Book & Author
Omar Kureishi: Once Upon a Time
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
Chicago, IL
Omar Kureishi (1928 – 2005) was a living legend: a man of many traits, talents, and skills. He excelled in all of his career roles: cricket commentator, editor of Times of Karachi, director of Public Affairs of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), and freelance journalist and writer.
As a cricket commentator his voice was the signature of excellence, as a writer he could analyze a spectrum of issues and topics from cricket to politics in an unbiased manner. He wrote columns for the most prestigious national and international newspapers. He contributed two columns, Swinging Drives and All Over the Place in Dawn for more than 25 years. He entertained generations with his impeccable cricket commentary. Reflecting on Omar Kureishi sahib’s absorbing commentary, Akhtar Faruqui, editor, Pakistan Link, observes: “I was his great admirer and listened to his commentary with great awe and trepidation as Hanif and Waqar faced up bravely to the fiery onslaught of Wesley Hall and Roy Gilchrist. ‘Back to the wall, Pakistan not yet out of the woods, ... drives all along the carpet, dances down the wicket ...’ are words that still ring in my ears.”
Omar Kureishi was born in Murree, received his early education in Poona and Bombay, and graduated from the University of Southern California. Pakistani and cricket lovers all over the world miss Omar Kureishi’s mastery of English language which they enjoyed in the form of his brilliant cricket commentary and his masterpiece newspaper articles. His zeal for cricket, in his own words, started as a passion and eventually became a lifelong love affair.
Omar Kureishi has used the British Raj as the central theme of his autobiography Once Upon a Time. Kureishi cites Mihir Bose (A History of Indian Cricket), to trace the roots of cricket in South Asia: “The British came as traders, then seized political power. Bengal, in the east, was the first province to fall to the British, the native Bengalis the first to take to British ways.” The author observes that in those days the British saw cricket as a way of keeping their own community together with little or no place for the Indians. Nirad Chaudri observed in his book Thy Hand, Great Anarch, that the British in India practiced a form of racial apartheid even as late as 1928. Omer Kureishi also observes, “The Raj was founded on the certainty of a racial and moral superiority over the natives.”
In Once Upon a Time, Omar Kureishi, travels back in time, and narrates his memories in a simple but elegant manner, of growing up during the British Raj, juxtaposing a vast array of subjects — including Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, British colonialism, Churchill, Pakistan movement, family affairs and father’s postings, Delhi, Bombay, Poona, World War II, Independence movements, class divisions and racism, Indian Congress, Muslim League, Gandhi, Nehru, Viceroys, Quaid-i-Azam, Indian Railway, Cricket, and voyage to the United States.
Reflecting on the nature of the book, in Introduction, the author observes: “Once Upon a Time is not an autobiography, though it may read like it is. The central character is the British Raj and I have tried to remember what it was to grow up in those times. Thus, in a sense, it is a book about personal memories but to the extent that these personal memories provide a backdrop….Once Upon a Time has allowed me to relive my youth, ‘blossom by blossom.’ Though the times were tumultuous and towards the end, violent, my youth were days of great happiness and joy, irretrievably lost in time but not in my memory, and though I may have forgotten much, I have been able to remember enough.”
The author starts the book with a description of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre: “April 13, 1919, was a day that was seared in the political consciousness of India. It was on this day that thousands had gathered for a peaceful meeting in a small, debris-littered park called Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar. There was only one entrance, and therefore one exit to the compound, a narrow alley between two buildings. Through it marched General R. E. Dyer at the head of 50 soldiers. The soldiers took their positions on either side of the buildings and without a warning, opened fire with machine guns. They kept up the fire for full ten minutes. They fired 1,650 rounds and killed or wounded 1,516 defenseless Indians. General Dyer was convinced that he had done "a jolly good thing." He may well have. It was the first nail in the coffin of British rule in India. Machine gun fire was heard all over the country and as far as Whitehall. It was a wake-up call for the rulers and the ruled.”
Reflecting on Churchill and the Pakistan movement, the author notes: “Churchill too came through as an unbalanced man who was obsessed with the Empire and a closet racist. The Raj was founded on the certainty of a racial and moral superiority over the natives. It is this aspect that I have touched upon for it created a deep impression on me of a loathing kind. As for the communal divide, the more I read, the more I was convinced that Pakistan was not only a valid demand, it was inevitable. It is quite remarkable how the Pakistan Movement gathered strength through the untiring efforts and single-mindedness of ‘One man.’ Mr Jinnah did not have the vast resources nor the organizational infrastructure, the political machine that the Indian National Congress had. Yet he turned a political party into a mass movement, though his health was failing, and he was a sick man, sustained by his willpower and faith.”
Describing his mother, the author states: “My mother, a petite Kashmiri, was a long-suffering lady and why shouldn't she have been? Her charges numbered nine sons and two daughters, more than two handfuls, not all of them hungry at the same time, so that breakfast, lunch, and dinner was in shifts. But she was blessed with enough love to give each one of us an equal share measured by some maternal computer so that no one got too much or too little. I would sometimes go and sit by her side when she was offering her prayers and be rewarded by a smile and a shake of the head that said that she was not to be disturbed.”
