Who said time-travel is not possible? In the very first few pages of Ashok Chopra’s Memories of Fire, I found myself drifting away and arriving in Rasoolpur. Without a willing suspension of disbelief, I was back in a time when I visited a small village on the outskirts of Jalandhar. It was hot, it was musty. At the end of April, I set out through the countryside to meet up with an old friend from our schooldays. He had come back to his pind after a lifetime spent making money in America. Why on earth was he wrapped up in a dressing gown? I wondered.
‘How will they know I’m foreign-returned?’ He said in answer to my unvoiced question, before turning towards a local signboard painter, whom he had hired to draw the outline of the Big Apple on the front porch of his kothi from a picture postcard he held in his hand. I was not in the least surprised to find that the village folk had already nicknamed him Amrika Singh.
‘All this new construction had been completely unplanned. The houses weren’t numbered, no street names, no colony. Hence for the convenience of the postman and visitors, the address was simple: ‘Babbar Sher Wali Kothi’ (the lion villa), ‘Kaan Wala Ghar’ (the house with a crow), ‘Magarmach Wali Kothi’ (the crocodile villa), ‘Hawaijahaz Wali Kothi’ (the villa with the airplane), and so on.’
Chopra’s first book of fiction is a journey through contemporary history of India and Pakistan. Five childhood friends—four of whom meet after a gap of fifty-four years—embark on a journey that takes the reader into a charmed world, where the undergrowth drips with nostalgia, touched with strokes of humour.
You meet the master storyteller Saadat Hasan Manto and visit him on his lost weekends. You will find him in Amritsar watching Alla Rakha walk unscathed across a shallow ditch full of burning embers. ‘Anyone who has faith in God can follow me on bare feet across this pit of fire,’ declares the fire-walker. You could have heard a pin drop. That is up until the time, a young man steps forward. He volunteers. As he steps across the burning coal, the crowd breaks into applause. ‘That was Saadat Hasan Manto’s first public ovation.’ And ever since, he had walked on fire.
Ashok Chopra’s tour de force traces the journey of, arguably, one of the greatest writers of this subcontinent. It begins with the publication of his first book of short stories, Manto ke Afsane in 1940 to the very end in an alcoholic haze in January 1955.
Included is the more contemporaneous issue of ‘Chandigarh: The City Beautiful—India’s Youngest, Modern and Only Planned City’. In 1966, it was supposed to be the temporary capital of Punjab and Haryana, and remained a union territory up until the time Haryana built its own capital. ‘The three warring husbands, aspiring for the sole proprietorship of the delicate beauty, fought an endless battle. The beautiful queen, mauled and battered, turned into an ogre.’
Memories of Fire is highly recommended to all those looking for rare gems. It is spicy and informative, a story of our past and present, brimming with anecdotes about our history, people, eccentrics, lovers, scandals—everything that makes for fine reading.