The Adventures of Topandas Khilluram Narkiyani in Manohar Shyam Joshi’s Hamzad

Ladies and Gentlemen! We have talked a lot about demons. It’s time we met one.

What do you call a person who sleeps with you, your mother, your hunchbacked elder sister, your beautiful younger sister, your first enigmatic lover, your second intellectual lover, your third filmy lover, marries all three, lets you sleep with them after marriage, sleeps with his daughter and his granddaughter and who, in a way, also murders all of them?

Demon?

Let’s see.

It’s the story of Takhatram Vilayatiram Thareja Ta-assuf Ahmedpuri and Topandas Khilluram Punwani aka T.K. Narkiyani. The story begins in the pre-Partition days in Moranvali, shifts briefly to Multan and Lahore, finally comes to Bambai and ends in New York.

It was nothing but coincidence, a very peculiar demonic coincidence, that both of them were born neighbors: Takhat son to a famous Congress leader, Topan to a mundane primary teacher.

Takhat strived for his father Lalaji’s understanding and love; it was Topan who won his favor and his admiration.

Takhat strived even more for his mother’s affection; it was Topan who remained her worthiest son while perhaps also sleeping with her.

Takhat had utmost sympathy for his hunchbacked elder sister Snehbai; it was Topan who satisfied her needs of all kinds.

Takhat really looked after his younger beautiful sister Kanak as a brother should; it was Topan who married her.

Takhat loved the intellectual Sarasvati and the intellectual Sarasvati also loved him back; it was Topan who slept with her and later married her.

Takhat also loved the enigmatic Maina and the enigmatic Maina loved him back; it was Topan who also slept with her and later also married her.

Takhat discovered Rita during a train journey and brought her to Bollywood, on the way falling in love with her; it was Topan who took her ‘screen test’ and slept with her.

Takhat tried very hard to save Meena, Kanak and Topan’s daughter from becoming Topan’s victims; it was Topan who managed to sleep with her, and sold her out as a sex worker.

Takhat tried very, very hard to save Soni, Meena’s daughter, and sent her away from the country; it was Topan who managed to take Soni’s ‘screen test’. But it is Soni who finally kills him and effects a long-due family revenge. Topan is killed while performing cunnilingus.

Takhat and Topan: Love, Sex and Videotapes*

* Videotapes are not a trashy, journalistic allusion to the Hollywood movie. When Maina and Takhat are given an opportunity to rekindle their love/sex life, this time in T’s bedroom, T makes sure that their emotional and sloppy lovemaking gets archived. In all, the gambler-turned-real estate tycoon-turned-King of Bollywood Topan sleeps with 953 women and a man (Takhat). To make things more interesting, the man in charge of Topan’s video archival system is none other than Takhat himself. He not only keeps a video record of all ‘screen tests’ but also makes a detailed written documentation.

** s with T stands for sleeps with Topan.

Women as Source of Demon Tales

It shouldn’t be gender-specific but my first demon stories came from women. My mausi (mother’s sister) used to be a great storyteller in her young days and she told me the archetypal demon stories. Stories in which demons and witches change their forms and do wonderfully witchy things. I never got scared. The storyteller didn’t take great pleasure in describing the demonic.

But then I heard that, as a 16-year-old newly-married girl, mausi was possessed by a male ghost and she started behaving very rudely and lost all manners that a bahu (daughter-in-law) should have. For a long time it remained to me a kind of practical joke that a young girl tried to enact. However, fortunately, it remains mausi’s standalone, one-off encounter with ghosts.

My nani (mother’s mother) on the other hand, has had many. She has lived her whole life communicating with the dead. But more interestingly, the dead have also tried to communicate through her. As a kid, it was a matter of awe and fun. And I had a lot more than others since for reasons unknown she always considered me to be her most worthy audience.  I never got scared. Not even in 1982-83, Calcutta. I was 7 or 8 and was advised by one hell of a homeopath to stay away from my desert town in order to cure my allergic cold. She told me don’t ever go to the public toilets once it’s dark. But we were poor and I think I liked Mrs. Bhagnani who supposedly also waited for an audience. I never got scared.

My first love story came from a man. One of my 6 uncles. And he was a passionate, animated narrator. Razia Sultan and Yaqub the slave’s love story was something, I am sure, a poor small town young man could easily relate to. His animated rendering scared me. For the first time ever, I was scared by a story, by a narrative technique and a narrator’s personality. My archetypal demonic experience didn’t spring from a demon tale but a moving love story. Before you doubt my own human status, give me a chance to explain things. The extra-human demons never seemed to be demonic enough. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I always knew, they were not real. But the people who could kill Razia and Yaqub were absolutely real. When you know something is fictional, you don’t get scared. However, I had my fair share of paranoia later as a young man falling in love with girls I shouldn’t have.

