Of Smokeless Fire A.A. Jafri (books to read to improve english TXT) 📖

Mansoor was surprised by that mellow statement. A few years ago, she would have picked a raging fight with his father over this. But perhaps she had finally got used to his drinking. Noor fired back with a couplet from Ghalib:

Waiz na khood piyo, na kissee ko pila sako

Kya baat hai tumhare sharab tahoor key

He turned to Mansoor and asked if he had understood the meaning of the lines. When Mansoor hesitated, he said: ‘This is another couplet from my favourite poet. What he is saying is: “What good is your liquor of piety, O’Preacher, that neither can you drink it, nor can you offer it to anyone.”’

Noor seemed pleased with himself at coming up with an apropos couplet in reply to Farhat’s mild protest. While telling Mansoor not to look at his mother for permission, he stole a guilty glance at his wife.

Mansoor had been introduced to the occasional sip of whisky from an early age. Noor called it a purging experience, a baptism of whisky. But Mansoor still felt uncomfortable drinking in front of his mother, who, he knew, disapproved of it sharply. He hesitatingly took a sip now. Satisfied that his son had defied his mother, Noor asked Mansoor a question, ‘What are your plans after your Senior Cambridge exams?’

With Noor slightly inebriated, the conversation had switched to English.

‘To go to college?’ Mansoor replied, not sure why his father had asked that.

‘Mashallah!’ Noor exclaimed sarcastically. ‘Mister, college is the only option for you. I am asking about your subject.’

‘I haven’t really thought about it, Abba. I still have a year to decide,’ Mansoor answered.

‘I want you to seriously think about economics.’

Never in his wildest imagination had Mansoor thought about economics.

‘Will you get that third book from the second shelf of my bookcase?’ Noor pointed at his precious bookcase standing in one corner of the bedroom.

Mansoor walked over to the bookcase and took out the book his father wanted. It was a book by a man called John Maynard Keynes and was titled The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

‘Do you know who this man was?’ Noor asked, taking the book from him.

Mansoor shook his head and said, ‘No.’

‘He was the man who saved the world.’

Noor flipped through the pages until he came to a passage that he had underlined with a red pencil.

‘Read the part that I have underlined.’

Mansoor took the book from his father and began reading:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Mansoor looked up at his father after he finished reading.

‘That is why I want you to study economics.’

Noor’s economic philosophy had undergone a series of transformations. During his early college years, he had been a communist sympathizer; he read The Communist Manifesto and fantasized about the proletarian revolution in post-colonial India. But Joseph Stalin’s brutal repression and the Soviet invasion of Hungary turned him off entirely from it. In England, while studying for the Bar, he was influenced by the Fabian socialists. When he returned to India, like many other Western-educated men, he began supporting the secular politics and socialist economics of the Congress Party. After the Partition, when his law practice took off, he visited the United States and, impressed by the country’s affluence, converted to capitalism. To him, the free enterprise system was it. The study of economics became his newest passion, and he pored over the tomes of Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. It was too late for him to become a practicing economist, so he started to think about living his dream through his son. At last, he had found a profession for Mansoor.

Mansoor’s mind, however, would switch off whenever Noor talked about economics, so he only retained bits of the information that his father insisted on imparting. Seeing his father so successful in his chosen path, he had always thought that he would eventually take over Noor’s practice, imagining an engraved gold-plated sign at the entrance of the Variawa Building where the office was: Haq and Haq, Advocates, Supreme Court. His admiration for his father’s work had only intensified after he successfully defended Haider Rizvi.

‘But I want to be a lawyer like you,’ Mansoor said.

As soon as he had uttered these words, he noticed his father’s complexion changing. The veins on his neck swelled; he took a deep breath and thundered: ‘I FORBID YOU TO EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.’ After pausing to clear his throat, Noor continued, ‘Now look, son, I don’t want to ever hear such rubbish from you again, understood? Don’t even think about being a lawyer.’

He paused again, grabbed his glass and gulped down some Scotch. ‘Do you know how much I hate this profession?’ he asked. ‘This is the most unproductive profession. It’s a profession where you create tricks and loopholes and legerdemain. You defend your clients even though you know they are lying, and they have cheated.’

‘But don’t the cheats and liars have the right to be defended?’

‘Yes, they do . . . but it weighs you down with a guilt which you will carry for the rest of your life.’

‘But you defended Uncle Haider, and you had tried to help Uncle Hassan Nasir.’

Noor’s face blanched at the name of his dear friend who had been dead for almost eight years. A shiver coursed through his being as the image of Nasir’s tortured body appeared in his mind. Nasir had been regarded by the Dundda government as the most dangerous communist agitator in the country. When he went into hiding, his friends talked about him in code, never mentioning his name even in the privacy of their