Jhoota Sach (This Is Not That Dawn): By Yashpal. A Story of Partition and Lahore

JHOOTA SACH

BY

YASHPAL

For the duration of reading the book and for some time after that I was transported to 1940’s in Lahore. The streets of old city with all the cross-roof talks, chatter of the vendors, the scent of flower laden walkways of Lawrence Garden, the hustle bustle of Shahalami and the suburban air of Model Town, all came alive.

You don’t need a map to know where Shahlmi, Pari Mahal, Papar Mandi, Machchi Hatta, Kanjar Phalla, Qilla Guggar Singh and Krishan Nagar are situated.

I could hear the chanting of wailing women in a Siyapa ritual, the waking up calls of drums and Naats  in early Ramzan Sehri parties, call to arms of Muslims against Hindus and vice versa, and the sirens of fire brigades and police vans. I am not from Lahore but felt like a Lahori. I thank Yashpal for that.

A scene: a few days after the Shahalami fire.

Puri had to give up the idea of going to Mori Gate. The thought of taking bodyguards to meet a person like Ghaus Mohamad was not agreeable. Next day around nine in the morning, he went alone, with the manuscript tucked under his arm. He did not go by the way of Machchi Hatta and Shahalami, but rather through Vachchovali, Shesha Moti and Sootar Madi toward Lohari Gate.  Mostly Hindus live in this area, By and large the shops were open but the bazaars were not crowded. . In the intersection near Sootar Mandi, he saw Masood, carrying a similar but slightly smaller package like his own.

I have no qualm in accepting the truth that had I not walked in the Udru Conference in NYC NYU arranged by Tahira Naqvi I had not known to date about the masterpiece I ended up reading. My son who learned Urdu on his own in the Urdu semester he took with Tahira Naqvi wanted to attend the conference and I accompanied him.

This year the theme was Lahore topophilia. And one of the talks was about the book by his son Anand who is the translator of the book into English. He aptly chose the name of the English translation as, This Is Not That Dawn, after the verse by Faiz. Both the original Hindi and English titles point to the dreams left unrealized after the Independence. It was more of a Partition than Independence.

Yashpal is a prolific writer. One of those few political activists, who could be termed terrorist in today’s jargon. He denotated a bomb in an attempt to kill the Viceroy Lord Irwin. He was a colleague of Bhagat Singh and served jail time. He was later released in an amnesty program. Then he became a writer.

I don’t know the exact length of the original Hindi scrip, but the translation in Urdu is  1117 pages long and 1119 pages in English. It is a big novel.

First half, termed Watan and Desh, (Country and Nation)  is set in Lahore. It takes you to 1945. The story is gripping. It revolves around a small street, a galli, Bhola Pandhe in the walled city, not so far from  Shahalami. Its inhabitants are Hindus and Sikhs.  The main characters are young adults, college going boys and girls including a pair of siblings in that street Jaidev Puri and his sister Tara, children of a school teacher Master Ramlubhaya.

The narrative is strong enough that you don’t need a map to imagine the old city. Lahori friends will be delighted to see the old city come to life. With characters walking or riding a bike, tonga , rickshaw or car to Shalhmi, Gawalmandi, Anarkali and to the suburban Model Town.

It is the closest narrative to people’s history of the events around partition in South Asia fiction. Told through the thoughts and dialogues of characters who are all Lahoris of various persuasions. In the Ghola Pandhe gali, none except one, a physician has travelled outside Punjab. They look at rest of India as an alien land. Although living in segregated lives, the lives of Hindus and Muslims mingle all the time.

Residents of this street do not thing at all in the beginning of the novel, around 1945 that they will ever have to leave Lahore. They feel closer to Muslim Lahoris than non-Punjabi Hindus of faraway India.

That was the time when there was an agitation against the Unionist Khizar’s government which eventually falls and Governor Rule is declared in Punjab.

As the weeks go by and the partition starts to become a reality, the tensions start to rise. Some of the young residents start becoming militant. It seems that the sectarian fights were instigated equally by Hindus in Lahore as much as by Muslims.