Remembering his father, the author observes: “My father was an Army Colonel who belonged to the elite Indian Medical Service, and this made him something of a sahib, though more properly he was a member of an emerging middle class of professionals as opposed to the comic aristocracy of the ruling princes and the landed gentry. He was a figure of authority though not of the stern, forbidding kind that instills fear, but he brooked no nonsense, that is, of the rampaging and rebellious kind. A little bit of self-assertion, some minor trespass like a windowpane broken by a misdirected cricket ball caused him to raise his eyebrows, though not his voice, in mock-disapproval. He believed in the family as a unit, he encouraged a togetherness, to be supportive of one another. There was no sibling rivalry (among 11 children, 9 sons and two daughters), delight at someone's good fortune like an elder brother getting a brand new Hercules bicycle. He was a caring human being and in his spare time ran a Children's Free Dispensary in Old Delhi. He was an avid bridge player…”
Introducing his Nani (maternal grandmother), the author states: “Nani was a handsome Kashmiri from Lahore's Moochi Gate. She had vitality, was forthright and fond of stories and we would gather around her, and she would relate them to us, stories of kings and queens, of heroes and villains, fairy tales and nursery rhymes translated in Urdu/Punjabi.”
Remembering Bombay, the author notes: “…In 1534 the Portuguese had taken Bombay by force from the Muslims. They named their new possession as "Bom Baia" which in Portuguese means ‘Good Bay.’ A hundred and twenty-eight years later the islands were given to the English King Charles II in dowry on his marriage to Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza in 1662. In the year 1668, the islands were acquired by the East India Company on lease from the crown for an annual sum of 10 pounds in gold. The British changed ‘Bom Bai’ to ‘Bombay.’”
Describing Poona, the author observes: “Poona was Maratha country, stalked by the spirit of Shivaji or haunted by his ghost, depending on which history book one read…In Delhi and Bombay religious antagonism was minimal due to the cosmopolitan nature of those cities. Poona was insular and one became conscious of the militant Hindu mindset. As a family, we had never been encouraged to think along communal lines, we saw the British as the villains, but among the prominent Hindu families in Poona, we were identified as a Mussalman household.”
Remembering “Parsis of Bombay,” the author states: “The Parsis were a dominant force in Bombay, mainly in industry and commerce but were prominent community leaders and city fathers. Bombay carried tangible signs of their philanthropy and good works. They had built schools, colleges, hospitals, they had laid out parks and gardens and quite remarkably I never saw even one Parsi beggar (and they were a sizable community) for the simple reason that they weren't any. They took care of their own. They were outside the fray, removed from the rough and tumble, the hurly burly of the politics of agitation. They were Westernized in outlook though their menfolk were easily identified in their phetas, a hard cap that resembled a homburg without the rim, but many wore sola-topees. They spoke Gujrati, a special blend of Parsi-Gujrati which sometimes tapered into English but was a virile tongue as spoken by the males, peppered with expletives when they wanted to be graphic. The most famous of all were the Tatas, the Rockefellers of India.”
Reflecting on the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled, the author notes: “The British were ambivalent about the Indians they dealt with. They wanted to communicate with them but made no attempt to learn their language. Instead, they wanted the natives to learn their language. But while the British ruled India, exploited it and even looted it…”
Remembering India of the British Raj, the author observes: “But what about India itself? India existed only vis a vis the British, in a political context. India was mosques and temples, gurdwaras, churches and synagogues. It was mountains and plains, deserts and forests, rivers and seas, a vast country with millions of people speaking hundreds of languages and dialects, it was cities and villages. There was diversity but no unity, no fusion, no assimilation, parallel cultural bloodlines whose merging was an optical illusion. Only foreigners seemed to find the need to discover India. And so, India attracted the hostility or the adoration of academics, philosophers, literati, religionists, and social scientists. It draws them like a magnet, inviting them to probe the depths of its spiritual consciousness, explore its metaphysical jungles. But even after all that study and probing they found India to be elusive.”
Remembering the pros of British rule, the author expounds: “…But British rule was not an unmitigated disaster. It had brought facsimiles of Britain's own legal and administrative system. It brought the English language which became a common bond. The Quaid and Gandhi negotiated in the English language over the future of India and Mr Jinnah roused the Muslim nation with his speeches which were in English. The British also gave us cricket. But most of all, the British gave India a railway system, an extensive network that connected all of the vast country by trains of every kind, passengers, and goods, express and the slower ones that stopped at every wayside station, broad gauge, meter gauge and narrow gauge, to Landikotal, Darjeeling, Ooticommand, faraway places with strange sounding names with their own railway stations.”
