“Tell…the truth,but tell it slant”: Form and fiction in Rusva’s Umrao Jan Ada 1

Abstract

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Rusva is best remembered today for Umrao Jan Ada, his Urdu novel about a Lucknavi courtesan by the same name, published in 1899. More than a century on, Umrao Jan Ada is praised, on the one hand, for being the first proper novel in Urdu. On the other, the novel is lauded for its accomplished portrayal of Lucknow a few years before and after the watershed events of 1857. Much of the Anglophone critical evaluation of Umrao Jan Ada, however, displays a singular preoccupation with the question of realism. The critical consensus around realism has metamorphosed from a useful framework for parsing Rusva’s novel from multiple vantage points into a hardened carapace of convention that in fact obstructs fresh engagements with the text. This essay argues for the need to move beyond the debates around realism. It attempts to ask new questions and seek different narrative possibilities in Umrao Jan Ada. Its principal contention is that despite ostensible evidence to the contrary, Umrao Jan Ada is a consciously contrived text straining after a novel poetics of expression, a poetics of indirection, which given the character and the times makes especial historical and situational sense. The novel also constitutes a significant bid at aesthetic experimentation in the face of prevailing indigenous and colonial modes of narrativity, something for which Rusva is not always given nearly enough credit.

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Rusva, the maverick Urdu poet, novelist and scholar from Lucknow, is best remembered today for Umrao Jan Ada, his Urdu novel about a Lucknavi courtesan by the same name, published in 1899. Critics and commentators continue to more or less unanimously affirm the novel’s literary and documentary value. On the one hand, it is hailed for “being the first novel in Urdu in the most comprehensive sense of the term” (Asaduddin, 2001: 91). On the other, Umrao Jan Ada is repeatedly lauded for its accomplished portrayal of Lucknow a few years before and after the watershed events of 1857. Much of the Anglophone critical reception of Umrao Jan Ada, however, exhibits a singular preoccupation with the question of realism. Thus, when David Matthews (2007) calls the novel’s plot “uncontrived” and its language “remarkably lucid and natural” (Matthews, 2007: xiv), it’s the novel’s mimetic mode that is being praised. For Asaduddin, Umrao Jan Ada “is a realistic account of contemporary life conveyed through a well-constructed plot and through characters that are life-like and credible” (Asaduddin, 2001: 92). Sukrita Paul Kumar likewise underscores Rusva’s success “in creating life-like fiction for the first time in a language that had so far abounded in unreal and fantastic tales” (Kumar, 2002: 239). Elsewhere, Jasbir Jain insists “Umrao Jan Ada is… social and political history. It is also women’s history” (Jain, 1997: 98). And Daniela Bredi believes Rusva “does nothing other than put into action his idea of literature as history” (Bredi, 2001: 110). Even Amina Yaqin’s refreshing reading of Umrao Jan Ada as “a narrative of possibilities” remains ultimately yoked to the novel’s realist function—gendered subject constitution (Yaqin, 2007: 383–384). At the other end of the critical spectrum, when Khushwant Singh and MA Husaini (1998) declare, “The courtesan of Lucknow was no figment of Ruswa’s imagination. She practised her profession in Lucknow and Ruswa had much to do with her life and loves” (Singh and Husaini, 1998: vii), it’s still the species of verisimilitude that is at issue. Trading the realism of fiction for the “reality” of authorised biography, they, in effect, are claiming that Umrao Jan Ada is all too real. Similarly, when Frances W. Pritchett refutes this proposition, her counterargument rests in equal measure on “historical impossibility” and overdependency on “melodramatic” and “improbable coincidences” (Pritchett, 2006–2008: n.p.). For Pritchett, Umrao Jan Ada is a work of fiction because it is not real(istic) enough to be f/actual; it is incorrect in its chronology and dating. The Anglophone scholarship on Rusva’s novel thus far has been insightful and erudite, but it increasingly runs the risk of repeating itself. The critical consensus around realism has metamorphosed from a useful framework for parsing Umrao Jan Ada from multiple vantage points into a hardened carapace of convention that in fact obstructs fresh engagements with the text. This essay pitches for the need to move beyond the spectrum of critical readings arrived at through the conceptual rubric of realism on three counts.

First, the available critical literature on Umrao Jan Ada has been mostly old-fashioned in its understanding of realism and auto/biography as transparent modes of expression rendering reality. Second, the recent re-imaginings of realism as complex and conflicted by Ulka Anjaria (2012) and Eli Park Sorensen (2010), among others, besides not being entirely persuasive conceptually, ² appear more geared towards recovering a mode that has fallen into disrepute among post-colonial scholars than necessitated by the novels categorised as “realist”. Finally, realism-centred approaches make it harder to perceive other anterior and indigenous modes of literary expression owing to the Procrustean aesthetic and ideological expectations that have congealed around the term over the years. Discarding realism as the principal filter of assessment therefore, my essay tries to ask new questions and seek different narrative possibilities in Umrao Jan Ada. I argue that despite ostensible evidence to the contrary, Umrao Jan Ada is a consciously contrived text straining after a novel poetics of expression, a poetics of indirection, which given the character and the times makes especial historical and situational sense. The novel also constitutes a significant bid at aesthetic experimentation in the face of prevailing indigenous and colonial modes of narrativity, something for which Rusva is not always given nearly enough credit.

My essay has three parts. Part I sets up the argument. It identifies the reasons for the kind of critical responses Umrao Jan Ada has elicited thus far and the problems that emerge from these entrenched practices of reading the novel. Part II highlights the textual inducements for an alternative approach to Umrao Jan Ada and indicates the nature of aesthetic challenge the novel constitutes. Part III clarifies how the argument advanced on form and fiction in the essay matches the historical and circumstantial exigencies of the eponymous protagonist, Umrao Jan. It underlines the possibility that Umrao Jan Ada may be, in fact, a rather more remarkable play at storytelling than previously imagined.