It was also thought as a conspiracy theory that the British bureaucrats in India including the Governor of Punjab were the Conservative Party supporters of Churchill and against the policies of Attlee and Mountbatten. There was also a rumor that the British may want to hold on to Punjab even if the rest of India is given independence.  (I never heard of this before)

The first scene of racial tension is very telling when two female activists of Hindu Defense Committee enter the street and ask a Muslim fruit vendor, an Arain to leave the street. Then they gather all the ladies of the galli and explain to them the massacre of Hindus in Calcutta by Muslims and encourage them to support Hindu street vendors and not Muslims.

One of the residents is a school teacher whose children are of college going age. His son, Jay Puri (who I think has several characteristics in common with the author Yashpal) had been in Multan Jail for being a part of anti war movement. His sister, Tara is a graduate student urged to do bachelors by her brother Jaidev. These young siblings have a circle of friends and colleagues, who are mostly left leaning including some who are communists. They include Hindu, Muslims and Sikhs. Some of their friends belong to more affluent families. Some have developed romantic inclinations with members of different faiths.

Life of young writers was tough in those days too.  Jaidev as a young writer has a really hard time to find a job. After much running around, he gets a chance to be in a newspaper, only to be fired when he speaks his mind in an editorial when one of an innocent Kashmiri Hindu boy of his galli is killed in a sectarian fight. Then it is downhill for him from there. One option after the other starts to fall off. It is very painfully described the way he gets increasingly depressed and ultimately had to leave Lahore all the way to Nanitaal to chase an opportunity, unsuccessfully.

Hindus and Sikhs from western Punjab had already started to find refuge in eastern Punjab in early 1946. Many of them stopped in Lahore where the Lahori Hindus helped them find the way forward. They themselves did not think or realize that they will have to do that themselves soon.

Close to the time of partition, almost daily events are mentioned, as they happened in the political sphere while the personal lives of the characters in the novel were gradually upended. Tara is married off against her wish, and her brother fails her. She almost runs away with a Muslim communist friend, who does not have the heart to stand up to the occasion. Her life takes the most dramatic turn on the eve of her marriage as Banni Hata, the galli of her marriage is attached by Muslims . She is left for dead, but she survives, only to face one humiliating fate after the other, going from one unsafe haven to another.  In the meantime, country has been divided and she is found by the combined search teams of Pakistan and India to secure the abducted women and is repatriated to India.

In the meantime, her brother Jaidev Puri is in Nanitaal, where his beloved Kanak has moved some time back to safe area away from Lahore. She has stood up against all odds to help him, against the wishes of her wealthy family including her father, a publisher in Gawalmandi. Now Puri is concerned about the fate of his family and tries to go back to Lahore to rescue them. Along the way he sees the plight of Muslims running away from rioting Hindus and Sikhs. He sees it all, the rape, the pillage the abductions.

Yashpal cuts no corners in telling the story of partition. The atrocities, by all, is detailed without prejudice or glossing over. The deceit and the animal nature of humans in all its nakedness is laid bare. The narrative is compelling that one cannot skip through it even if one wants to do that.

In the second part, Watan ka mustaqbil ( Future of Homeland) the characters, the former inhabitants of Ghola Pandhe, Gawalmandi and Model Town pick up their lives in India. What was turned upside down in a matter of few months, takes years to come to some shape. This part is stretched over almost ten years from 1947 to 1957 and shows how the resilient Punjabi spirit survives despite the discrimination and uphill battle the refugees face in their adopted land. Some are more successful than others but all suffer to some extent: the exploitation they face in the camps, streets and at the hands of interlopers.

The female characters are the stronger ones in the novel. Kanak, seems to be the strongest during the first half or more. Daughter of a wealthy and liberated publisher of Gawalmandi, she falls in love with a young activist and fights all , including her father and brother in law, to stand by her man. When eventually a time comes to confront her man, she does not shy away from that either. As the story builds up, Tara comes across as the most resilient and strong person against all the possible odds one could face. Then there are female characters who keep their love flames alive despite being married elsewhere and those who would rather die than be ostracized.

It is the master artistry of the writer that characters are on a moving scale of being liked or disliked. Some of the very positive characters in the beginning of the book end up being partly villain or fall off from the most favored list. Others who seemed to be week, seem to rise up to the occasion.

