Legacy of a Divided Nation - pg. 10

Scores of writers have described the corporate identity of the towns and the largely cordial interaction of the mixed Hindu and Muslim populations. In Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi, Rahi Masoom Reza's Aaadha Gaun, Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column, or Intizar Husain's Basti, the parallel worlds of, say, Bhagatji and Abba Jan in the novel, of Hindu mythology and Muslim legend and lore, could exist in reality and not only in the writer's fancy.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - Closing

Asad's voice called, "Laila, where are you?"

I got up quickly, wiping my eyes as his tall, thin figure was silhouetted at the door.

"Laila," he said, blinking at the shadows, "what have you been doing so long in this empty house?"

"I have been waiting for you, Asad. I am ready to leave now."

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 294

Chapter Six

THERE was a fountain at one end of the garden which had been our delight when, as children, we had flirted with the spray from the jets of water that spurted from the mouths of two marble fish coiled round each other. It was not aesthetically pleasing, but my grandfather had bought it because fish were the emblem of the Province.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 253

No one took them seriously. The smooth-spoken, superior Ghulam Ali could not be associated with such crudity. The servants were obviously indulging their innate love of the dramatic.

idea: dialogue based servant assault story

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 243

I was sitting in the veranda of my room drying my hair with my back to the sun. Winter was slipping gently towards summer and the air was losing its invigorating crispness. The flowers in the garden were beginning to look weary.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 233

Uncle Hamid said with heavy sarcasm, "This Muslim League in which you are so interested, I have heard it called communal and reactionary by nationalist Muslims. Certainly most of its leaders -- and many are my friends -- are of the kind you would call 'reactionary', according to your political theories."

Saleem flushed, "I believe the Congress has a strong anti-Muslim element in it against which the Muslims must organise. The danger is great because it is hidden, like an iceberg. When it was just a question of fighting the British the progressive forces were uppermost; but now that power is to be acquired, now the submerged reactionary elements will surface. Muslims must unite against them."

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 230

NO one seemed to talk any more; everyone argued, and not in the graceful tradition of our city where conversation was treated as a fine art, words were loved as mediums of artistic expression, and verbal battles were enjoyed as much as any delicate, scintillating, sparkling display of pyrotechnic skill. It was as if someone had sneaked in live ammunition among the fireworks. In the thrust and parry there was desire to inflict wounds.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 195

I tried to look attentive as he went on. " I found them most instructive this afternooon. They brought home to me why our Province is known for its culture, and our hometown for its nuances of courtesy and grace. Nowhere else could the impossible, acrobatic feat have been performed of stabbing one in the back right under one's nose! And with such charm, humility and poetry that the stabber and the stabbed both appeared to be accepting a gracious favour from each other. I had a lesson in practical politics, which makes all one's theoretical studies seem like the pipe-dreams of opium eaters."

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 174

I wondered about the dead whose graves we had come to visit, whose stream of life flowed in us and through us. They had been kept alive by generations that respected their traditions. Did our alien thoughts and alien way of living push them into oblivion? Or was it final release for them and freedom for the living?

Everything in those days of my years ended with a question mark.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 146

The terraced houses enclosing the lawns and gardens were freshly painted too, their golden-yellow colour relieved by touched of white on mouldings and pillars. An aura of romance still clung to them though they were now merely the town houses of Taluqdars whereas they had once sheltered the beauties of the Royal harem, and the King was said to have walked across their roofs shaded by a flight of pigeons. The two elaborate gates leading into the quadrangle were still decorated with the emblem of the Kings of Oudh -- two arched fish in relief.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 140

Naseer's life was shaped by his ambition. Everything about him was precise, weighed and balanced by what he thought was 'correct'. layer upon layer of good qualities, when unwrapped, revealed nothing but ambition -- the core of his being.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 120

New furnishings and decorations altered the rooms, changing them from friends to acquaintances. I missed the ghostliness of the drawing-room. It had had a personality, gloomy and grotesquley rich, reflecting one of Baba Jan's eccentricities.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 99

They were much poorer than others in the family. Zainab's father was lazy and content with the rent he collected from his small portion of inherited land. He was short with a round paunch and cheeks that seemed like hald-filled balloons. His beard was red, his hair was white and his voice was like scraping wires.

All day he sat outside the door of his house on a staring bed, smoking his hookah and gossiping, but was galvanized into action whenever vast quantities of food had to be cooked. He was asked to supervise the cooks and organise the kitchens for every feast in the vast tribal network of the family. The more guests there were the happier he was; counting them in hundreds sent him into a state of ecstasy. He moved along the bubbling cauldrons like a magician.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 88

In the city the past attacked the present, and the future was lost in conflict.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 59

Once again Kariman, the bangle-seller, found herself welcome. Fat and eternally laughing she rolled along under the weight of the large wicker basket she carried on her head. When she squatted on the floor and pulled away the red cloth from her basket, the light danced and glittered and lay within bangles of every colour, warm and passionate, cool and delicate, silk spun, heavy and fluted, gold-banded, gold-speckled bangles, for tiny wrists and fat wrists. Her fat fingers gently coaxed delicate bangles over the least flexible of hands to fit tightly round the wrist. It took time, but what was time for but to gossip, to joke, to choose circlets of coloured glass for us and then the maid-servants.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 26

Jumman in anger seemed a stranger. His dark face, with its thick moustache in contrast to his cropped head, was made gentle by large dark eyes that held no challenge. He wore a thick silver bangle on each wide wrist, and a gold ring in one ear. His loin-cloth, white and spotless, was drawn high above his bony knees, because he stood long hours in the tank washing clothes, beating them against the titled, corrugated board with a steady strong rhythm of breath and movement.

Sunlight on a broken column - pg. 16

Inside the glass shivered, and the door opened. I turned quickly in embarrassment towards Zahra, but she had not noticed me looking at myself. She was too full of some personal excitement which shone in her eyes and quickened her movements. Her eyes were large, slanting and protruded slightly, and she emphasised them with the line of kajal drawn outwards, dark and long at the corners. She used them to ask favours and to attract sympathy. They drew attention away from her commonplace nose, her greedy mouth. I thought they squinted inwards slightly, and no wonder because she saw everything through herself.

Sunlight on a Broken Column - Opening

Chapter One

The day my aunt Abida moved from the zenana into the guest-room off the corridor that led to the men's wing of the house, within call of her father's room, we knew Baba Jan had not much longer to live.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear :

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

First published in the UK by Chatto & Windus 1961

Published with a new introduction by Virago Press 1988

Published in Penguin Books India 1992

Copyright Attia Hosain, 1961, 1988

Introduction copyright Anita Desai 1988

All rights reserved

For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only

Printed at Rashtrya Printers