Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke – Reading A Multi-Layered Text

Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke– Reading a
Multi-layered Text

In the past few decades the Indian sub-continent has witnessed the emergence of migrant writers settled in the West and bearing distinct codes of the West. Mohsin Hamid’s (he is a Pakistani by birth, settled in the US) Moth Smoke is one such addition to that unique genre of post-colonial where sensibilities are clearly western, with all the related signs, references, and cosmopolitanism. Trained as a writer under Nobel laureate Toni Morrison at Princeton, and now a consultant on Wall Street, Hamid’s imaginaire reconstructs Lahore, less touched with nostalgia than with issues that lie in the underbelly of his city.

The story is set in the Pakistan of 1998, and examines, what Milan Kundera calls, “The historical dimensions of human existence.” (Kundera 1986:36). Thus, the tragic-comic story of the antagonist-hero is structured within the historical framework of the Great Mughals as the Prologue begins with, “Imprisoned in his fort at Agra, staring at the Taj he had built, an aged Shah Jahan received as a gift from his youngest son the head of his eldest. Perhaps he doubted, the memory that his boys had once played together, far from his supervision and years ago, in Lahore.” (MS, p.4). We are warned at the outset that the narrative which is going to be unfolded would be a tale of wild passions, unmitigated desires and horrifying betrayals.

Moth Smoke begins with a flashas the “almost-hero”, as described by the author, Darashikoh Shezad reminisces in jail about his life full of love, ambition and failure. The narrative, from the beginning, underlines its inherent unfinalizability as the principles start trickling inside the court of law.

Darashikoh’s reflections begin from the night he attends a party thrown by his super-rich friend, Aurangzeb or Ozi–and Mumtaz, Ozi’s enigmatic and attractive wife. By the end of the evening, Dara is completely taken over by the opulence, imported drinks, drugs, and his best friend’s wife.

However, hash is not the only drug that has benumbed the senses of the people of Pakistan. According to Hamid, the nation’s ruling class, the militia and the aristocrats are also hooked on another drug–money and the arrogance that comes with it; as Ozi defends his baldness to Dara, “all women care about is cash. And my bank account is hairy enough for a harem.” (MS, p.13). And Hamid draws a vivid portrait of this addiction. The emotional drama of the lives of the novel’s characters blends seamlessly with the nuclear tests in the subcontinent in 1998. In one way, the novelist uses this temporal caesura to mark the angst, ambiguities and anxieties of his generation (Moore­-Gilbert 1997:173).

We also get to hear a critique of the nuclear madness from the point of view of the non-­elite. Among the rickshaw pullers, at the garage where Dara picks up his dope, there is concern that tomatoes will now be two hundred a kilo.

In such times, the faith in the power of the pen is courageous, even heroic. In Hamid’s story, Zulfikar Manto (Hamid’s tribute to Saadat Hussain Manto), becomes the spokesperson for the prostitutes’ stories. Ozi’s wife Mumtaz Kashmiri represents the most unconventional and progressive face of the otherwise decadent and emotionally desensitised Pakistani elite. She also has a double life–apart from being wife, mother, lover–she is a popular and provocative investigative journalist (mob stones the editor’s office when her piece appears in the newspaper)

Metaphorically, the title Moth Smoke has plenty to convey. Traditionally, a moth desires something that cannot be had without risk–union. Dara’s wish to join the elite leads to violence, and his affair could cost him his freedom, but his desires are too strong to be neglected. It is the hero’s uneasiness of always being the outsider, yet so desperate to be the insider which fascinates Hamid. In spite of being acutely aware of the societal hypocrisies and superficialities, where an individual’s worth is determined by the car he owns, Dara cannot suppress his desire to become a stakeholder in his community. His affair with his friend’s wife, his drug-addiction, his willingness to commit a murder–all stem from an aching longing to be a part of the chosen few, especially the charmed world of Ozi.

To the play of passion and power-struggle, Hamid introduces a new voice, in the form of the irrepressible intellectual, Julius Superb, a professor of economics (the eternal outsider). Unlike Dara, the professor has the courage to comment on the rot which has set in the society, and therefore, deserves to be shunned. Here is Superb’s imaginative, but unambiguous look at class divisions in Pakistan:

“There are two classes in Pakistan. The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vast control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between members of these two groups is made on the basis of control of an important resource: air-conditioning.

Moth Smoke works wonderfully as an example of postmodern pastiche, with elements from history, popular culture, and literature. Hamid also romanticises the names of the characters with multi-layered richness. So, besides the two leading male characters, we have Mumtaz Kashmiri, the woman over whom the two men fight (historically, her name spells deep passions–as immortalised by the Taj Mahal and as a bone of contention between two warring brothers), Murad (Emperor Shah Jehan’s son), Ozi’s father Khurram (Emperor Shah Jehan’s real name) Shuja, the friend who betrays Dara (Shah Shuja was Shah Jehan’s son who participated in the bloody war of succession), and Ozi’s son Muazzam (Emperor Aurangzeb’s son who participated in the bloody war of succession). Muhammad Ali (the boxing champion) is the name given to Dara’s nephew, also a boxing enthusiast. The portrayal of Manucci Darashikoh’s man-servant is another master-stroke by the novelist. Like his Italian traveller-explorer namesake, Manucci, too, is a wanderer, a man-from-nowhere, and desperate to belong.

Hamid also draws considerable material from local and global culture and ends up giving the novel a global flavour. Verbal surprises are strewn across the landscape of Moth Smoke. However, like a truly cosmopolitan voice, there is no post-colonial “other” in Hamid. With all its multinationals and cultural excesses, America, or the West, is not the enemy here; for the writer, the enemy lurks within. Without being defensive about one’s local culture, Hamid, like Rushdie, does believe that cultures can exist in “melange, impurity and adulteration.” (Rushdie 2003:268). Hamid does ridicule the phenomenon of globalization when he describes the root of Murad’s love for English literature to the omnipresent British Council Library–but more with warm humour rather than castigation. What the writer deplores is the blind, and often laughable, fascination for Amreeka, with people pining for American Universities, branded t-shirts, wrist-watches and jeans, jobs at Wall Street, and Black Label. As Dara mentally notes down, “The utopian vision of Over There or Amreeka promises escape from the almost unbearable drudgery of the tribe’s struggle to subsist.” (MS, p.79).

The novel ends with an epilogue which is startlingly close to the horrors of the partition, its bloody repercussions, and a nation weakened by its own people. At the same time, it also deals with apocalypse as an intertextual motif (McHale 1992: 161; Ricoeur 1983: 152-154) at three levels–the nuclear war of which the sub-continent is on the verge; the self-destructive streak that young men like Dara carry; and, of course, the burden of historical bloodletting which the sub-continent can never really shake off.

Moth Smoke works as a political metaphor since Pakistan is presented as a nation whose determination to be an international player may prove costly–clearly seen in the recent events in the country. From a terrorist-sponsoring state to a state aiding the war on terror, the country today balances itself precariously on the edge. Hamid throws an unflinching light on these moth-like flirtations with fire, hinting that all such passions result in the smoke of loss. Still, on a deeper level it serves as a brilliant allegory of human condition where the worth of an individual is reduced to their material possessions, the rich keep getting richer, and justice can be bought and sold. In Darashikoh’s destruction (and in the triumph of Aurangzeb), we find the death of the virtues of tolerance, secularism and compassion. It is this thematic universality–in the tradition of the works by Nadine Gordimer, Es’kia Mphahlele and Ingo Schulze–which makes Moth Smoke a novel people from any part of the world can identify with.