When I read ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, in whose pages I was first introduced to Mohsin Hamid, I was bowled over by the strength of the narrative, by the author’s refusal to take a moralistic stance (which would have been by far the easier option). It was therefore only natural that I was waiting to get my hands on this book. It was worth the wait.. More so after feeling let down by Hosseini’s ‘And the mountains echoed..’, this book was a welcome relief. More than welcome, truthfully. Laced with a generous amounts of hypocrisy, hedonism & resentment, Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Moth Smoke’ is an absorbing read.The novel begins by attempting to draw a parallel between Dara Shikoh & Abul Muzaffar Muhi-ud-Din Mohammad Aurangzeb, the fratricidal sons of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, & Darashikoh & Aurangzeb (or “Daru” & “Ozi” as we get to know them by), two of the characters central to the plot. A few pages in, we are introduced to Mumtaz, Ozi’s intoxicating wife & essentially the glue that holds Hamid’s story together; no prizes for guessing where she gets her name from. Later, we also meet the Obelix-minded Murad Badshah (the similarity lying in the I’m-not-fat syndrome), proud owner of a fleet of auto-rickshaws & a hash-dealer on the side, without doubt an intentional reference to Muhammad Murad Baksh, Emperor Shah Jahan’s youngest son who had joined hands with Aurangzeb to vanquish Dara Shikoh. Although these allusions to the famed Mughals are made only once more, & that too right at the very end, it only adds to the overall grandeur of the setting.The Indo-Pak nuclear arms race provides the perfect easel on which Hamid’s untiring pen paints a flesh-and-blood picture of the Pakistan as we have come to know, a sentiment that is best expressed by Ozi when, in an acute matter-of-fact way, he says “You have to have money these days. The roads are falling apart, so you need a Pajero or a Land Cruiser… The colleges are overrun with fundos… so you have to go abroad… The police are corrupt and ineffective, so you need private security guards… People are pulling their pieces out of the pie, and the pie is getting smaller, so if you love your family, you'd better take your piece now, while there's still some left.” Ozi’s Pakistan is a fortress, money being the only way in. Daru’s Pakistan is a victim of circumstance, ever uncertain with the ground always shifting beneath its feet. Mumtaz’s Pakistan is a claustrophobic cage, much like her dysfunctional marriage, that is trapped palpably between the real & the desirable.There is a definite Mughal-esque touch to Darashikoh Shezad’s dissolution, what with the primary factors being a woman & a hash-turned-heroin addiction. And the woman herself as a self-immolating addiction. Indeed, it would be a severe understatement to term Daru’s plight as a rags-to-penury story; if anything, it is a tale of his plummeting finances, his crumbling social position & consequently his rampant appetite for self-destruction. For those of you who have read R. K. Narayan’s witty short-story ‘Out of Business’ and believe that, like Rama Rao, losing one’s job is but a temporary setback in the bigger scheme of things, you have another thought coming. As Daru loses his job & his life goes for a free fall, he goes from a mid-level banker to willing adulterer to self-deprecating drug-peddler to a stoned criminal languishing in prison, the disintegrative process turning him into a bitter man who hates everyone & everything. And as the last page begins with “At the ends of their stories, Emperors like empires have the regrets that precede beginnings”, we realize that we couldn’t have done anything other than watching on in mesmerized fatalism..In Act III Scene II of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’, Mark Antony famously says “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. Were I in charge of laying this book to rest, the epitaph would read - Better to burn out that to fade away..or so they say. That’s what a candle does, you know. Burn out. & while she burns, there are always those who are willing to fling themselves at her feet. Moths. Drawn to the flame. Inexorably. Willing to die for her. Literally. & when the dust settles on her burnt out wick, the smoke smells of the last lament of moths.. A longing. An annihilation. Dead poetry. “Moth Smoke”.