Muslim characters are of peripheral nature. Whether it is Asad,  the love interest of Tara, Zubaida who moves to India to be with her Hindu lover, or Nabhu the rapist, or Hafiz Inayat the spy turned holyman who saves women but also wants to save their hereafter, or Syed Abdul Samad of Durrani Gali, Delhi Gate Delhi, all are somewhat week characters and rather dispensable to the narrative of the story.

Events of daily live are portrayed in detail and one finds oneself being a part of a scene of a Hindu Lahori death ritual of Siyapa, a birth of a young Sikh boy and the ritual of naming him, and the marriage of a Hindu family in the streets of Lahore while the city has started to burn.

Most of these young educated Lahoris were hoping against hope to have India united, and even if there is a partition, to remain in Lahore, even as a minority amongst Muslims in Pakistan and saw the dream slipping away from their hands.

And as of the residents of the guli, they  were already upset when two of the rather wealthy neighbors Ghasita Lal and Panna Laal had locked up their houses and left under the guise of going for a religious pilgrimage to Vrindavan and Mathura; but when, in the middle of July 1947, the official notification came for the governmental officials to get themselves transferred to India or Pakistan based on their religion, people started to panic. If the government could not assure the safety of government officials of different faith in a country how they would safeguard the security of common man. 

The following passage gives a good picture of how a Hindu Lahori thought of life without Lahore.

In Bhola Pandhe’s Gali, the only government employees were Babu Govindram,, Dotor Prabhu Dayal, postel clerk Birumal, and Shaduram who worked at the secretariat. These men would sit at the chabutra of Babu Govindaram and discuss the situation late into the evening, Khushal Sing, and Masterji joined them. Babu Govinran wanted all of them to say in Lahore. Doctor Prabu Dayal was in two minds. He was the only person in the gali who had visited other parts in India, He would say, rather sadly, ‘One can live and survive, if necessary, anywhere in the world, but the truth, is there is no city like Lahore, ( Lahore Lahore hay!).

The mere thought of being posted to a different place frightened Birumal. After he joined, he had worked for a few years in the Railway Mail Service, for several months at the beginning of 1940, his posting was to Cuttack, quite a distance to the south-east. He would say, “Bhai, that country is totally different. They are also Hindus, but of a different sort. Their talk sounds like a pebble being shaken in a brass pot. The only clothes their women wear is around their waist. Bhai, their food is different, and so are their customs. They let boiled rice go stale before eating it . --------So what if Muslims of Lahore have turned into our enemies? At least they’re like us, same language, same dress, their food too is almost the same. They only difference is that between a temple and a mosque.’ He said, uttering a curse, “It’s been ten years since I went to any temple. How long can we remain enemies?’

It is a treat to read this novel. The Urdu translation has its limitations. It is by Munira Surati, an Indian and perhaps she is much exposed to many Hindi words that she may not have thought of them being a bit foreign to Pakistani audience. For examples the words like andolan, charcha, sundaas and grahak are mentioned many times. One has to guess the exact meaning of a word in a particular context.

The English translation is by the author’s son, Anand. I have skipped through it and seems very attractive to read. I may end up reading the whole thing, another 1119 pages.

 

Happy Hundredth! Abbaji

My father, Chaudhry Mohammad Aslam, would have been hundred years old today. Born on the day after Armistice, he grew up in British India, got married on the first anniversary of Pakistan’s independence, lived almost all his life in Punjab and died in New York two days after his 74’s birthday.

Much of his life amazes me; he is my example of simple and contended living.

He lived an ordinary life. He was youngest of three boys. His father was the first to leave the village, matriculate and get employed in Army Medical Corps.  Hailing from Dhok Mohka (short of Mohkumdin), a hamlet south of Rohtas Fort in District Jhelum, he spent most of his professional life in Rawalpindi and Murree. My father’s childhood was spent in those cities. He grew up in Committee Chowk on the Murree Road.

His elder brothers went on to get Masters in their respective fields and retired at the peak of their professions. In this upwardly mobile family, my father was not an ambitious man at all. He studied in Denny’s School and Gordon College, and then is Islamia College Lahore for a short time, he got a job in Military Accounts after he graduated.