Realism, reality, and the same old story

Why has Umrao Jan Ada been so consistently read through the provocation/s of realism and reality? Naïvété aside (see Pritchett, 2006–2008) readers and commentators have taken their cues, in part, from Rusva himself. As many critics have noted, Rusva was among the earliest theoreticians of the novel form in India (Asaduddin, 2001; Kumar, 2002; Russell, 1970). Prefaces and introductions to his novels often carried Rusva’s views on what sort of writing novelists should attempt: writing focused on “what happens to human beings… their inner feelings and thoughts”; and should not attempt: writing focused on “the lives of persons about whom we cannot know anything in detail” (quoted in Singh and Husaini, 1998: vii). These paratexts also explored what sort of novels he himself aimed to write and why he sought to do so: “I have made it a principle in my own writing to record in my novels those things which I have myself seen, and which have made an impression upon me, believing that these things will make an impression upon others also” (quoted in Russell, 1970: 133). Rusva also distanced himself from the two types of literary expression pioneered by his fellow novelists in Urdu—Nazir Ahmad and Abdul Halim Sharar. About the former’s instructional texts, he says, “my method is the opposite… I aim simply at a faithful portrayal of actual happenings and am not concerned with recording the conclusions to be drawn from them” (quoted in Russell, 1970: 132–133). As for Sharar’s preferred style of writing—historical romances—Rusva maintains, “I have not the inventive power to portray events that happened thousands of years ago, and moreover I consider it a fault to produce a picture which tallies neither with present-day conditions nor with those of the past” (quoted in Russell, 1970: 133). Instead, Rusva categorically demands his novels “be regarded as a history of our times” (quoted in Russell, 1970: 133).

Insistent authorial asseverations apart, the colonial and neo-colonial propensity to measure modern Indian works of literature against European standards has been equally instrumental in influencing the reception of Umrao Jan Ada. As Javed Majeed reiterates most recently, the usual practice among scholars “is to measure the realism of South Asian fiction and the novel in particular against a ready-made category of the realist novel as a Western form” (Majeed, 2012: 270). Many nineteenth century and early twentieth century Indian novels have suffered persistent misreading as a result, through ignorance, oversight and prejudice. Umrao Jan Ada is no different. Soon after its publication, the novel was linked on rather tenuous grounds to Rosa Lambert (see Naim, 2000: 287), G.W.M. Reynolds’ fictional memoir of a clergyman’s daughter reduced to prostitution by sexual assault and grinding poverty. Rusva’s translations of Marie Corelli also found gratuitous mention as if to establish the trajectory of literary inspiration: from the “original” British to the derivative Indian. Consolidating this trend in modern times, unfortunately, has been the work of noted Urdu scholar, Ralph Russell. Russell’s evaluation of Umrao Jan Ada is steeped in Eurocentric assumptions. Complimenting Rusva, Russell writes, “one can truly say of his greatest work Umrao Jan Ada (1899) that with it a real novel, in the internationally accepted modern sense of the term, at last makes its appearance in Urdu literature” (Russell, 1970: 132). Clarifying his meaning, Russell states, “The story is beautifully told and extraordinarily well constructed. … [T]he characterization and the dialogue excellent; the story has a proper plot, and real development, with ‘a beginning, a middle, and an end’” (Russell, 1970: 134). His assertion, “Much more could be written about this novel, which in my view has nothing to fear from comparison with its English and European contemporaries” (Russell, 1970: 139) is offered in earnest and uninflected by any irony. As noted above, contemporary scholarship on Umrao Jan Ada has to a great extent followed Russell’s lead and confirmed the heuristic salience of realism in reading the novel.

One fallout of this critical fixation on realism has been a shrunken field of play, semantically, for the novel. Analyses of Umrao Jan Ada have been limited to elaborations and permutations of essentially three positions on the text: (a) Umrao Jan Ada regarded as historically real (auto/biography); (b) Umrao Jan Ada regarded as adroitly realistic (accomplished novel); or (c) Umrao Jan Ada regarded as riddled with the illogical, unhistorical, and unrealistic (flawed novel). Over time this has erased a potentially rich palette of meanings to leave in place sundry monochromes of representational realism. It’s from within such a constrained critical formation that Umrao Jan Ada is judged for what it is not, and for what it ought to have been, rather than what it is. Muhammad Sadiq, for instance, maintains that “Umrao Jan Ada does not strike [him] as a successful novel. The characters are indifferently portrayed, and there are very few gripping moments in the story” (Sadiq, 1964: 356). Pritchett, as mentioned before, underlines the manqué realism of Umrao Jan Ada: she lists a raft of reasons to establish Rusva’s text as a stylistically defective novel (Pritchett, 2006–2008). Convinced of the auto/biographical nature of Umrao Jan Ada, Singh and Husaini, meanwhile, freely extrapolate from anecdotal evidence to justify their tendentious meddling with the text when translating it: “Since the author had never bothered to revise his work, we came across contradictions, repetitions, and wrong sequence of events. We have also had to take the liberty of deleting some passages, inserting new lines to link the sentences and correcting a few minor details” (Singh and Husaini, 1998: xii). Claiming that “Ruswa was an excellent story-teller”, they nevertheless insist he was “an indifferent poet” who “continued to interlace his beautiful prose” with “decadent Urdu poetry. … Many examples of this kind of poetry interrupt the narrative of Umrao Jan Ada” (Singh and Husaini, 1998: xii). Doubtless, to provide a more seamless reading experience, Singh and Husaini lop off one substantial example of what they deem Rusva’s egregious poetry: their translation omits the mushaira-sequence that otherwise opens the novel. It hardly needs repeating that critical disapproval invariably targets those components of literary style and expression that do not square with the prescriptions of formal realism.

This is not to say that all such contentions are necessarily wrong either as valid judgements or as explanation. Umrao Jan Ada could indeed be an unrealistic, technically imperfect text, as Pritchett argues. Its shortcomings could well be because Rusva was a careless writer who never reread his drafts, as Singh and Husaini allege. But do these arguments exhaust the narrative possibilities of Umrao Jan Ada? Even if correct are they sufficient?

