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Boys Will Be Boys: a Moving Tale of a Family and a Nation

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Boys Will Be Boys: a Moving Tale of a Family and a Nation Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.5.Issue 3. 2017 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (July-Sept) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) RESEARCH ARTICLE BOYS WILL BE BOYS: A MOVING TALE OF A FAMILY AND A NATION Dr. JHARNA MALAVIYA Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Allahabad Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Sara Suleri’s memoir, Boys will be Boys, is a classic of postcolonial literature; a book, vital for understanding the postcolonial world of India and Pakistan and their complex shared past. Suleri brings to life the lost world of Pakistan and examines the complex network of power and cultural discourses that has shaped the present. In the memoir, Suleri’s family becomes a microcosm of the nation and her love-hate relationship with her father, the love-hate relationship with Pakistan. Boys will be Boys is a touching saga of the death of an era, a family, and a nation, and the birth of a new world ruled by fundamentalist forces. Suleri does not accept historical narratives at face value. She doubts history and Boys Will be Boys is an attempt to revisit and rewrite history, to narrate untold or silenced stories of the past, and to understand how feudal cultural hangovers, half-baked democratic bourgeois values, and the discourses of cultural imperialism shape the society. A professor at Yale University today, Sara Suleri was born and brought up in Pakistan. Her mother was a Welsh journalist and father a renowned journalist who migrated from India to Lahore after the partition of India. Her tales are full of nostalgia, a deep sense of loss, and an open dislike for grand narratives that have always cheated people. Boys will be Boys is a must-read. Keywords: Sara Suleri Goodyear, Boys will be Boys, Postcolonialism, Pakistan, memoir, cross-cultural dialogue, Introduction A Comic Elegy Many writers have tried to study the Unlike Meatless Days (Suleri’s first postcolonial world, but much remains to be said and memoir that she had dedicated to her mother), documented. It is necessary to study how cultural Boys will be Boys is in a lighter vein. Its author discourses function in a society and how they alter said in an interview, “I was much younger when I and redefine the vital concepts of nation, state, wrote Meatless Days and I think my language was patriotism and family. A threadbare study of more lubricated than it is now. Boys will be Boys everyday life is needed to shed light on the hidden was far more difficult to write because it is an network of power and cultural discourses. As a elegy; I wanted it to be a comic elegy, if that is postcolonial writer, Sara Suleri takes up the possible, and to intimate that I loved my father.” challenge and weaves a moving tale of a family and (Shamsie) a nation. It is necessary to define her achievements Boys will be Boys is a daughter’s nostalgic and her contribution to the postcolonial theory and tribute to her father, who died before he could fiction. begin his dream project – his autobiography. He 756 Dr. JHARNA MALAVIYA Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.5.Issue 3. 2017 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (July-Sept) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) often joked that he would name it “Boys will be always upright in politics, “but not quite so Boys”. She explains, “. he would frequently upright with his children” (17); he used to read announce that he was going to write his secretively his daughters’ personal letters and autobiography and call it Boys Will be Boys, and diaries. This man of many contradictions, whose then would burst into a roar of laughter . at patriotic sentiments for Pakistan were the pivot of some crucial Muslim League conference in Delhi, his life, had started a new married life in Pakistan Jinnah got up and announced, ‘All right, boys. And with a Welsh woman who was ironically, “an now get to work for Pakistan!’ I was touched by ethnic reminder . of a race that should have that tale: how appropriate it felt, for whose boy been gone” (12)! were you, Pip, other than that of the man you Boys will be Boys takes us through the would call – time after repeated time – ‘my vast tracts of Suleri’s life in Pakistan – she recalls leader!’” (Boys will be Boys 18) the old city of Lahore and the beautiful river Ravi, The delightful book traces Suleri’s she talks about India-Pakistan war, the bazaars of childhood in Pakistan. Boys will be Boys brings to Pakistan and their “unique talent for plagiarism” life her childhood memories, half-forgotten (13). She revisits the “Lahrance Garrden” (the stories of her family, and the historical and name given to the beautiful Lawrence Garden by political events of Pakistan. The result is an illiterate people) of taxi drivers and rickshaw astonishing melange of history-writing and pullers, and the elegant constructions of the household chitchat. Boys will be Boys does what colonial days. She fondly remembers the broad historical records and documents cannot – it roads lined with stately trees and public gardens, captures very vividly the mood of a tumultuous the larger-than-life statue of Queen Victoria era. The book offers a rare picture of the (which later disappeared), and the beautiful kaleidoscope of Pakistan – we come across the mahogany piano at her home (that belonged to famous Urdu poet, Iqbal and listen to the her great grandfather). She recalls the typical speeches of generals and rulers of Pakistan, we Lahore mornings and twilights fragrant with Motia celebrate Eid and Muharram with Suleri, and visit and Rath ki Rani and the lawn of their house universities and colleges, we walk on the beautiful where “Pip”, her father, used to sit on his wicker roads of Lahore and stroll on the narrow streets chair in the evening. Suleri, it seems, has as we taste the spicy street food. Suleri admires forgotten nothing. Urdu – a language she has left far behind. This The book gives us an intimate account of deep fascination with Urdu finds expression in the the socio-cultural fabric of the postcolonial world form of beautiful Urdu poems, couplets and lines, of Pakistan – its Gulbarg market flooding with picked up from poets like Ghalib, Faiz, Akbar salwar kameez (the dress worn by women in Allahabadi, Momin, Mir, and Hali, which embellish Pakistan), Rahat Bakery, and the culinary changes each chapter with their refined elegance. Suleri’s made by the English rulers in the subcontinent. Pakistan emerges swathed in the fragrance of She takes us to the open-air theatres of Lahore captivating Urdu ghazals. In an interview Suleri and the popular music and quawwali festivals that had said, “In Boys will be Boys, I attempted to were unthinkable without the melodious voices of honour my love for Urdu in the chapter headings" Begam Akhtar and “Malika-e-Tarannum” Nur (Shamsie). Jehan. An ancient pre-colonial world and a A “hodgepodge” picture of Pakistan modern “westernised” post-colonial world – both The book begins with a “hodgepodge” share the same room in south Asian countries like (Boys will be Boys 6) picture of Pakistan – Sara Pakistan. The strange interbreeding of these Suleri introduces her father as a man who was mutually antagonistic worlds has given birth to a “always exuberant” (13) about his editorials and new cultural world, that wants to hold on to its his articles, even when he did them every day. past on the one hand as an assurance of its The book is addressed to Sara’s father who was 757 Dr. JHARNA MALAVIYA Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.5.Issue 3. 2017 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (July-Sept) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) distinct national identity and on the other hand to writers have dealt with the colonialism. The book is adopt and accept western lifestyle and mindset. valuable for its penetrating analysis of the Yearning for a last word with her departed father, intermingling of diverse cultures in modern India. Suleri finds memoir writing a relieving experience. Suleri show great and abiding interest in studying The memoir becomes a means of communicating the stories of the colonisation of India. Boys will be with him – she talks to him freely, argues with Boys does exactly what The Rhetoric of English India him, questions him, and confesses many secrets does at theoretical level – both challenge the too in this moving elegy. She recalls forgotten standard chronology of imperial history. family codes, jokes, anecdotes, and incidents, she Suleri pushes hard her imagination to expresses her long-standing grievances, and she conceptualise her father for some time “as a raises objections to things that she had found friend instead of as a father” (Boys will be Boys preposterous in the past. All this is addressed to a 61) to understand the life of this complicated father who, “toward his children . maintained a man. But these efforts are doomed to fail. Thus, more ambivalent rigidity” (61). she revisits his past, his obscure childhood, she Suleri allows her thoughts and emotions collects jumbled pieces of his past life, and by the freedom to follow their own course. As a putting them together, she tries to reconstruct his result, the events narrated in the book are in no life.
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