Manzar Ahtesham’s original Urdu work Sukha Bargad has been called a modern classic and has been ably translated into English under the title A Dying Banyan. Set in the late seventies and early eighties when Islamic tendencies are on their rise in Pakistan and Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto has been hanged while in India, Mrs. Gandhi has lost the elections and the Janata Party has come into power bringing in its wake the erstwhile Jan Sanghis­.

The book tries to follow the life of Suhail, the son of a middle class and secular minded lawyer and his devout tradition minded wife as observed by Rashida , Suhail’s sister. Along the way, through Suhail’s experiences, it tries to trace the search for identity for a Muslim in post partition India.

Suhail and his family live in Bhopal, a city that has always been Muslim in character and ruled by a Nawab; but in independent India, its character slowly changes as it is rechristened as the capital of the modern state of Madhya Pradesh. Slowly as the Muslim identity erodes and many of the Muslims of means emigrate to Pakistan, questions arise in the minds of those who stay back- or circumstances force them to ask questions. The book touches upon the wars of the 1965 and 1971 and the peculiar tests the Muslims were put to.

Everyone – the Hindus and the Muslims listened clandestinely to Radio Pakistan ; but if the Hindus listened in, they were merely listening in to discover what the “other side” was saying; but if the Muslims did so, they were traitors who tuned into the “enemy” for the news. And yet with so many blood relatives in Pakistan, the Indian Muslims had valid reasons to listen to Radio Pakistan, not because they were traitors but because they had legitimate concerns about the welfare of their families.

Sukha Bargad also traces the silent beginnings of communalism in post-British India and the some what clumsy attempts of Muslims to adapt and adjust. Some like Suhail’s lawyer father held on to their secular ideals; but they had passed their prime and they were left undisturbed but Suhail, his son attempted to follow in his footsteps; he very quickly found that the going was not too easy and that under the veneer of secularism, distinctions flourished and barriers continued to be erected. Muslims react in different ways; some migrate out – that is what seems best for a time till Zia ul Huq comes to power in Pakistan, hangs Bhutto and starts promoting a distinctly unpalatable style of Islam; a few retreat deeper into their obscurantist tradition and ghetto culture and a few like the politician Rajab Ali are rank opportunists – courting the Jana Sangh one day and giving clarion calls about Islam being in danger the next day.

The ultimate message of the book is perhaps captured best by the relentless downslide of Suhail’s life – unable to make peace with traditionalists, distrusted by the liberal as well as the communal Hindu, he finds succor only in drink and decay even as his sister, Rashida, the narrator looks on helplessly. The ultimate message of the book in the translator –Kuldip Singh’s words is to peep into the heart of minorities, wherever they may be and empathize with their alienation, fears and insecurities – and society’s fundamental questioning of anyone who is different- in look, in thought and in belief and the unending agni pariksha that they have to go through – in every generation.