That Rusva may have had motivations other than ideological conviction when disquisitioning upon his literary exertions, for instance, is hard to deny. As Christina Oesterheld notes about the period in which Rusva was writing:

Realism had become one of the central demands of the new critics… who had internalised Western critiques of the lack of realism in Urdu literature. Therefore, novelists started to claim that their works were pictures of “real life” and of “nature”, no matter how far removed from the realistic mode their texts actually… were. (Oesterheld, 2004: 196)

Rusva was involved with Urdu literary reformist groups. An eccentric polymath with a colourful personality, he was also, by all accounts, nobody’s fool. Given that Rusva wrote much of his fiction under pecuniary compulsion, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that his claims about his novels being disguised historiography were to some extent an astute attempt at augmenting and securing financial interests, with the public as well as with the British. Rusva’s chief competitors, Nazir Ahmad and Abdul Halim Sharar, had captured the market for a certain type of didactic literature, and popular fiction, respectively (Russell, 1970: 132). Running down their craft at the same time as distinguishing his own writing in terms of an aesthetic whose time had come could plausibly be clever self-marketing by Rusva. This essay wonders if like scepticism may not be warranted about the available critical mappings of Umrao Jan Ada. Must we take scholarly opinions at face value and grant them finality? On the evidence of the text, it’s not only possible, but, at present, perhaps even desirable, to set aside jaded discussions caught within the dialectics of realism and find new parameters within which to explore Umrao Jan Ada.

Art and artifice in Umrao Jan Ada

To be fair to critics, Rusva’s exhortations apart, there are dispersed plugs for authenticity throughout Umrao Jan Ada that are difficult to ignore. Consider the care taken to construct the meta-story that embeds Umrao Jan’s reminiscences to Ruswa ³ over several sittings. Ruswa’s interjections as Umrao Jan’s interlocutor as well as his claims to have secretly transcribed Umrao Jan’s narration heighten believability. Likewise, Ruswa’s avowal of longstanding prior familiarity with Umrao Jan, on the basis of which he certifies “all she told us was one hundred percent correct”, and his immediate retraction in tones of apparent disinterestedness—“But that is my opinion. My readers are free to make up their own minds”—are a masterly literary “device” that “effectively enhance[s] the illusion of reality” (Russell, 1970: 135).

Umrao Jan’s panegyric on the pleasures of verisimilitude, which forms part of the novel’s narrative coda, similarly broadcasts the status of Rusva’s fiction as veridic discourse. Ruswa reveals at the beginning that Umrao Jan was livid on learning of his subterfuge in recording her life story without her knowledge and consent. Umrao Jan not only corroborates Ruswa’s claim at the end, she also gives readers an insight into what ultimately changes her mind about the manuscript: she “became so engrossed in my own tale that I could not put it down. I have never experienced so much pleasure in reading. Most stories are simply contrived fiction, but the events you had written down were true. … I could picture them before my eyes” (Matthews, 2007: 187). Umrao Jan Ada’s meta-story, in addition to credibly contextualizing the narrative, as presented, brilliantly authenticates that narrative as non-fiction. Umrao Jan Ada, the published work, it is insinuated, is not just any ordinary titillating biography of questionable intent and content. Rather, the text claims the status of an authorised biography or at least an authorised memoir, since Umrao Jan, by her own admission, has read and presumably approved the draft before its publication as the document that circulates as Umrao Jan Ada. Umrao Jan’s rhapsodic reaction to reading the manuscript also constitutes a subtle attempt in reader-response manipulation and retraining: it subliminally conditions readers to value a certain kind of narrative (realist/ic) over other more fantastic tales then popular by teaching them how to emotionally identify with and find pleasure in a new sort of literary experience.

Besides the opening and closing stratagems to simulate the appearance of reality, there are other scattered indications in Umrao Jan Ada that the old fantastical genres and hyperbolic communication styles are being superseded by the new social mandate for realism and realistic discourse. Right at the start, we are told that Lucknow effects a sea change in the literary preferences of the Delhi-based Munshi Ahmad Husain when he comes for a short visit (Matthews, 2007: xv). “Since his early youth”, Rusva claims, “Munshi Sahib had been inordinately fond of reading the old romances”. But “after… a few days… in Lucknow… listening to the elegant speech of those who really know the language, his taste for the artificiality and pomposity found in the works of most novelists had declined” (Matthews, 2007: xxxvi). Not only does Rusva here reconcile the cultured speech of Lucknow with the prerequisites of the new aesthetic, he also discredits as stilted Urdu texts that affect a different style.

Towards the end of the narrative, a similar transformation in Umrao Jan’s literary sensibilities is detailed. She states that reading Gulistan and Akhlaq-e-Nasiri “opened up many secrets for me. My interest in Urdu and Persian literature developed into a passion. … However, I soon grew tired of their false flattery. … These days I read newspapers and learn a lot about what is going on in the world” (Matthews, 2007: 199). Newspaper reportage and editorials represent the language of credible information and intellectual gratification under colonial modernity: through “facts” and reasoned argument, they in/formed as well as entertained the educated classes of colonial India. By showing Umrao Jan switching to newspapers, Rusva’s novel may not exactly endorse the claims of realism and reality, but it certainly creates a positive impression in the reader’s mind for the same.

That the narrative is keen to forswear any kinship in shape or style with writings it traduces for sensationalist make-believe is apparent in Umrao Jan Ada’s deft attempt to buy a free pass with the readership for its own store of potentially unbelievable incidents. At the very outset, the novel implicitly chalks these up to Umrao Jan’s exceptional life experiences. If there are any incidents in Umrao Jan Ada that beggar belief, or shock the readership, it’s because, “She [Umrao Jan] had seen things with her eyes that most people never heard of” (Matthews, 2007: xxxvi). In other words, even the extraordinary dons the garb of the real and the credible in Umrao Jan Ada.

Given such textual encouragement, it’s no surprise that those already sold on the idea of realism ⁴ analysed Umrao Jan Ada in terms that answered to their predispositions. This essay sees a different narrative grammar at work in Umrao Jan Ada that hinges on questions of art and artifice in the novel. To elucidate, it is necessary to refocus on the early portions of the novel.