Reflecting on his visit to Lord Willingdon’s residence, the author states: “I once went to the Viceroy's House to attend a children's garden party given by the Viceroy's wife, Lady Willingdon, a formidable woman whose avarice made her a legendary figure, in the best tradition of a Robert Clive or a Warren Hastings, who on being charged with corruption, had said, in his defense, that he was amazed by his moderation. I was spruced up as befitting a little gentleman, a creamy, white silk shirt, velvet short-pants, stockings and shining new black shoes. The Viceroy's House was a palace, awesome in its pomp, unashamedly imperial, rivalled, probably only by Buckingham Palace itself or by Versailles. Lord Willingdon [1866-1941] was the last viceroy [1931-1936] of an India that was the brightest jewel in the crown. Others who followed him had to deal with an India, seriously in revolt. All I remember of him was that he wore a white sola-topee, all others were khaki in color. I suppose my father's military position entitled me to the honor of getting invited. For honor it was. The natives did not mingle with their masters, were supposed to be submissive…”
Describing the appearance of an Indian railway station and its resemblance to Indian villages, the author observes: “…There is no more masterly description of an Indian railway station than the one in Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar, in itself a fascinating book described by no less a man than Graham Greene as ‘compulsive reading.’ Paul Theroux writes, ‘To understand the real India, the Indians say, you must go to the villages.’ But that is not strictly true, because the Indians have carried their villages to the railway stations. In the daytime it is not apparent — you might mistake any of these people for beggars, ticketless travelers…”
Reflecting on Indian railway system and the classes of Indian society, the author notes: “It was before the time of air-conditioned bogies and there were 4 classes on the train, first, second and third but there was also an Inter class, a betwixt and between, a poor man's second class and a rich man's third class. There was a fifth class if one counted the servant's compartment attached to the first class. That's the way society was divided in India as well.”
Remembering his father’s posting in China, the author states: “During World War I, the Great War, my father had been posted in Tientsin in North China. Three of my brothers have been born there, one of whom, a baby of few months, had died and was buried there in the Muslim graveyard. (When I went to China in 1956, I had made a special point of requesting my hosts that I wanted to visit Tientsin and see if my brother's grave was still there. I did get to Tientsin but was told that the graveyard has been shifted. (A likely story!) … During my family’s stay there, China had had great floods, and my father being a doctor had been prominent in relief work, above and beyond the call of duty and for which he had received a high civilian award from the Chinese Government…”
Remembering the post-war political scene, the author observes: “He [Churchill] himself had said that he had not become prime minister of His Majesty's Government in order ‘to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.’ He nurtured an intense hatred of the Congress Party and of Gandhi in particular….The Quaid-i-Azam saw in the war an opportunity to strengthen it further. Patrick French in his Liberty or Death discloses that in a briefing to Amery, the Secretary of State for India, the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow acknowledged the strength of Jinnah's position. It was a fair assessment, although it would have infuriated the likes of Nehru, Gandhi and Azad had they read it. In the Viceroy's opinion: ‘Congress is essentially a Hindu party, though it contains Muslim elements... there is no justification on a broad view for regarding (the Muslims within Congress) as of any very decisive importance... at the present time the only organization which can speak on behalf of the Muslims of India is the Muslim League under Jinnah…’ The Quaid-i-Azam was playing his cards right. Any future settlement of India would have to have the consent of the Muslims, not as a minority but as a nation.”
On his voyage to the United States, the author remembers visiting Shanghai: “A civil war was raging in China, and we were told that the roar of the guns could be heard in Shahghai…as we disembarked, we were body-searched by a soldier…The Street was lined three-deep with women, some with babies in their arms. They were yelling, imploring, beseeching; ‘good time Joe, five dollars.’…these were not prostitutes, these were the victims of the civil war, the crumpled rose leaves. We went to a café owned by an American called Blackie who told us that ‘Shanghai ain’t fit for humans’…the next morning we went out again. The official rate of exchange was one US dollar to 12,000 Chinese dollars, the open market exchange was 44,000 Chinese dollars.”
Reflecting on his arrival in San Francisco, the author recalls: “[Our ship] docked at San Francisco late at night. I was up at first light to catch a glimpse of the United States. I saw houses on top of a hill. They looked like dolls houses, like something out of a fairy tale. I had arrived. One chapter of my life had been firmly shut. Another one was beginning…”
The author concludes the book with a reference to the independence of Pakistan: “On August 14, 1947, the Union Jack was lowered and the green and white flag with a star and crescent of the sovereign state of Pakistan was raised in Karachi… We had got rid of the British and the Hindus and had our own homeland…I was in Madison, Wisconsin with my brother Humayun on that day and it struck me that we had ceased to be British Indian…That evening, my brother took me to a fancy restaurant, not too fancy, by the way of celebration, just the two of us. The next day was the morning-after the night before.”
Once Upon a Time is not only an autobiography of Omar Kureishi, but also a mini course on the British Raj in India. The book is an interesting read for all book lovers and students of history. Omar Kureishi — traveling back in time — had masterfully juxtaposed his personal story with the British Raj’s political, social, and cultural implications.
(Dr Ahmed S. Khan – dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org – is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar.)
