Did a version of this for the May issue of The Hindu Literary Review
A few pages into
Ajaz Ashraf’s The Hour Before Dawn I
started feeling mildly panicky. Rasheed Halim, a New Delhi-based journalist and
the book’s principal protagonist, had just stumbled across the possibility that
the cancer he’d fought and seemingly defeated could return. And his rising
panic at this discovery was infectious.
Rasheed’s
struggle to deal with the trauma of a possible relapse is one of the stories at
the core of this rather hefty book. Another major narrative is the mysterious
appearance every morning of ‘Secret History’ — a series of posters on the walls
of residential colonies in New Delhi — across November 1992. This ‘Secret
History’, which portrays Muslims as invaders intent on plundering the country
and wiping out all traces of Hinduism, claims it presents the ‘real’ history of
India. ‘Secret History’ addresses Hindus, who it declares are “the only true
people of this holy land” and exhorts them to rise and destroy the Babri Masjid
in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992.
Several other
narrative threads run through The Hour
Before Dawn. These include Rasheed’s blossoming relationship with Uma, who
helps run a helpline for people with psychological ailments; efforts by Rasheed
and a bunch of others to unmask and stop ‘Secret History’s’ anonymous author;
and the story of Wasim Khan, who is Rasheed’s neighbour, a devout Muslim with a
catholic worldview and an Islamic scholar on a quest for “the nectar of the
Invisible.”
Weaving all
these strands into an engaging tale is a challenge that Ashraf tackles with
limited success, as the narrative plods on to an ending where not all is
revealed.
Some sections
are extremely evocative, especially the bits that deal with Rasheed grappling
with the idea of a relapse and all that it means, including the possibility of
imminent death. Rasheed withdraws into a little bubble of dread and doom. And
Ashraf captures this sense of darkness so well that it almost becomes a living
being, one that sucks out every shred of positivity from the world around.
Sample this passage that captures the pain, fear and confusion that envelop
Rasheed: “Like drops of water falling from a leaking faucet, the thought of
dying dripped into his consciousness. His was the pain of a man overwhelmed by
the cruel certainty of his fate.”
I was also
struck by how well Ashraf has crafted the various episodes of ‘Secret History’,
with their catchy, over-the-top portrayal of events from India’s past. Of course,
you soon realise they are exaggerated and fictionalised accounts; something
Ashraf confirms in the afterword. Yet, there’s something beguiling about them,
a bit like those e-mail forwards you get and promptly forward to people you’re
not too fond of!
At the same
time, the writing is often uneven and stilted, with convoluted sentences like
this one: “They felt the emptiness similar to what is experienced on missing
out on reading the newspaper in the morning, a regimen adhered to for years.”
The book is also
afflicted by a jarring ‘article-itis' and ‘preposition-itis’ epidemic; with
articles and prepositions being used in the wrong places and missing from where
they’re needed.
I also found
some of the sub-plots and details that crowd the book tangential, at best, to
the overall narrative and quite exhausting. They add bulk to the book, but
little heft to the plot.
Which left me
feeling that some incisive editing, which cut away the flab that weighs down
this book and shaped a tauter tale, could have saved The Hour Before Dawn. That it didn’t happen is a pity. For the book
presents a slice of recent Indian social history, the effects of which are
still being felt. Equally important, it is a work of fiction, a historical
thriller that also throws culture, religion and medicine into the mix. At
another level though, it nudges us to reflect on what terms such as ‘history’,
‘trust’, ‘friendship’, ‘religion’, ‘liberal’, ‘fear’, ‘love’ and ‘life’ itself
really mean.