Asaduddin asserts, “The plot is tightly constructed and coherent, except for the rather contrived opening of the novel” (Asaduddin, 2001: 95). Singh and Husaini, as already mentioned, exclude the opening segment in their translation. Pritchett holds that even Matthews’ effort is wanting: he “includes it, but in a truncated and extremely free-rendering” (Pritchett, 2006–2008: n.p.). Far from being a superficial graft on the plot to be discounted, mangled or expunged, however, the prefatory mushaira-sequence is integral to the meaning and modality of Umrao Jan Ada.

Briefly, the novel begins with Ruswa telling us about a friend, Munshi Ahmad Husain, who was visiting from Delhi, and their evening mushairas with a group of like-minded poetry enthusiasts in the room Munshi Sahib had rented in the Chowk. Ruswa tells us that the room next to Munshi Sahib’s houses a courtesan, but nobody has seen her or heard from her because she guards her privacy zealously. One evening, this reclusive neighbour interrupts their session with applause from her room. When invited to join their gathering, she gives no response, but later sends a message for Ruswa, asking him to visit her. Ruswa complies and when he visits the adjoining room, the courtesan is revealed to be Umrao Jan, someone with whom he shares an old acquaintance. He once again invites Umrao Jan to their gathering and after some persuasion, this time she agrees. Thereafter, Ruswa explains, Umrao Jan becomes a regular part of their informal evening assemblies. The narrative then describes one mushaira session in detail. At its conclusion, Munshi Sahib and Ruswa badger Umrao Jan to tell them her life story. After initial reluctance, Umrao Jan agrees. The mushaira-sequence ends with Ruswa informing us about how he surreptitiously took down her account, and how he is certain her story is true. Thenceforth, the novel is Umrao Jan’s first-person narrative, punctuated by the odd question, interjection or harangue from Ruswa.

I submit that not only is the mushaira-sequence a frame-narrative that lends credibility to Umrao Jan Ada as a whole, but the mushaira itself is also a carefully devised meme that embeds significant clues for decoding the novel. Two reasons especially call attention to the mushaira-sequence. First, the role of poetry in the novel: poetry has a notable presence in Umrao Jan Ada. Every chapter of the novel begins with a couplet that it loosely vivifies in prose. Some chapters also end with poetry. And many have verse passages interspersed with prose. Not only does verse constitute a substantive part of the text, the protagonist is also an accomplished poet and connoisseur of poetry. Equally, Ruswa, the narrator and Umrao Jan’s interlocutor through the novel, professes a keen appreciation of the art. Umrao Jan Ada therefore is not just the life story of a courtesan; it’s also an extended conversation between two poets and aficionados of poetry.

Second, the reason Umrao Jan comes out of self-imposed seclusion in the narrative is her appreciation of beautiful poetry. Before her identity is revealed, the novel underscores the extremely private life Umrao Jan leads. She is first spoken of in the novel as someone whose “life-style was quite different from that of the other ‘ladies of easy virtue’” (Matthews, 2007: xvi):

No one ever saw her sitting on the balcony overlooking the street, nor was anyone ever heard entering or leaving her room. Day and night the curtains were drawn over the doors, and the entrance from the Chowk always remained tightly shut. … On occasions when the sound of singing came from her room, it was impossible to ascertain whether anyone else was present there or not. (Matthews, 2007: xvi)

According to Ruswa, even the “small window on the adjoining wall” of “the room where we held our gatherings… was always covered by a cloth” (Matthews, 2007: xvi). Surely, what brings such a pertinaciously asocial woman out of retirement is significant. The narrative suggests Umrao Jan was so moved by the fine verse she heard that she could not stifle her spontaneous appreciation. Even those who might argue that it is Umrao Jan’s recognition of her old friend Ruswa’s presence that prompts self-disclosure, would have to concede that ultimately it was the appreciation of poetry and perhaps a reawakened desire to participate in the evening soirées next door that persuades her to re-engage socially. Either way, underscored is Umrao Jan’s passion for good poetry. Since the mushaira-sequence embeds the beginning and ending of the story of Umrao Jan Ada, and comprises a protracted account of a mushaira in action, it clearly deserves more critical attention for being crucial to the plot and poetics of the novel than it has so far garnered. In fact, the mushaira described in Umrao Jan Ada is particularly important because it signposts ways to read the novel.

Some familiarity with what a mushaira meant, and the kind of poetry it featured historically in India will make it easier to appreciate the point being made. To quote Munibur Rahman, “the word ‘mushairah’ literally means ‘a poetical contest’. But in its more general connotation it represents the assembly where poets come together to recite their verses” (Rahman, 1983: 75). Dating its emergence to around the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, Rahman asserts that the “history of the mushairah runs parallel with the development of the Urdu language and literature. … By the eighteenth century they were a familiar feature of the Urdu literary environment. These gatherings were sponsored by the court and nobility, or were organized by some leading poet” (Rahman, 1983: 75). Official mushairas were often grand affairs governed by numerous conventions, including punctilious observances of the order of speakers at the event. According to Rahman, “The ordinary individual was drawn to the mushairah because it was the most common form of intellectual entertainment available in the prevalent urban setting; as for the poet, it represented the only forum for literary self-expression” (Rahman, 1983: 76). In fact, it was a point of honour for gentlemen at the time to be “able to compose a few tolerable verses”, but failing that, it was acceptable to buy verses off professional poets for an important mushaira. Plagiarism was also not uncommon. Mushairas were spaces of animated discussion: poets spent hours debating “how to improve the language, what words and expressions to import into it, and what to avoid as archaic and vulgar” (Rahman, 1983: 75). While “[b]oth appreciation and criticism were a customary feature of the mushairah and contributed to its lively character” (Rahman, 1983: 77), mushairas were also occasions that inflamed egoistic competition and schadenfreude among participants (Rahman, 1983: 79–80). The ghazal format and the subject of love enjoyed pride of place at these poetic jamborees. Also popular were humorous as well as rekhti poetry. Traditionally, the invitation to a mushaira consisted of a “misra e tarh or pattern-line, providing a specimen of the metre and rhyme on which each poet had to compose his poem. … [T]his convention… allowed the audience to compare the relative worth of each composition” (Rahman, 1983: 76).

