In the spirit of discovery
“Incidents on which the book is based do not follow a strict chronological order. I have written these down as these came to my mind. There is something I want to say here. It was weighing heavily on my mind.”
Journey of an Explorer sat quite contently over a pile of books I intended to get into, at a pace not necessarily established, often a signature of my work desk. M had sent it over a few weeks ago for me to read but my usual recreational escapism had been impaired a fair bit. It was then when an esteemed colleague brisked past my work-station and exclaimed Azmat Sahab? I turned to him otherwise quite engrossed in the material realm and said excuse me?
That’s Azmat’s Sahab’s book – I didn’t know he translated it into English.
You’re familiar with this particular piece?
No, I read the one he wrote in Urdu.
Is it worth a descent?
Now that’s a journey you need to take for yourself. And so, I did.
Mr Ansari, a journalist, adventurer, broadcaster, actor and an air-force PR man chronicles his life through his childhood in pre partition Haryana snaking his way to modern day Pakistan, finally having settled and deserving a life fully lived, engrossed in the luxury afforded to a choice few – to reminisce in comfort.
Through his “prose”, we are shown an ambitious catalogue of interests and pastimes, some of which in he abandoned all sense of moderation. Ranging from mountaineering to wildlife to show business, music, travel and serendipitous interactions with regional giants, such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Saadat Hasan Manto.
Inspired by his father, Mr Ansari took to mountaineering early in life, trained at the Karakorum Mountaineering Club and learned to trek up to 40 miles within his first few efforts. With porters and ponies, axes, rock nails and ropes he attempted to scale icy peaks, while camping next to ‘ice falls’, savouring at each instance the breathtaking beauty of Pakistan.
From the blisteringly cold mountain tops to the arid dominion of Gorakh Hill, accompanied by guides in baking heat, Ansari reached the top of the Gorakh contesting the elements, inhospitable terrain and risking the unpredictability of tribal behaviour. Hardships aside, the ends justified the means, and through his illustrated articles in Dawn Magazine, and later in other newspapers, that people came to know of a hill in Sindh that receives snow. Of all his adventures, Gorakh Hill read like the most pivotal, read: emotional, bolstered by his detailed descriptions of flora and fauna illustrates his fascination and appreciation with nature.
Patriotic in spades, Ansari actually has little to no interest in actual politics, something peculiar about a South Asian who, along with his family, lived through the Partition, not to mention the harrowing train journey that he took to Pakistan. In his description of the war of 1971 that Ansari feels he was doing his duty to Pakistan by informing the foreign media that hardly any fighting was done by the Mukti Bahini [freedom fighters of Bangladesh] and that everywhere in East Pakistan it was Indian soldiers doing the fighting disguised as Bangladeshi nationalists.
His penchant for risk evolves over time, often undertaking suicidal missions chaperoning foreign journalists to the front line as army vehicles unleashed their deadly payload. He also became a prisoner of war, yet remained indiscreet as ever, indicated in a letter that included a snide remark about the then Indian prime minister. Ansari was caught and tortured first in a Bangladesh prisoner of war camp and later transferred to New Delhi to undergo further hardships.
Making his way back to Pakistan, he resigned his PAF commission and humoured a new life that he recorded in his works - Yaadon Ke Dareechay. At places, the book reduces itself to a monotonous travelogue in which countries, cities, sites, hosts and he himself revolve round a glamorous routine whose description is interesting, but devoid of meaning. This way Ansari is being himself, for he makes no claim to intellectuality. There are ample treks within the volume that are reduced to unconnected dictations, that a less than interested subordinate was tasked with articulating in short-hand. Indifference enough that they didn’t warrant a re-write during the editing phase.
Through and through though, he sticks to what he knows and what he is — a man who is essentially an explorer — for he informs his readers that Pakistan has no less than 100 islands, even if some of them are little better than mounds often run over by the Arabian Sea’s monsoon waves. He waxes excitedly about an orchard that grows saffron in a remote valley in Quetta; he rushes to Badin to find out what it is like to hunt for oil; and he goes to Mohenjo Daro to make 100 transparencies to show them to a packed hall in America. His voice over the radio is heard by millions as an English newsreader, as a central figure in a radio play and as host of a programme of Western classical music and he dashes off on the eve of the programme to the Soviet consulate in Karachi to know how the name of legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter is pronounced. The almost child like sense of curiosity is one to be gawked and reveled at with equal measure.
If you find yourself reading this book, fret not for it was never a literary feat of novelty. It is nostalgia, introspection and one man’s endearing philosophy – “an internal culture that has enabled him to change the venom of existence into the elixir of life.” For behind the diversity of his activities and initiatives, there has always been a single spirit – the spirit to discover the unknown.