He felt happy doing routine office work, and not compelled enough to move up the ladder. He preferred to live in small towns and felt uncomfortable when he was posted for some time in the metropolis city of Karachi. He appealed to be moved back to small town.

He had simple pleasures. He liked to read and visit places. He had been to every shrine I could think of: from Bari Imam to Zinda Pir ( Ghamkol Sharif) to  Bahishti Darwaza in Pakpattan. He had been to Qadyaan a few times. He enjoyed the melas (Fairs) and political gatherings. He had been in Lahore on the day of Lahore Resolution.

He was a modern man, in many ways. His wife, my mother, was the first one in his family not to cover her head. He took his daughters to watch movies in the cinema houses. Every summer night, he took all the family out for a walk after dinner. He sent his daughters to boarding house at age 15 to Frontier College Peshawar, one after the other, as there was no college in Kohat at that time.

And yes, all this was not in a big city. It is about Kohat in the then North West Frontier Province, in sixties.

In other ways he was very traditional. He kept his fatherly distance almost all his life. It was only in the last few years of his life, here in the USA, that I could talk to him freely on many things; still many, not most. Even at age 70, he would show deference to his elder brother, who was a heavy smoker, and extinguish the lighted cigarette before facing him.  

He always had company, they were mostly entertained at our home. But later in life, when he was living a retired life, he was okay to be alone and spend time reading and watching TV. He enjoyed company but was also happy being alone.

Nothing seemed to bother him. He handled many tough situations without others around him being aware of them. He handled indiscretions on my part with grace.  On some, he did not let me know what he had to suffer due to my doings.  I came to know much later of them.

A product of his time, he was not expressive in his emotions. It showed in his actions. When my mother Maqbool Fatima got sick, and she got increasingly debilitated for the last ten years of her life, my father took care of her as her first and foremost attendant. He made her breakfast, served her tea at her prayer station, gave her medications and when she had extended hospital stays, he stayed with her day and night.

He lived on for five years after my mother passed away.

With my mother, he raised five children, with modest means, and we could not have wished for a better childhood.

Through three daughters and two sons, Fozia, Farida, Bushra, Mubashir and I, my parents have 12 grandkids and four greatgrands.

My sisters are the luckier ones to know the parents more.  My eldest sister Fozia, has been like a third parent to all of us and helped my parents raise the rest of us. My middle sister, Farida, had the privilege to take care of them after they moved to the USA; and the youngest, Bushra, took care of them when they were in Pakistan.

My brother Mubashir and I did not have chance to do our share in taking care of them. They both were in a hurry to leave.

Five years back, at this time, a few lines poured out of my keyboard. I end with them.

https://ghareebkhana.blogspot.com/2015/11/i-miss-you-abbaji.html

May his soul rest in eternal peace.

The more I grow older the more I realize what a guy he was.

Carefree, funny, witty, caring, sensitive and honest.

He was unable to achieve many worldly goals.

In fact he settled for a lot less than what was expected of him by his family.

He was content with what he had. 

What he did not have did not seem to bother him.

Always managed to bring some fruit on daily basis on his way home. 

We always had sweets at home.

Perhaps that is why mother always thought he had more than he actually had.

When mother got sick, he took care of her for a long time, assisting her in all activities of daily life.

She perhaps did not know that he was not that well either.

He never let me know what problems and humiliation he had to go for me for my issues with the authorities.

He made sure all of us siblings knew if either of us were unaware of the expectation of the others.

Worked behind the scenes to keep us together.

He was a good man. 

Wish I had known him more when he was around.

I miss you Abbaji.

Be Well.

We Come in Peace: MET rooftop display by Huma Bhabha

Source. Press release:  https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2018/huma-bhabha

On July 13^th, 2018,  I went to see “We Come in Peace”, the roof top display of a Pakistani American artist Huma Bhabha at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Huma is a Pakistani born artist from Karachi, who had studied in USA and settled in NY. Her interview on the display is at the end of this post.