Mushairas in nawabi Lucknow operated roughly along these lines. In the wake of the politically redefining events of 1857, however, and perhaps reflecting the changing character of patronage, the mushaira underwent at least one significant change. Increasingly, there was a local push to reform and modernize Urdu poetic expression by bringing it more in line with prevailing Western literary mores. Of maximal import in the matter was the decision of Colonel W.R.M. Holroyd, Director of Public Instruction, Punjab, to organize a mushaira in Lahore that broke with convention: instead of being asked to compose according to a metrical pattern and rhyme scheme, poets were asked to write on a chosen topic. According to Holroyd, this would “lay the foundation of a new mushairah” (Rahman, 1983: 81), which would “encourage the composition of poetry on Western lines in Urdu” (Muhammad Sadiq, quoted in Rahman, 1983: 81); poetry, which, as Abida Samiuddin argues, bore the “appearance of versified essays” (Samiuddin, 2007: 87). By the time Rusva was writing Umrao Jan Ada, this practice had gained ground and mushairas featured poetry around a theme rather than only a hemistich as before.

How is this relevant for an alternative reading of Umrao Jan Ada? According to Pritchett, Rusva “presents us with what he thinks of as a plausible, attractive, sophisticated gathering of a handful of devoted amateur poetry lovers, who evening after evening hold a kind of performance workshop and entertain each other with presentation and discussion of their verses” (Pritchett, 2006–2008: n.p.). While Pritchett criticises Singh and Husaini as well as Matthews for their negligent treatment of the mushaira-sequence, her demand for more careful study of the mushaira in the novel is a variation on the normative realist argument. It’s because Umrao Jan Ada offers a close rendering of the “pre-1857 ‘mushairah culture’”, Pritchett contends, that the depiction is “fascinating” and “well worth studying in its own right” (Pritchett, 2006–2008: n.p.). Pritchett’s stance is debatable on two counts. First, the mushaira in Umrao Jan Ada is not necessarily a faithful representation of the pre-1857 days so much as it’s a loose conflation of pre- and post-1857 Urdu poetic culture—the inclusion of Mazhar-ul Haqq’s subject-centric nazm (a form of Urdu poetry that is theme-centric and not bound by the strict metrical rules that governed the ghazal form) in the mushaira-sequence should alert us to this possibility. Second, the claims of the mushaira to critical attention go beyond its catoptric value—the mushaira is key to facilitating a different reading of Umrao Jan Ada.

The mushaira in Umrao Jan Ada mirrors not so much or only the Urdu literary cultural milieu of Lucknow at the time, but the conceptual underpinnings of the rest of the novel as well. Albeit in understated form, the mushaira prefigures the subsequent narrative structurally and modally. Take, for instance, the question of what sort of narrative document Umrao Jan Ada represents. Even when working within the broad teleology of formal realism, many critics have noted how Umrao Jan Ada is a sophisticated mix of literary genres and narrative points-of-view. Thus, Yaqin asserts that “Rusva’s use of the personal pronoun allows us to read the novel as Umrao Jan’s autobiography rather than a story mediated through a biographer, which is how it begins” (Yaqin, 2007: 384). Jain, likewise, speaks of “a double discourse. Ruswa begins the story, Umrao narrates it. It thus becomes both an autobiography and a biography” (Jain, 1997: 94). Kumar avers that “the dynamics of” Umrao Jan Ada’s “textual performance… significantly operate[s] between and through both male and female points of view” (Kumar, 2002: 231). And Alison Safadi deems it a “polyphonic novel” (Safadi, 2009: 19) because “[b]oth Umrao Jan and Rusva the narrator are very much there on equal terms with Rusva the author and Rusva the man” (Safadi, 2009: 20). Umrao Jan Ada is a combination of narrative forms, but, this essay contends its heteroglossia is that of a mushaira.

Mushairas were dominated by the highly regarded ghazal form in the rekhta mould. They also featured less esteemed but popular comical/satirical and rekhti poetry. The narrative of Umrao Jan Ada is not so much a mix of male and female points-of-view as critics have noted above, but a complex weave of conventionally gendered registers of expression or voices. Put differently, Umrao Jan Ada is double-voiced: there is the rekhta narration of Umrao Jan and the rekhti narrative of Ruswa.

As Carla Petievich explains, “rekhta is a literature narrated in the masculine voice[;] its love [is] idealised rather than purporting to reflect social reality” (Petievich, 2003: n.p.). The desire such poetry expresses is high-minded, pious or metaphysical in nature. Indirection is characteristic of this form: it’s allusive and elusive. Its language, moreover, is high-toned and refined. In contrast, rekhti is a form of narrative drag where male poets employing begumati zubaan (women’s idiom) “narrate in the feminine voice” and sometimes in feminine attire for the amusement of a male audience (Petievich, 2003: n.p.). Unlike rekhta, “neither sublimated passion nor love in separation… are its forte”. Rather, “The emotions expressed are understood to result from the social reality of women being thrown together” (Petievich, 2003: n.p.). Direct, quotidian, and literalist in themes and treatment, rekhti is supposed to be “light and racy in tone, often suggestive, occasionally salacious— some might even consider it obscene” (Petievich, 2003: n.p.).

The foregoing gloss articulates the standard view on rekhta and rekhti. Ruth Vanita offers at least two qualifications in her study of rekhti that are particularly pertinent when reading Umrao Jan Ada. First, Vanita identifies a busy subset of poetry within the traditional rekhta genre: “[N]on mystical rekhta”, she writes, is “mainstream Urdu poetry with a male speaker, focussing on everyday life in this world” (Vanita, 2012: 2). Vanita’s intervention makes it possible to locate and comprehend Umrao Jan’s narrative within a wider field of expression, affect, gesture, scene and meaning straddling mystical and non-mystical rekhta. Second, Vanita argues for substantive “interplay between [non-mystical] rekhta and rekhti in language, form and content” (Vanita, 2012: 2) in late eighteenth century and nineteenth-century Urdu poetic culture. This is valuable information when analysing Umrao Jan Ada because it tells us that not only did Rusva have a well-developed model of literary hybridity available to him when he set about writing the novel, but that as an avid Urdu poet and scholar he was already likely a practiced hand at the politics and play of tongues and tones in the language. Vanita’s work, ultimately, helps discern the cast and character of Rusva’s aesthetic experimentation in Umrao Jan Ada.