Hamzad

Hamzad, according to an ancient myth, is your satanic double who is born with you and never leaves you. If Topan is an ideal Hamzad, we have a very simple and profound definition of a Hamzad: a Hamzad sleeps with everybody and kills everybody.

What exactly is the relationship between Takhat and Topan?

I AM YOUR HAMZAD.

It is Topan explaining things to Takhat. I was born with you and I will never leave you, even after my death.

But that’s spiritual.

In worldly terms, Topan earns, Takhat receives.

Takhat is Topan’s C.C., variously interpreted as Constant Companion, Chief Chamcha and Chief Concubine.

Takhat is weak, helpless goodness. Topan is bold, enterprising evil. They are partners in crime, literally. But we must assume that Takhat never wished to do any of these crimes. It was his satanic double whose inexplicable hold over him made him do everything.

Very late in the story though, Takhat confesses that, after a lifetime struggle for freedom from Topan, he has finally started enjoying the power his relationship with Topan gives him over others.

WRITING AS BLACK-MAIL

The novel begins with a letter Takhat writes to Jaykishen. Jaykishen was conceived in Lahore when Maina and Takhat decided to overcome the gloomy deathly atmosphere in her house (she has a dying father and belongs to a decaying ‘izzatdar’ family) by having passionate sex in the attic. But a month later, Maina got married to Topan and so Jaykishen, for ignorant outsiders, remained Topan’s son. Jaykishen has Takhat’s physical and Topan’s spiritual attributes.

In a way, Jaykishen is also Takhat’s Hamzad.

The letter is an apology for a failed attempt of blackmail. Takhat tries to blackmail Jaykishen after Topan’s death. Jaykishen has already thrown him out of his job, and has discontinued the favors Topan had granted him. But now he commissions Takhat to write the whole thing and if he finds that Takhat really has something substantial up his sleeve, he’ll restore Takhat as his own C.C.

Takhat is a self-styled progressive writer. And he has some of the characteristics progressives displayed in the 60s and 70s. Sloppy, emotional, indecisive, woman-seeking. Progressive shayari was the new shortcut to women’s hearts and beyond.

He writes the whole thing and Jaykishen finds it substantial though vastly manipulated. Takhat is re-recruited as Jaykishen’s C.C., gets a New York posting and is killed only a day after he lands there. He dies in exactly the same way Topan did. An unknown half-Spanish, half-Muslim looking woman kills him while he is performing cunnilingus.

Takhat, a writer who has failed terribly both as a serious progressive Urdu poet and a popular Bollywood screenplay writer, finally writes something successful and triumphant. He takes writing to a new height (or a new low). Writing as an act of blackmail. Novel as aesthetics of blackmailing.

The ‘qissa’ he writes, is the ultimate, the truest form of blackmail he could ever come up with.

The writer takes his revenge on a producer.

This is the most fascinating part of the novel: writing as an act of blackmail. Writing perhaps has always been a blackmail of some kind. A potential threat to expose something.  Takhat exposes Topan. Takhat also exposes himself. Since he is able to pull off this double exposure, his ‘qissa’ is a sublime blackmail.

We are not very far from saying that Takhat is Topan. Topan is Takhat. It is Takhat who creates Topan for us.

Takhat is the writer, the creator, the blackmailer. And in a way a lovable, vulnerable blackmailer.

Post-black-mail

Manohar Shyam Joshi published his first novel at the age of 47. He was always a misfit in Hindi, never comfortable with the Marxist-Progressive Hindi establishment. He perhaps liked Marxism, but found the Male Marxists (Hindi Marxist writers) unbearably ignorant and romantic most of the time. He has paid a mocking yet loving tribute to the progressive Lucknow of the 70s, its coffee house culture, its petty fights and woman-seeking in his wonderful nonfiction work, Lakhnau mera Lakhnau.

In protest he wrote love stories, TV soaps and satires. Perhaps the original demon caricatured by a novel like Hamzad is the aesthetics of progressive realism. In a way, all his writing was an attempt to expose what he considered to be the false, romantic theatre of revolution. Hamzad as a novel exposes that self-conceived theatre and, in doing so, also exposes the counter-theatre of the popular-classical blend he tried to create in Hindi.

Nevertheless, a brilliant act of successful blackmailing.