The Lost World: A Qayamat or a Basti?

“Kia basti thi kay jal gayi. Kia khalqat thi kay bikhar gayi…Kia soortein thi kay nazron say ojhal hogayi” (483).

In class, we discussed the world that the four men find themselves in within Intezar Hussain’s short story, “Woh Jo Khoye Gaye” – calling it a post-apocalyptic world or a purgatorial universe – and the way this world is a condition of a type of abjection that is worse than exile. The present, however, has an undeniable relationship with the past, in the story. Through memory or lack thereof, it interferes with the present on numerous occasions. My contention is that there are two different ‘pasts’ that intervene in the present – one is that of the pleasant, normal past (the basti), whereas the other is the burning destruction (qayamat) from which the four men have escaped. This oscillation between the basti and qayamat, I believe, creates a purgatorial present; whereby the four men find themselves in a circular liminal state.

The story begins with the question: “Kia hum nikal aaye hain?” – referring to the qayamat that the four men have escaped from – of which the naujawan remembers his father praying amidst the fire. Within this qayamat, the zakhmi aadmi was also injured, though we do not know with what weapon. However, the basti that the men recall is very different from the end that it suffers. The young man remembers a moment of intimacy with a woman and recurrently returns to this image. It is within memories of the qayamat and the basti that the four men have created their own barzakh (purgatory) – remembering some parts of each past. The present, therefore, is a negotiation between these two temporal orders – where the four men constantly try to preoccupy themselves with the now, but find it unable to do so as memories from the two ‘pasts’ constantly intervene.

The naujawan, while discussing the lost man, says “Hum is ka peecha kar rahay hain, yo woh humara?” to which the bearded man says later, “peechay mur kar nahi dekhna chaiye.” This entire discussion of the lost man, for me, is a discussion about that which has been lost. The young man’s question seems to suggest that either the four men are chasing after a past or the past is haunting them like a balla. For me, the past that they are constantly in search of, or constantly relating the present to (by calling the present a ghair waqt, the men set it up for comparison with a past which was not ghair – it was known) is the basti where they found themselves in their normal lives, with the soortein they recognized and lived with. The past that haunts them, however, is the qayamat, which results in a loss of the soortein and the khalqat to the effect that none of them, no longer, know each other’s names, faces, or identities. It is, therefore, the constant oscillation between these two types of ‘pasts’ that informs and moulds their present purgatory.