There are two larger than life figures, like aliens occupying the roof of MET. On first glance, one seems god like, standing erect. The face looks like a sphinx and torso has large breasts. The other is prostate, like in sajda, almost in the direction of the standing figure. The face of the prostate figure is hidden in the ground, the whole body covered by what seems like a large black garbage bag. Only the clay-made hands on the ground in the front and a line of excreta in the back, looking like a tail, are evident otherwise.

What seems like one prostrating to the other, gradually look different. They both, it turns out, are expressions of death, suffering, exhausted by defiance, exploitation and being out of this world. They are somehow in this experience together, not one at the expense of the other. 

More on that, later---,

It was part of a tour one take with the artist. The series is called 'Artists on Artworks'. The artist takes you to various artifacts in the museum of her interest. Here Huma took us to four statutes, all influencing her own roof top display. She was accompanied by Shanay Jhaveri, the curator of the display at MET, who gave in depth details of the artifacts and their relationship to Huma's work.  He interviews her in the link at the bottom of this post.

The first one was a marble statue of 6^th century BC, It is a standing figure from Attica ,Greece. Influenced by Egyptian art, it is a young slender male figure with one step forward, as he is about to move. He is very symmetrical and face is poised. The statue marks the grave of a young Athenian aristocrat.

The second was a Togu Na female figure from Mali, carved out of wood. Here the bosom is exaggerated perhaps to emphasize the nurturing or the resolute power of a woman. These forked sculptured elements support a roof beam of Togu Na open-sided shelters where elder Dogan males sat and discussed important matters of the community.

The third is a crest Tsesah from Cameroon on Bamileke people. Made of wood, these were the larger than life face masks used at the time of coronation of a new king Fon, when the older one dies. One extraordinary feature of these collection of figures where the eyes are placed on the cheeks facing the heavens in the sky. It was perhaps used in the coronation rites.

The fourth was the bronze 'Head of a Woman', 1909 by Picasso. His signature cubism is displayed in the face. Walking around you realize that each angle gives you a different shape and meaning to the statute. It is claimed to be the likeness of his partner, Fernande Olivier.

And then we went to the roof top and see the work of the artist.

In her own words it is an expression of militarism and exploitation. Seeing these two figures, one erect and the other prostrating, in the backdrop of Central Park and the high-rises of the metropolis beyond that, gives it an out of this world experience; as if you are in a distant place, like a desert, looking at these images and the civilization is at the horizon, too far away.

Looking at these images again, the erect one, named 'We Come in Peace', perhaps taken from the first dialogue between aliens and humans, "We come to you in peace" in "The day the Earth stood still" by Robert Wise, is non-binary, a hermaphrodite, carrying physical manifestations of both genders. They have one step forward, as if in motion. The breasts are enlarged, making it as obvious as another part of the body. The face, in fact five faces, has the typical element of cubism and walking all around, you see the different Picasso influences. It also reminds of the all seeing Vishnu with multiple heads.

The prostate figure, Benaam, Urdu for nameless, perhaps depicts the nameless masses, who are in the process of dying, falling prostate, hands down and excreta is coming out the other end. One could not thing of a worse condition one can be in.

As a viewer one is entitled to derive one own interpretation of art. To me, it was the foreignness and out of place-ness of these two. They may have landed separately but are now here together. Benaam could be the nameless dying in the present day global wars, or could be the undocumented. They may be in a process of dying, but refuse to be invisible. The erect figure is mutilated, violated, but still stands tall and stands with five faces looking all around, as if bearing witness to what has happened and is happening. They brought their sufferings and stories to the house of power. There is a cry to be heard. The reference of the title implies as if these 'aliens' want to have a dialogue, but may still communicate in other ways. Their defiance and refusal to go away with the backdrop of Manhattan skyline, the ultimate symbol of the powerful is very striking. Could not think of a better contrast.

It was a trip worth taking on a Friday evening.

Artist's interview:

https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/modern/huma-bhabha-roof-garden-interview

Visiting Patras Bokhari

June 2^nd, 2018

Lot 16368.Section 177, Pocantino I-B-2, near Actors Fund of America. That is where it was. the place I visited 26 years back for the first time

Today I went to visit Patras Bokhari. His final resting place, I mean. It was after a long time. The last time I could not find my way and got lost in the crowd of graves in the Kensico Cemetery.  At that time I was relying on my memory which I thought will lead me straight to the site. I was wrong. So this time I went to the office first.