Within the novel, Umrao Jan is shown to compose in the masculine register at the mushaira: when Khan Sahib half-critically wonders why she, a woman, and a courtesan whose meretricious idiom begumati zubaan was supposed to be, had chosen the masculine tongue, Umrao Jan staves off his attempt to restrict her creative scope and skills by disavowing the “language of women” (Matthews, 2007: xx) or rekhti (see Pritchett n.d.: n.p.). I contend that not just Umrao Jan’s poetry, but the tenor and purpose of her entire narrative in the novel may be seen as rekhta in nature. Her narration time and again deflects Ruswa’s attempts to elicit prurient details about her life. Her love life remains in the shadows—always alluded to, but never clarified. In the name of self-disclosure, what Umrao Jan paints in sure strokes is a picture of pre- and post-1857 Lucknow. As a matter of fact, each chapter of Umrao Jan’s narration begins with a rekhta couplet; the chapters themselves flesh out, to varying degrees, the idea and mood expressed in the opening verse. Throughout the novel, Umrao Jan’s narration cleaves to the respectable and the cultured. It also ultimately tends to the universal in tone. In contrast, Ruswa’s narrative with its obsession for detail, its humdrum concerns with the here and now, its lubricious preoccupations, inscribes the rekhti mode. The whole narrative of Umrao Jan Ada is thus a performance of mushaira in novel form: it’s an intricate tango of rekhti and rekhta, the prosaic and lowly with the lofty and poetic. The novel begins in one mode and ends in another. It commences as Ruswa’s realistic this-worldly rekhti, but concludes as Umrao Jan’s poetic, allusive rekhta. Throughout, it has a male narrator ventriloquizing a feminine register and sensibility, while the female protagonist claims a masculine voice and temper.

If Umrao Jan’s narration is rekhta, it is in effect a ghazal (or ten) and must be recognised as such. A ghazal is commonly spoken of as a “love lyric” made up of shers or two-line verses. Shamsur Rahman Farruqi, however, points to the pitfalls of such a definition: unlike a lyric, which is both private and personal, “the ghazal was intended to be recited at mushairas and public gatherings, and was… largely disseminated by word of mouth” (Farruqi, 1999: 8). Second, while a ghazal may speak emotions, “these are not necessarily the poet’s ‘personal’ emotions” (Farruqi, 1999: 8). Pritchett (1979) concurs that a ghazal is not a literal representation of society or individuals, but a set of specific compositional practices replete with stock types, phrases and imagery. A ready familiar repertoire, she notes, is almost necessary, given the extreme fragmentariness of the traditional ghazal form. Most experts agree that the theme of idealised, suffering love is central to the ghazal form. However, as Farruqi observes,

The poet and the audience both know that it is in the nature of certain themes to be sad, and they are not interested in how “sad” is “sad”. Their primary concern is to renew, and refashion, and thus demonstrate and realize the potential of the language. Intertextuality, imagination, audience expectation, all play their part. (Farruqi, 1999: 14)

Umrao Jan Ada’s peculiar imbrication of episodic plotting with realist narration rehearses the logic of the traditional ghazal form which is both substantively fragmentary and stylistically coherent.

Moreover, read in this light, the mushaira in Rusva’s novel emerges as a culturally dense and literarily nuanced representation. The mushaira in Umrao Jan Ada is an informal but informed assembly of poetry enthusiasts, which features poetry composed in the older, pre-1857 metre-cum-rhyme-bound style as well as later, colonial, theme-centric mould. The responses that the audience–participants express towards each other’s verse at the mushaira are not only realistic, but also contain valuable lessons about the sorts of concerns readers could bring to Umrao Jan’s narration. In general terms, responses to the mushaira can be grouped into the following broad sets. Evaluations determining linguistic virtuosity, wordplay and innovation—responses like “fine verse” (Matthews, 2007: xxii), “words were well said” (Matthews, 2007: xxii), and acclamation for the “pearl-like quality of her verse” (Matthews, 2007: xxiii)—belong to one category. Another type of response revolves round the question of appropriate voice or register of expression—Khan Sahib’s “it’s a fine exordium, but rather masculine in tone” (Matthews, 2007: xx) is of this order. A third response concerns issues of poetic influence—thus, comments like, “I detect a touch of Persian” (Matthews, 2007: xxii) or “that is Lucknow wit” (Matthews, 2007: xxv). Yet other responses are about the quality of themes and ideas presented: statements like the “theme is pleasing” (Matthews, 2007: xxii); or when people note the “depth of expression” (Matthews, 2007: xxv); and “praised the fair mindedness and outspokenness of the description” (Matthews, 2007: xxxi); or when they criticised “a rather slender line of thought” where if the poet had not explained the idea, the “verse would [have] be[en] incomprehensible” (Matthews, 2007: xxxv) exemplify this last set. The antecedents of curious pen-names also forms a topic of discussion at the mushaira: when explaining his “strange pen-name Cossack” (Matthews, 2007: xxxv), Agha Sahib reveals how these poetic identity-markers could be attributed to personal history or to the literary persona assumed by the poet or to a combination of both. In the process, he also implicitly testifies to the shayar’s (poet’s) openness to new influences and propensity for improvisation. If, as I have been suggesting, Umrao Jan’s narration is a type of rekhta, it solicits the same sorts of concerns exercising the audience–participants in the mushaira scene. Twice at the mushaira, Khan Sahib tries to bracket Umrao Jan’s poetry within the parameters of rekhti. Both times she fights off his efforts at circumscription. The first occasion has already been cited. The second references Khan Sahib’s insistence that Umrao Jan “obviously speak[s] from [her] own experience” (Matthews, 2007: xxii–xxiii), thereby implying her compositions share more with the (pseudo)naturalist rekhti genre than with the poetic rekhta voice she claims for herself. Umrao Jan’s reply to Khan Sahib is unequivocal, and in the context of the line of argument being advanced, telling. “My own experience is another matter”, she says. “The subject I chose is merely poetic” (Matthews, 2007: xxiii). Dare one say that critics reading Rusva’s novel exclusively through the prism of realism rehearse the role of the literalist Khan Sahib when they deem the narration to be transparently auto/biographical!

