of various molds and a supplier of engineering solutions for international clients. He is based in Gurgaon, India.
Published in Canadian Asian News, July 15, 2017
Tales From Birehra by Rafi Mustafa
Readers' Reviews from Goodreads and Amazon
Kassim Ebrahim
In Part One of Rafi Mustafa’s Tales from Birehra you are taken on a very interesting and leisurely journey into a village world that existed many decades ago in colonial India. You will encounter delicately and skilfully described characters -- Hindus, Muslims and a solitary Sikh – who constitute the agricultural community in the village of Birehra. Along the way, you will learn about the different class structures and religious beliefs of these individuals and stories of their foibles and acts of integrity and courage. But, the serene and simple life of Birehra, as depicted in Part One, sadly gives way to an uncertain and challenging life for the village folk as the political climate in India undergoes change.
In Part Two you read of the winds of political change and of religious animosities that tear through the fabric of the sub-continent as India throws off the shackles of colonialism. Tiny and remote Birehra, too, is swept up by these forces and the innocent and idyllic lifestyle of its people comes to a sad end. With that, as has been the story of humanity in so many places and at so many times -- including the present -- people are forced to flee their homelands and become refugees.
Rafi Mustafa’s detailed and delicate telling of the stories of Birehra and its people, makes his book a most enjoyable read.
Rashid Latif
This book has narrated the sordid and very grim historical facts of 1947 holocaust in India, in such a fictional and highly absorbing style that people of my generation, though not many left now, feel that Birehra's story is not that of a fictional village, but the story of their own ancestral village and their pre 1947 culture, which they left behind never to visit that again.
The author has expressed the viewpoints of both 1947 villains, Hindus and Muslims, without any bias or prejudice towards any, which is not an easy task even for a secular, leave alone a practicing Muslim. Whenever he describes the feelings of Muslims, the author seems to be a staunch Muslim, but the most remarkable feature of this author is that, while describing the Hindu's point of view, he leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that the author is definitely a Hindu.
It seems that the author has not written, but painted the book with such masterly strokes that even the minutest detail of his painting has not escaped his attention. For the younger generation the book is a "must read". It is not a fiction but the history of pre 1947 India that unfurls like a movie as you keep turning its pages.
Feb 26, 2017Rashid Latif rated it it was amazingShelves: already-read
This book has narrated the sordid and very grim historical facts of 1947 holocaust in India, in such a fictional and highly absorbing style that people of my generation, though not many left now, feel that Birehra's story is not that of a fictional village, but the story of their own ancestral village and their pre 1947 culture, which they left behind never to visit that again.
The author has expressed the viewpoints of both 1947 villains, Hindus and Muslims, without any bias or prejudice towards any, which is not an easy task even for a secular, leave alone a practicing Muslim. Whenever he describes the feelings of Muslims, the author seems to be a staunch Muslim, but the most remarkable feature of this author is that, while describing the Hindu's point of view, he leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that the author is definitely a Hindu.
It seems that the author has not written, but painted the book with such masterly strokes that even the minutest detail of his painting has not escaped his attention. For the younger generation the book is a "must read". It is not a fiction but the history of pre 1947 India that unfurls like a movie as you keep turning its pages.
This book has narrated the sordid and very grim historical facts of 1947 holocaust in India, in such a fictional and highly absorbing style that people of my generation, though not many left now, feel that Birehra's story is not that of a fictional village, but the story of their own ancestral village and their pre 1947 culture, which they left behind never to visit that again.
The author has expressed the viewpoints of both 1947 villains, Hindus and Muslims, without any bias or prejudice towards any, which is not an easy task even for a secular, leave alone a practicing Muslim. Whenever he describes the feelings of Muslims, the author seems to be a staunch Muslim, but the most remarkable feature of this author is that, while describing the Hindu's point of view, he leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that the author is definitely a Hindu.
It seems that the author has not written, but painted the book with such masterly strokes that even the minutest detail of his painting has not escaped his attention. For the younger generation the book is a "must read". It is not a fiction but the history of pre 1947 India that unfurls like a movie as you keep turning its pages.
Syed Mukarram
The book is indeed enthralling. Rafi Mustafa takes the reader on a roller coaster ride on a journey through time, places and seasons. One cannot help but be emotional. It is a mixture of fiction, history, philosophy, geopolitics, comedy, tragedy, suspense. At times you laugh and at times you cry as you go through the pages.
Once you start reading the book it is very hard to set it aside. You become an inhabitant of Birehra actively participating in the events, experiencing the scenery, the changing seasons, the flora and fauna, the architecture from the palaces to the thatched huts. And a cast of fascinating characters, their names (with a glossary and genealogy at the end), their occupations bound to their caste, their down to earth conversations....it's so interesting ..... all communities, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs living peacefully and harmoniously helping and caring for each other for generations, a model for humanity.
What a simple beautiful life it was, until............Until the stunning game of devious politics begins beyond the grasp of the simple folks of Birehra poisoning the well......the friendships and the betrayals.
This book indeed is really worth reading, and deserves to be in every library. The book can be made into a great movie.