The first time was in 1992. We had recently moved to Valhalla. I commuted daily through the cemetery to Westchester County Medical Center, where I was doing my heme/onc fellowship.  Kensico Cemetery is very scenic, on the hill and always lush green. On his visit from Pakistan, my father in law had expressed the wish to go to the cemetery. He had read in Dawn an article about Patras Bokhari, It mentioned that he was buried in the Valhalla cemetery. We went to the office, and surprisingly the lady who assisted us remembered the events around this death. He worked in the United Nations as the first permanent representative of Pakistan, and later as the undersecretary general of Information and had died in New York. Some Muslim resident had a burial lot and donated it for his burial. It was a lonely Muslim grave in this non-denominational cemetery.  The tombstone simply told us that Ahmed S, Bokhari was born in Peshawar in 1898 and died in 1958. And then there is a verse from Robert Frost. More on that later, see below.

After that I had visited it many times for the five years I lived in Westchester County. I had taken my father and his elder brother, who  along with Faiz, was a student of Patras at one time. Many in my family and circle of friends visited the grave when they visited us.

Then we moved out and hardly visited the grave as it was out of the way. A few years back on our way back from upstate we tried to visit, but could not find it.

Today, I was in Westchester and was about to go home that I just thought of it. I had time. Why not attempt another visit. And I turned towards the cemetery. In the office a lady was able to locate the record and drew me the way on a map. It seemed to be a different area than I thought. I took the map and went to the graves. I spend one hour in a rather hot day by NY standards but could not find it. The area was mostly ‘inhabited’ by Chinese and Parsis which tombstones in Mandarin and Farsi. I had to go back to the office and they realized that they had sent me to section 77 instead of section 177. Now I did find the grave.

The cemetery is kept well. But the tombstone was a bit out of ink. There was a sign of ‘Extra Care” next to the grave. I spend some time, paid my respects and went back. His death anniversary was, I realized a couple of weeks back.

Growing up, his name was hard to miss. I remember reading his essasys , Patras Kay Mazameen ( Essays of Patras). A few of them were in our Urdu course. Remember one, kal sawary jo meri aankh khuley”.

Hailing from Peshawar, he and his brother made it to Dehli and the All India Radio. I heard a lot about him from my uncle and later learnt from NM Rashid's writings about the way he was as a teacher and an acting instructor. He was a peculiar person.

http://ghareebkhana.blogspot.com/2017/12/muqalaat-e-noon-meem-rashid.html

There is an interview with Prof Anwar Dil. On Patras Bukhari, he had a long association, initially in GC Lahore as his student, later a coworker with him in AIR Dehli and then in UNO in New York. We learn that Patras was very finicky, aloof and a private person. He was a theatre artist and performed often in the reproductions of English plays in GC College. He delved too much into the work of the government to the detriment to his literary life. Rashid thinks that Patras would have left a bigger legacy in literature had he not been a government employee. With Patras, it seems there were similarities although there were differences. Both had Urdu as a second language, both were anglophiles and worked for the government, British India and then Pakistan. Both were what we may label today as elitist.

Kensico Cemetery is home to many famous people. There is a cell phone tour of famous individuals buried there, http://www.kensico.org/cemetery-map/#KenCemMap

http://www.kensico.org/cemetery-map/#KenCemMap

But Patras in not one of stops on the tour. Someone,  perhaps the Pakistan Consulate should look into it.