Moth Smoke is a fictitious work by Moshin Hamid about the modern society of Lahore, one of Pakistan’s larger cities, where the socioeconomic factors have a major impact on people. The novel displays the power and privilege of the rich, and how this shadows over the poor. Hamid shows a society that corrupt and overrun by crime and drugs. The novel also depicts the beauty of friendships and love, as well as the ugliness of betrayal, addiction, adultery and lies amid economic turmoil in Pakistan.The protagonist, Daru, at the beginning of the story is very charming, sweet, and attractive even though he is impulsive and confusing at times. Throughout the story, his character develops into something darker and unstable that resembles Pakistan society that he lives under. By showing the extreme differences of status between Daru and his spoiled rich friend, Ozi, and the upper-class people he hangs out with, Hamid cleverly points out the impossibility of changing the fortune of one’s fate according to his social status. The story is based on the murder trial that leads to Daru’s eventual execution for a crime that Ozi commits. The poor people can’t speak for themselves under Pakistani government. The novel also reveals the reality of human nature: people can be weak, greedy, insecure, and lack will power. We often possess the desire to be someone else that we’re not, and hunger for things that we can’t afford. Daru’s character, for instance, while critical of the elite power, himself mistreats his servant to make him feel better about his miserable life.Furthermore, through the character of Mumtaz, Ozi’s beautiful wife, Hamid exposes the choices people make in life that make them feel trapped, suffocated, and unhappy. Mumtaz refuses to be a victim of her own choices by rebelling against the regulations of Pakistani society. She smokes, drinks, and commits adultery with her husband’s best friend. Then, she becomes cruel and selfish just like the rest of the people she hangs out with. Hamid’s novel examines modern day life in a third world country and illustrates the ugly part of society that people often refuse to acknowledge.
What do You think about Moth Smoke (2001)?
Hot, humid, hazy and pointless like rolling & smoking joint on a scorching summer’s eve knowing perfectly well that you are going nowhere with your life and have absolutely no one to look forward to. A huge load of things that ought to be regretted upon though, belonging to the past, each and everything belonging to the past sounds like screaming that you neither belong in the present nor in the future; but only past. Suffering for the sake of suffering, why in hell does it lead to only one possible end? Horrible “It is perhaps between hope and memory, in the atomized, atomic lands once Aurangzeb’s empire, that our poets tell us Darashikoh, the apostate, called out to God as he died.”
—Sana Khalid
Boring ass long drawn bullcrap - oh I am out of job, oh I am having the conflict of my life regarding the important decision of making up my mind to fuck my friend's wife, oh heavens, I am peddling drugs - my life of crime has begun, oh look I am so educated and now in a world of crime. Pure crap. And to think, it go so much acclaim.What is the literary world literally smoking? Or are they trying to create a new 'genre' of literary-popular fiction - which has a semblance of 'literariness' to it - just because a goddamned overused method of 'allegorical' narration has been employed, despite the otherwise chuthiyapically developed content.
—Ashwini Nocaste
In Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid crafts a complex story and leaves you to judge the characters, their insecurities, their arrogance, and their crimes. He has written a candid and uncomfortably honest account of contemporary Pakistan.Dara has lost his job, and all desire to pull out from the economic slump that leaves him in. He is resigned to let his insecurities take him over. Reuniting with his childhood pal Ozi and Ozi's beautiful wife Mumtaz, bring out all the hitherto buried uncertainties. Dara's clandestine attraction for Mumtaz and his envy for Ozi cloaked under morally uptight condescension thrust him into the belly of Pakistan's corrupt judicial system.Whether it is the drug addiction or his insistence on becoming martyr to his love, Dara's decline is not unlike the much scrutinized moth fatally spiraling towards the candle flame. From being a banker to a drug peddler to a petty criminal, Dara smokes through to the inevitable end.Mohsin Hamid has inferred interesting parallels between the characters and the nuclear rivalry of blood brothers India-Pakistan. And the fatalistic nature of the moth to bring forth certain unstated thoughts of Dara.It is a cleverly laid out book which unravels as a play with each character recounting their side of the story. The writing style for the narratives of each character is very similar and this is where I feel Mohsin Hamid left me desiring for something better. Each character's narrative sounds similar in language, their diversity and disparity is not manifested in their language.Mohsin Hamid's achievement in Moth Smoke is that he has steered completely clear of the immigrant literature formula. A lot of South Asian author's first books fall for the obvious and tend to talk about their immigrant lives, childhood memories triggered by smells of pickles or jasmine oil, houses full of aunts and uncles. There is none of the sepia-toned flashbacks which make even the hottest day appear mellow, beautiful in our memories. Rather he says it like it scorchingly is.Visit I Read... for more reviews.
—Bookchica