Umrao Jan Ada and the poetics of indirection

According to Farruqi:

The final impression that a… ghazal leaves on us is… the feeling that we have been in close touch with a vigorous, complex intellect, a mind capable of self-mockery and introspection, a body and spirit that have suffered and enjoyed… a soul that is no stranger to the mystic dimensions of existence. … An invitation to pity is nowhere to be found in [its] vocabulary. (Farruqi, 1999: 27)

This is precisely the impression made by Umrao Jan’s narration in particular, and Umrao Jan Ada as a whole. At the risk of overstatement, Rusva’s novel is a mushaira in narrative form: its poetics is not that of the realist novel per se, but that of intertwining rekhta and rekhti. Quintessentially, the ghazal communicates through indirection and moves through powerful evocation. It delights through linguistic dexterity and tonal excellence. It’s not supposed to be taken at face value, or only at face value. Instead, interpretation is required for better appreciation of its fragmental offerings. The same holds true for Umrao Jan’s narration. Attention to the particulars of Umrao Jan’s characterization and situation reinforce the assertion that hers is a beguiling narration not to be taken literally.

It merits notice that the text is called “Umrao Jan Ada” and not Amiran, the “real” name of Umrao Jan, as we are told by the courtesan herself, the one she was known by before being abducted and sold into prostitution. Jain says, “The significant point is how does one respond to Umrao?” Do we “treat her as a liberated woman or a victim of society?” (Jain, 1997: 99). This would have been a valid enquiry had it not been for a serious oversight: Umrao Jan Ada is neither Umrao Jan nor Umrao. In fact, there is no Umrao in the text, just an Umrao-in waiting. There is an Amiran (or Amiran equivalent) ⁵ in the text but she’s not to be confused with Umrao Jan either. Instead of “who”, however, the question to ask would be “what” is Umrao Jan? Umrao Jan is the hyperreal persona created when Amiran is first renamed Umrao by the brothel madame, Khanum Jan, and a few years later formally inducted into the life of a Lucknawi tawaif (courtesan). “Ada”, which translates as grace or style, is Umrao Jan’s, and not Amiran’s, chosen poetic handle or signature. The title becomes the first of many reasons therefore to suspect the auto/biographical claims of the novel, for what Ruswa presents is a celebrated courtesan-poet’s account.

Did this personage wish to reveal Amiran’s story? According to the novel, it’s the repeated appeals of Ruswa and Munshi Sahib that convince an initially reluctant Umrao Jan to tell them her life story. But did she really capitulate and comply with demands she was uncomfortable with? The novel also tells us that Umrao Jan was shocked and furious to learn that Ruswa had secretly written down her account. Was Umrao Jan then cornered into sanctioning Ruswa’s manuscript? If Ruswa is to be believed, the answer is an emphatic yes. Different possibilities emerge when we remember that it’s a famous Lucknavi courtesan we are talking about. Recalling Veena Oldenburg’s discussion on the courtesan’s secret art would be especially illuminating here.

According to Oldenburg, scholarship has neglected the “secret skill—the art of nakhra, or pretence, that courtesans have to master. … To achieve their material ambitions they use… an arsenal of devious ‘routines’… that make up the buried text of an evening’s entertainment”. Repeated rehearsals by the trainee are “evaluated by the adept tawaif, until no trace of the pretence is discernible” (Oldenberg, 1992: 43). Umrao Jan openly admits to these tricks of her tribe when responding to Ruswa’s question about her romances. To quote her, “Heaving long sighs, weeping and beating our breasts for the slightest thing, going without food for days on end, standing on the edge of a well and threatening to jump, taking poison—these are all tricks of the trade. No man however hard-hearted can escape from our wiles” (Matthews, 2007: 83–84). It’s possible, of course, that Umrao Jan has been pushed by Ruswa and Munshi Sahib into narrating her life story. It’s more probable, though, that a courtesan as accomplished as Umrao Jan allows Ruswa to think he is getting his way while successfully counter-manipulating him. Umrao Jan’s statement, “I’m a wily old bird. … I become what people want to make me, and of course I can manipulate and hoodwink them as well” (Matthews, 2007: 191), lends credibility to such an inference. This essay would even venture that Umrao Jan had some inkling of Ruswa’s subterfuge and merely feigned outrage when confronted with Ruswa’s manuscript. Bolstering this contention is the fact that early in her narration, with Ruswa ferreting for the scandalous, Umrao Jan had “hope[d] you are not going to publish this in some newspaper” (Matthews, 2007: 37). When Ruswa asks her what she thinks, she curiously exclaims, “Ah, the disgrace! God preserve us! Will you make me as notorious as yourself?” (Matthews, 2007: 37), marking the possibility that Umrao Jan may not be as unaware of Ruswa’s intentions as claimed.

If Umrao Jan is not the reluctant narrator she’s made out to be, how likely is it for a seasoned courtesan, who harbours no illusions about Ruswa’s character, to bare her heart and soul to him? When we consider the socio-political climate in Lucknow post-1857 and how it impacted the courtesans in particular, there can only be one answer to that question—very unlikely. After the bloodshed of the Mutiny, the British targeted those they saw as sympathisers and loyalists of the erstwhile nawabi aristocracy in Awadh. Their persecution of the courtesans was sharpened by Victorian prejudice. Not only were once cultured, socially influential courtesans (Sharar, 2010: 196) reduced to seedy prostitutes, they were subject to a battery of degrading state controls, and forced to sexually service British military officers. They came to be seen as repositories and carriers of filthy disease. Even public opinion turned against them following reformist denunciations. Courtesans that still practised their trade had to find patrons among boorish country taluqdars (often, tax-collecting landholders) and the new, grasping professional classes that took up the space vacated by the nawabi exodus from Lucknow. They also had to guard their earnings from being taxed and/or confiscated by the state. Oldenburg discovers many names of courtesans in the tax ledgers of 1858–1877 who were in the highest tax bracket. Their names were also “on lists of property… confiscated by British officials for their… rebellion against British rule in 1857” (Oldenberg, 1992: 27). According to Oldenburg, this prompted courtesans “to intensify their struggle to keep out an intrusive civic authority that taxed their incomes and inspected their bodies” (Oldenberg, 1992: 28).

