In love with Muhabbatnama

                 

Good  books leave a lasting imprint on one’s mind. Some are transformational– life-changers that bestow meaning and purpose to life. Some are like a soothing balm providing healing touch to your anguished mind. And then there are some gems which dwell in your soul like a soft sweet melody. For me, Jung Bahadur Goel’s ‘Muhabbatnama’ has been one such book casting a spell quite akin to falling in love, and like being with one’s mehbooba. The book strings together brief but riveting portraits of the lives of some legendary thinkers, writers, poets and philosophers who shone on this earth in the nineteenth and the twentieth century. While doing so, it provides a sneak peek into their love affairs lending it special (voyeuristic) charm. The book opens with our own great Rabindra Nath Tagore’s life’s journey and his ardent love for Kandambari, his elder brother’s wife, and closes with dear and darling Punjab-di-dhee-  Amrita Pritam, etching an endearing story of her  lasting but unrealized love for Sahir Ludhianvi redeemed through her adoring lover Imroz. In between these two, there are other intellectual greats that fill the pages of this 248-page Punjabi book. There is Honore de Balzac- one of the greatest French writer-geniuses (of the class of Charles Dickens, Flaubert and Henry James) and his quest for love for Countess Evalina Hanska, and his death just 5 months after his wedding in 1850. Russian writer Ivan Turgenev and his platonic love for the ordinary looking but an exquisite theatre artist and music maestro- a married French woman Pauline Viardot, follows next.  Then we have Fyodor Dostoyevsky – “turbulent in love as well as life”! -  who regaled the world with such great novels as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov,  and  his love affair with 25 years his junior and his stenographer Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (with his trademark bushy moustache) and that fiercely independent, stunning, golden-haired lady Lou Andreas-Salome’ (about whom I wrote in my last post) come next, making for a gripping read; followed by an account of wordless, seamless love (their “partnership larger than marriage” ) between Khalil Gibran - who gave the world his immortal classic The Prophet which is read with love even today - and his heart throb Mary Haskell, a headmistress in school and 10 years older to him. (The love letters exchanged between them are by themselves stuff worth reading.) Then we have the iconic French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre who made even Atlas shrug  with his theory of Existentialism and no less great Simone de Beauvoir, both soul mates, but  open to casual sexual flings with “contingent lovers”. Lastly, before concluding with Amrita Pritam, we have the world famous Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade's story of his undying love for a Bengali lady of great distinction Maitreyi Devi.

The author has  delved  into the lives and works of these  all-time greats to give us an essence of  their joys and sorrows, failures and successes, highs and lows and, of course, their trysts (and flings)  with women; or men ( in case of Amrita Pritam). We also get to know about their extraordinary creative genius reflected in their novels, philosophical treatises, poems, lectures and thoughts which were like a fresh new dawn for the war-torn world of that era groping in the dark and desperately in need of the sunshine of Enlightenment.  No wonder all of them turned into beacons of awakening and inspiration for generations to come… and will remain so. Personally, I remember how, fresh from the University (and ill-taught), when I was an aimless wanderer torn by existential dilemma, it was Sartre’s thoughts that gave me a sense of direction and hope.

Well, geniuses they were, but what Jung so deftly and masterfully brings out as an undercurrent is the fact that still they were all men and women of flesh and blood with human frailties. Secondly, that love transcends all man-made barriers and moral codes; thirdly it is love with its pain and bliss that brings out the best in us. Fourthly, it needs courage and conviction to weather all storms and to remain steadfast in your beliefs even when you are pilloried and ostracized by the dogmatic society, and plough your own furrow despite all odds. Then and then alone you can rise above mediocrity and can be a trailblazer. Didn’t Tagore say: “ekla chalo re”? But if you want to be a monotonous mediocre in life, well then, stay put in the safe cocoons of established beliefs and conventions and die unsung, unheard and unknown.

Longfellow’s lines we were taught in school come to mind:

…Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime

And, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time…

Having read Muhabbatnama, I don’t feel like reading another book: to not let go of the sweet taste it has left me with, and I urge you dear reader-friends to do read it. If you don’t know Punjabi await its translation which I am sure would soon be out. Or, if your heart dances to the beats of love and understands its subtle nuances, welcome to my humble little 'aahlana' (nest): I will read it out to you, page after mesmerizing page over sips of vodka or maybe scotch!

Lastly, I can’t thank Goel Saab enough for bringing out this sparkling gem of great beauty and charm.