On his tombstone is a couplet by Robert Frost who  wrote it for Patras. In his letter, posted on the website dedicated to Patras Bokhari, Frost writes on April 19, 1957;

     " Your visit would vibrate in my memory for the rest of my life, though I were never to see you again. I have taken my time with your undeclared request. I wonder if I would be far wrong in figuring it out to be for something like the following couplet--"

And then is the couplet, reproduced on Patras's tombstone as you can see in the picture, 

From Iron Tools and Weapons

To Ahmed S Bokhari

Nature within her inmost self divides

To trouble man with having to take sides 

I wonder what was the undeclared request to which Frost responded by writing a such a deep verse and dedicating it to Patras. It is on page 468 of his complete works, "The Poetry of Robert Frost"

---------------------------------------------------------

References

http://patrasbokhari.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patras_Bokhari

http://patrasbokhari.com/content/patras-bokhari-robert-frost

Leonardo da Vinci by Burno Nardini

Leonardo da Vinci by Bruno Nardini
Portrait of a Master

After waiting for a long time going through temperature controlled rooms, when you finally enter the old dining room of the priests in the monastery and look at masterpiece painted on the wall, it is a bit underwhelming. Although restored, the paint is faded and hazy in many areas. One has to look at the other forms of reproduction of "The Last Supper" like the one reproduced below, and to know the history to really appreciate the work. Here the moment is captured when Jesus reveals that one of his disciples will betray him. This painting, and of course, Mona Lisa. are the two by which Leonardo is known to the world. 

I bought the book in March 2016 in the gift shop of monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, where The Last Supper adorns the wall, but it took me more than one year to finish the book.

An excerpt from the book.

Leonardo was a living contradiction. In a century rich in innovatory trends, leaving behind it a vast heritage of art, he impersonated in himself the themes of Humanism and the Renaissance, but also turned his back on that century to gaze far in to the future, anticipating an age still to come- our own, the twenty-first century.

I have a confession to make. I don't know much about Western art despite going to museums for a while. As I was not exposed to this side of art while growing up, it is hard to learn. So the following account is not for those who know art inside out. It is for many like me, as I learn along the way.

We learnt growing up that Renaissance, the "Fire in the Ashes"  took Europe out of dark ages on the path to enlightenment. I did not realize that it was Italy, and Florence to be precise, where it all started. Social and cultural renaissance happened earlier than the later roller coaster of scientific and industrial  innovations and inventions. Even in science, Leonardo and Galileo are connected to Florence and both have a museum to their names in the city.  

It is the emancipation of thoughts which lays the ground work for development in other fields. The concept of Humanism, fore bearer of modern ethics, is perhaps the first step in the 12th to 17th centuries of Renaissance.

Late 1400' were the days when many Greek scholars and others found a conducive environment in Florence, thanks to the trader-rulers Medici who came to power after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. So in some way, the Muslims indirectly led to the beginning of renaissance

It also meant that the merchants can be good rulers, can promote humanism and an atmosphere of culture and arts.

It was that conducive atmosphere where a young Leonardo, just moving from his town Vinci to Florence to join his father, found himself.

For a beginner like me it is not difficult to get confused between Leonardo and Michelangelo. It was not until I visited Italy and saw first hand that the difference was clear. Leonardo has Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Michelangelo is the one painted the ceiling of Sistine Chapel in Vatican and sculpted David in Florence.

Both were from Florence, and contemporaries. Leonardo was older. Although known to posterity for his paintings, he was an illiterate who self taught himself and had been an engineer, (conceived the first flying machine), sculptor, anatomist,. inventor of war machines, etc.

His grandfather was a notary of means and had influence in the town of Vinci. Leonardo was a love child, 'illegitimate". His grandfather took control of the situation and had his son, ( Leonardo's father) married somewhere else right away and influenced another person to marry Leonardo's mother. Later his status was legalized. That did not prevent, much later, his eleven or so legitimate siblings to keep him away from their father's inheritance.

He was illiterate by choice. Although son and grandson of notaries, he showed no interest in learning math and other subjects. His father realized that early on and showed his drawing to Verrocchio, an artist, who ran one of the successful workshops in Florence. Those workshops were residency institutions. where the students lived, worked and learnt the trade under the direct supervisor of the master who also acted as a guardian. Verrocchio realized the talent and took the young boy under his wings. Soon the teacher broke his brush when he saw that the pupil had painted an angel better than the master in a pair of angels.

It was in his workshop that Leo got the attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici king of Florence, who like his grandfather was a great patron of arts. Much of the Florentine Renaissance is credited to the conducive and nurturing atmosphere of the Medici's. Hard for me to accept, but it seems to be true that the early seeds of what became the fire in the ashes were laid by the lords of feudal system.

