Daily Times

I find strange amusement in the realisation, that my own failures have great correlation with the rain. Every time it falls, it washes away more than just streets and pavements; it takes away hopes too. The sound of rain then haunts and the failure sings loud, as it falls off the leaves onto the parched pavements.

It rained a lot this February (in Lahore) and the depths of my thought brought me back to the man who claimed that he was above defeat. “Failure is a word unknown to me,” said Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Well, only a man like Jinnah could say that. So replete with composure, he was a daunting man in himself and possessed this uncanny ability to never lose at arguments. Whoever named him Quaid (leader), had the wisdom to add the word Azam along with (literally meaning greatest), because Jinnah really was the greatest and too many ethnic quaids were to follow, each meant to leave the other behind in the playground of political venality. But to say that Jinnah never failed is factual injustice.

From 1906, Jinnah laboured with the Indian National Congress and after nine years of much approbated participation, he was ready to ascend the final rungs of the party. But then, at the hour of victory, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi conjured himself in India (circa 1915), and sold religion with such ease and ardour that the Indian Congress adopted a religion. Jinnah was for once outclassed and his penchant for constitution-driven politics left him with no reply to Gandhi’s rhetoric of religion. Proud and stately, Jinnah would never refer to ‘Mr Gandhi’ as Mahatma, and subsequently left the Indian National Congress, his efforts now solely focused on a minority party, the All India Muslim League.

Jinnah’s political aspirations were significantly hurt by his departure from Congress, and the internal struggle for power in the Muslim League. His seemingly blighted future affected his relationship with his wife Ruttie and it was not long before their chemistry dwindled, separation followed and Ruttie left for another life (1929), not before leaving a last letter, part of which read, “Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon.” This short lived affair was an abyss, and the cold man finally broke down at her grave. Was it repentance, the first twinge from a bruise long open, absolute grief or the knowledge of failure?

The last 30 of the millennium found way to inception and political wedges relentlessly mined deeper; over half a century old and disheartened, Jinnah finally turned his back on his political ambitions and left for a life in England. He was now a seldom sight in India and only a momentous ghost in the political arena. He practised before the Privy Council in England, focusing on the only profession that never betrayed him, one of argument and no failures. The past was a haze, marriage a hidden memory, and politics, a block fade on the canvas of glory. It was only in the wondrous cajoling of Iqbal and Liaquat, did destiny return to its right path and Jinnah to his desired calling.

But failure was never the dormant child of noon; his family life had its last breath in 1939 when he parted ways with Dina, his only daughter, over her decision to marry Neville Wadia, a Parsi by faith. “What about the millions of Muslim men in India?” he asked Dina. The argument did not hold front to the winds of changes and gone was Dina, at the expense of a religious predicament (much expounded upon in my article titled “Dina Wadia: the forgotten daughter”, Daily Times, February 2, 2013). As brilliant as Jinnah was in all things said and done, a thorough family life was a known preclusion. Stanley Wolpert was enlightening in the fact that none of his direct descendants chose to settle in Pakistan, a country which cost him his very life.

In spite of these definitive troughs, Jinnah still claimed that failure never crossed his path? Perhaps that has much to do with how one defines failure and how often does one gauge it; Jinnah certainly did not count his failures by the day and a hour of redemption did follow when he held parity with Gandhi, lifelong presidency over the Muslim League, repeating grief for a wife long-lost, meetings with a daughter estranged, and realization of a resplendent dream, which was a substance of dreams itself.

The world still continues to deny its failures and we amble so far in the dark as to believe it does not exist (with denial walks in uninvited the very incompetency to deal with). The rain then falls and slow realisation appears that litmus test of failure is to be employed at a later day amongst the billows ahead, perseverance the chosen ally for now, for today.

Let the rain fall, they say, for there is beauty in it too.

The writer is studying at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and can be reached at k.alizubair@hotmail.com