‘The Ceremony of Innocence’
Syed Afsar Sajid
Title: ‘Second Coming’
Author: M. Athar Tahir
Publisher: Lightstone Publishers, Mehran Town, Karachi
Pages: 190 – Price: Rs.1295/-
Renowned Pakistani poet of English and a three-time recipient of Patras Bokhari Award
for Literature in English, ex-bureaucrat M. Athar Tahir has now come out with his maiden
work of fiction named ‘Second Coming’ which has been widely acclaimed by discreet
readers of English fiction here and elsewhere.
It is intended to explore layers, as it were, of ‘several countries and cultures, belief systems and social structures, ages and genders’. The quasi–symbolic title of the novel seemingly suggests inter alia, a gyre-like revolution configuring the pietistic and the terrene. The author seems to have intentionally subtitled the four parts of the book as ‘earth’, ’air’, ‘water’, and ‘fire’ (Cf. ‘The Waste Land’), with a view to realigning the mythico-spiritual aura of the book.
The events in the narrative relate to an exotic alien land (Thailand) that the (nameless)
protagonist of the story, vicariously representing the author himself, visited after a lapse
of around three decades. It was an official visit as the authorial persona had been
delegated to represent his country at a multilateral moot lasting for three days in the
country of his destination.
The presence of a biographical nay autobiographical similitude in the novella-esque
novel would seem to endorse the writer’s contention that no author (of a fictional
narrative like a novel) could afford to write it ‘without something of himself in it whether
it’s fantasy, stream of consciousness or science fiction’.
The anonymity of the protagonist is further explained by him as a deliberate artistic move to dissimulate his identity because ‘if the name had been given, it would have been a certain person. Without a name, it could be anybody or everyman …… Much of it was left to the imagination of the readers if they think it’s autobiographical.’
Simultaneously, as for the role of the reader vis-à-vis a work of fiction such as the present one, the writer is of the view that for a character to be relevant in fiction, ‘it must speak of some aspect of the reader’s personality’. This empathetic view of the art of narration is the cornerstone of Athar Tahir’s narratorial adeptness.
‘The artist starts from life itself. How, then, is he to express himself, so that he may be
understood by others who are sharing the common life of all humanity? Only in terms of
something known within the compass of that life, in a material medium!
That is why Pater’s (renowned English art and literary critic and an accomplished stylist: 1839-94) stylist has to winnow and search for the right words, that is why Winckelmann’s (a pioneering German art historian and archaeologist: 1717-68) sculptor must wrestle with
his resistant material— because he is trying to get back into the world of sensible reality,
of life, what he originally extracted from the same world. The externals of life gave him
the impulse.
The externals of life can alone give him the language with which to express what he has seen. All art, assuredly, is expression; but it is the expression of life, as the artist sees it, in a language which other man can understand.’ The implications of this Crocean (Croce, Italian philosopher, historian and art critic: 1866-1952) critical dictum could be conveniently extended to Athar Tahir’s instant fictional work.
The concept of second coming in Christianity implies the belief that Jesus Christ will
return to Earth at some point in the future. The Bible, particularly the New Testament is
the source of this belief that describes the return of Jesus with concomitant events. It
will be a transformative happening marking his glorious comeback. He will judge the
living and the dead. The righteous shall be rewarded with eternal life in heaven whereas
the wicked shall be punished with eternal damnation in hell.
Notwithstanding the uncertainty shrouding the second coming, Christians are called to live in anticipation of it. W.B. Yeats’s (1865-1939) poem ‘The Second Coming’ (1921) was a superbly controlled powerful poetic commentary not only on WWI and the decline of traditional standards but also on the 20 th century man and the new invention of horror.
Sukhon Urairat (aka Su) is the centrepiece of the novel. Her appearance, poise, gestures,
and gesticulations speak eloquently for her nature, character, and attitude.
The monologic speeches of the ageing protagonist tend to vocalize his frenzied longings.
Verily it is an attempt on the part of the ‘autobiographer’ to explore the parity of the
sacred and the profane in his life which one would fain call the human condition. In some
kind of an impressionistic vein, the author lays bare his cerebral ramblings so as to
involve a thoughtful, discernible reader in the complex mechanism of his fictional art.
In his ‘second coming’ to Thailand after his eventful 3-day official tour in the near past,
we are treated to a long drawn monologue signifying the emotional chaos caused by
Su’s growing indifference to his solicitousness.
Dr. Tariq Rahman has aptly elaborated this point in his observation: ‘Love, and that too of an elderly Pakistani middle-class, happily married man, for a younger Thai woman. Who would dare to write a novel on this unpromising theme? Yet, this is what the author does and with such pathos, such deep feeling, such aching nostalgia and such probing into the possibilities of the human experience that one cannot help admiring it.’
The analogy between the two productions viz. ‘Second Coming’ and ‘The Second Coming’ can at best be termed as a metaphysical conceit obliquely referring to the glowering human condition exemplified in the instant novel: ‘The van vanishes in the traffic spiriting away five years of fragrance.’ The image of the vanishing van out of the ‘Spiritus Mundi’ (Cf. ‘The Second Coming’ by W.B. Yeats) could be likened to the ‘drowning of the ceremony of innocence’ which would continue to trouble the protagonist’s sight, God knows until when!