Umrao Jan, a well-known courtesan closely associated with the nawabi court, is in a precarious position in the colonial “present” of the novel. Her vulnerable situation, in fact, explains her reclusive lifestyle and cagey behaviour when discussing her finances—being nondescript is a survival tactic for Umrao Jan. Calling attention to herself in these conditions would expose her to the prejudice, greed and sexual control of the colonial government. Umrao Jan is even seen ingratiating herself with the new dispensation by extravagantly praising British rule and ostensibly criticising the old regime (Matthews, 2007: 197–198). Given her circumstances, and her familiarity with Ruswa’s disreputable ways, therefore, it’s highly unlikely that Umrao Jan would be coaxed into jeopardising her interests by telling Ruswa her life story.

Umrao Jan’s narrative is therefore not auto/biographical, at least not in any straightforward sense: in answer to Ruswa’s prodding, she appears to tell all, but in fact, reveals little. It would be legitimate to ask why she participated in the charade. Why not simply refuse Ruswa’s and Munshi Sahib’s requests? One explanation could be that Ruswa is an old acquaintance and patron. Refusing him would have meant alienating one of the few non-judgemental people left in colonial Lucknow. Besides, outright refusal, which may cause unpleasantness, goes against her training as a top-notch courtesan in pleasing and so “managing” her patrons and well-wishers. After a period of extreme isolation, it’s also possible that Umrao Jan viewed Ruswa’s invitation to narrate as a rare opportunity to “perform” and indulge her artistic ingenuity. Her stated reluctance to Ruswa’s proposition may well be the conventional refusals that a poet was to issue on being asked to recite his poetry at the time. Just as in the mushaira scene Shaikh Sahib, “feigning modesty”, said “he could remember nothing” (Matthews, 2007: xxv) before going on to recite his verses, Umrao Jan feigns unwillingness before launching into her narration. The celerity with which she moves from wondering “what pleasure can you possibly expect to find in the story of someone so unfortunate as me?” to admonishing Ruswa to “listen well” (Matthews, 2007: 1) supports the hypothesis that her self-deprecation and apparent disinclination may be ritualistic rather than sincere.

Umrao Jan’s narration is best read as her latest ghazal, a carefully stylised part mystical, part non-mystical rekhta love song on Lucknow, composed with a mind to make it appear as it is not. Umrao Jan starts her narration juxtaposing two phrases: jag beeti and aap beeti. What she offers is a fairly accomplished account of the “story… of the world” (Matthews, 2007: 1), only she passes it off as aap beeti or her own life story. Even the historical errors, the inconsistencies, the contradictions and coincidences that critics have noted are plausibly intentional. They are of a piece with Umrao Jan’s proclaimed reluctance. When and if the narration would become public, Umrao Jan could fall back on them to issue disclaimers. In the meantime, she finds an outlet for artistic expression. Umrao Jan does not observe purdah in Rusva’s novel. Women of the kotha (brothel) like her, having breached prevailing codes of gendered decency, could have no real claim, after all, to the vesture of modesty worn by sharif (high-born and respectable) women other than as a meaningless or wistful affectation. Umrao Jan’s narrative, however, is a discursive veil that keeps Amiran within the folds of social respectability. Her narrative functions as the purdah of propriety that obscures and protects Amiran, even as it selectively foregrounds and exposes Umrao Jan. Ruswa and successive generations of readers seduced by Umrao Jan’s tale frequently miss this detail.

Conclusion

Umrao Jan Ada is a boldly experimental novel in form and telling. Far from being a clear-cut realist novel as Rusva claims, it represents the search for a contemporary idiom to articulate in the colonial present the silenced stories of a nawabi city and its courtesans overrun by British imperialism. Rusva ultimately creates a literary hybrid in Umrao Jan Ada, which stages the interplay between two Urdu poetic representational, compositional and even epistemic modes (Ruswa’s rekhti and Umrao Jan’s rekhta) within the anatomy of the novel form. The result is a multiply layered, markedly unstable, chiaroscuro narrative that tantalises with the promise of fact, but delivers alluring fiction, even as it reveals prosaic truths in the trappings of poetic fancy. The formal and narrative strategies of Rusva’s novel register a radical recognition of the near historical impossibility of any “real” self-disclosure for a sexually, socially and racially othered courtesan in post-1857 Awadh. What Umrao Jan Ada’s mesh of prose and poetry, truth and illusion, detail and diffusion delivers consistently, and with artistic and intellectual ingenuity, is an assortment of sharp social vignettes segueing into soothing hyperreality. Krupa Shandilya and Taimoor Shahid note how Junun-e Intezar, a sequel to Umrao Jan Ada, which was published along with the latter novel, and which claimed the courtesan as its author, acknowledged “April 1 1899, All Fool’s Day” as its “date of publication”. Not only does this suggest that “the novella is a prank” (Shandilya and Shahid, 2012: 23), it also suggests that Rusva is not above scripting intelligent literary larks. More pertinently, it suggests the possibility that Umrao Jan Ada was part of an elaborate language game, albeit one with a serious underlying purpose, that Rusva played on, and with, his readers. Like Emily Dickinson, and Umrao Jan his character, Rusva, the novelist, too, obviously, had learnt “to tell… the truth but tell it slant”. And the enduring appeal of Umrao Jan Ada is witness, his “success in circuit lies” (Vendler, 2010: 431).