That was the time that Renaissance was taking birth in Florence. He had the privilege to be in the companies of great artists, thinkers and philosophers, many had converged to the city from various parts of the world. That is where the early field of Humanism developed.

It helped his imaginations fly and they did fly.

The Medici King. in order to export the talent of Florence around, asked him to go to Milan to help Ludovico il Moro, the Sforza ruler, realize a dream of making a magnificent horse sculpture of his ancestor. Leonardo landed in Milan. After a long delay, as he got easily distracted, he could only make a clay model of it before the French moved in and the Sforzas ran away.

But in the meantime, he was asked to paint the Last Supper on the wall of the mess, the dining room of priests of the church.That turned out to be his classical masterpiece. That is where I bought this book by Bruno Nardini.

He had arranged great shows for the royal wedding where the planets revolved and actors played; a precursor to the mega million shows we seen these days at the opening and closing ceremonies of Olympics.

Sometime in Milan, his birth mother showed up and he took care of her till she died. That was for a brief time. He mentions that in his journals emotionlessly, and not acknowledging her as mother, only by her name, Catelina. He walked alone behind her funeral.

When Milan fell to the French, he moved to Venice and eventually to Florence. Back in Florence he had started to paint the young wife of a Francesco del Giocondo known as  Mona Lisa Gherardini.

Then there are years of wandering along with the General Giuliano with whom he moved to various cities. He was also accomapined by the famous Machiavilli of the "Prince' fame. Later the brother of the general, became the Pope. Like others Leo tried his luck in Rome for a while but was of now avail. Later as a part of a truce between the French King and the Pope, Leonardo was asked to accompany the entourage of Pope. The French King, Francis I, at that time was already impressed by Leonardo and asked Pope for Leonardo, Pope agreed and Leonardo moved to France to pass the last days of his life. He had to do nothing, just provide company to the King from time to time.

It is there in France that he died and was buried.

A life well spent is long.

He was particularly religious and doubted the doubts of agnostics. He thought both the believers and atheists were ignorant and much has to be learnt before one can make a determination. He however did think there was a Prime Mover.

He had no clear relationship with women. He was once accused of sodomy by an anonymous complaint. Charges could not be proven, and his father was helpful in getting him out of trouble. That episode left a mark on him and perhaps he became even more private in his personal affairs.

There were at least two pupils with whom he may have had romantic relationship, it could have been platonic. One of them, Salali, who inherited Mona Lisa portrait, may have been a muse of some of his works. Salali was a young arrogant, vivacious man whom Lenoardo had a sudden liking of. That was despite the fact that he stole from Leo and his friends all the times. Leonardo tolerated him all along; except in the end of his life, when he went to live as a guest of the King of France, that he did not take him along. Salali may have refused to go, as he realized that now another pupil, son of a Count Melzi was now the favorite of the Master.

Other realized that primarlily he was a painter, but he wanted to be much more than that. He had ventured into the fields: anatomy, (dissected the human body twice to know for sure how it is), engineer, inventor, sculptor. and much more.

He had a habit of documenting everything. His notes, recently discovered, provide much information on his attention to details. He took in things slow and was habitually late for things. That is why many of his works remained unfinished, One can imagine how much the world would have inherited had he been not as laid back as he was.

There is an interesting story about the story of a shield which he make out of a log, It was given to his father by a peasant. Leonardo painted a speculator demon on it which would put the viewer in awe. His father was impressed by it and realized the peasant was not worth getting it. He bought a cheap painting from the market at gave it to the peasant and sold the original painting of Leonardo at a much bigger prize. It showed the difference between a worldly father and an artist who was happy that he made his father feel scared at the first sight of the demon painting. That was a prize worth his work and he needed nothing more than that.

He had two prophetic dreams. One was that he saw a flying kite, It was a memory of infancy, that while lying in a cradle, a kite came down and opened his mouth with its tail and struck him many times with its tail between his lips. Full of symbolism.

Second was near the end of life. Breathing heavily, were his last words. " Yes, now I remember. I wanted to say that everything we know begins from feelings. Now I feel myself flowing away like the water in the rivers. I feel myself borne by the currents towards death. Now I am going to live it, to experience it."