Hi Zulfikar!

Manners, like grammar, are nothing but conventions. Old conventions are discarded, new conventions take place of old.

Signs are ominous. Clocks are not in unison. This situation leaves the elderly like a patient etherised upon a table. Zulfikar Ghose, poet, novelist, literary critic and Professor Emeritus in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin, has recently written in a Pakistani newspaper about his experience with students and other people in the virtual world. He says that people from around the world contact him through the internet, seeking his help in the study of English literature and literature of other languages. He says, “Digital communication, disregarding time and space, facilitates instant correspondence, ignores the age gap and the old formalities of conventional respect whereby ‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Dear Professor Ghose’ is casually abandoned for ‘Hi Zulfikar!’ by a 16-year-old writing to someone nearly 80. Electronic media has produced a worldwide democracy in which we are all equals … ”

No sir, these kinds of manners are not limited to the virtual world alone. Manners, like grammar, are nothing but conventions. Old conventions are discarded and new conventions take the place of the old.

In his autobiography, acclaimed historian Dr Mubarak Ali has mentioned several of his bad experiences. When he was teaching at a university, a crook and his henchmen had used indecent language against him when he had refused to forward a student’s examination form since the student had not attended class, even for a single day, in one whole semester. The unsavoury incident gave him such a shock that he quit his university job. In another incident, Dr Ali helped an unemployed young man who later turned against him and dragged him to court in a false case. Dr Ali helped him using his influence with his publishers in Lahore. He got him books written in English on various subjects to translate them into Urdu. His translations were shabby but Dr Ali improved the language and had those translated books published. This brought a handsome income to the young man. Once he told the manager of the publishing house that he was getting married and asked for Rs50,000 as a loan, but the manager refused, saying that he already owed them Rs14,000. Upon this, the young man filed a court case against the manager, the proprietor and the entire staff of the publishing house which also included Dr Ali as one of the respondents in the petition. Once Dr Ali was standing next to the young man in a courtroom, he told the young man, “Mein nay tumharay liye itna kiya aur tumnay mujhay yeh din dikhaya hai” (I did so much to help you and you have dragged me to court). The young man replied, “Abhi tau bahut kuchh dekhna parega” (Now you will have to see a lot). The young man even told the court, “I am the author of more than 300 books. And this Mubarak Ali who claims to be a historian is a fake. He translates English and Hindi books published in India into Urdu and gets them published under his name.” The case, however, came to a naught.

In one of his recent columns in The Express Tribune, Chris Cork mentioned his grandmother’s pet sentence in the run-up to, and during, the Second World War, “All mouth and no trousers”. She used this phrase frequently in those days while commenting on the hollow statements of politicians. A senior Indian journalist had published Qurratul Ain Haider’s novel Aag Ka Darya without her permission. This was when the writer was in Pakistan. When she visited India, she met the journalist. When she asked the journalist why he had published her novel without her permission, the latter told her brazenly, “Yes, I have published the novel without your authorisation. You can do whatever you like.” In an interview to a Pakistani newspaper, Haider said she has written only 12 novels but Pakistani publishers have published 40 of her novels.

A journalist friend told me about his experience with a junior colleague. Once he was returning home from work, with a few of his colleagues, in office conveyance. Besides him, there were two others in the vehicle. He was sitting in the front seat beside the driver. One of the colleagues got off at his residence. So, in order to check how many people were left there in the vehicle, he turned around and saw a junior colleague sitting in the backseat. He said to him in a lighter vein, “Please give proof of your presence”. Sharp came the reply, “Sahib, I am very tired. I have to work too much.” This left my friend speechless.

Spanish thinker Ortega Y Gasset wrote a book, Revolt of the Masses, in 1930. Gasset writes: “Great levelling has taken place.” Or have things gone beyond this?

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2013.

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