. . . . . .  
 
 
 
 
02/05/2019
FILLING A BLANK
AFTER A LECTURE ON 'BLANK' AT BNU, LAHORE

 

 

The lecture topic was Blank, and it was to be delivered before an audience of students at a liberal university in Lahore at their third annual NothingFest. It seemed the perfect platform to infect undergraduates with nihilism, and also to declaim a riveting exposé of the current political scene with its ‘fill in the blanks’ style of governance.

But what is a NothingFest? One was familiar with LitFests, even a ThinkFest. (In case you are wondering, the difference between them is a LitFest is for those too lazy to read, a ThinkFest for those too bored to think.) This NothingFest aimed at looking at the everyday in ‘a new aesthetic realm — a conscious development of low latent inhibition’. Its sub-theme Blank hoped to ‘provoke different areas of the mind, body and soul’ as mankind copes with ‘the genesis of creativity’. Only a young stomach could digest such academic dialectic.

For pedantic minds, the title Blank suggested prosaic possibilities: an unused sheet of paper, an untouched canvas, a blank expression, or a blank cheque. The longer one pondered, the more blanks made themselves manifest — in literature, art, poetry, politics, marketing, religion, even space.

Who has not been intimidated by a blank page? The novelist Vladimir Nabokov saw words where the less courageous see only blank pages: ‘The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible.’

Who has not waited for that special moment, when a poem in rhyme or in blank verse would come unsought? Wait no longer. The poetess Anna Quindlen's discovery gives every budding poet hope: ‘I walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.’

When God created man, He chose clay with a reason. Humanity hewn from stone would have given it an unintended permanence. Clay modelling is an exercise in accretion; statues carved from stone are subtractions. No one knew this better than Michelangelo: ‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of sculptor to discover it.’

Perhaps the best known hobby painter in history was Sir Winston Churchill. [Hitler does not qualify. He began his career as a house painter.] Churchill was 40 when he picked up a brush. It was not love at first sight: ‘Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air.

‘My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. But after all the sky on this occasion was unquestionably blue, and a pale blue at that. There could be no doubt that blue paint mixed with white should be put on the top part of the canvas. [...] So very gingerly I mixed a little blue paint on the palette with a very small brush, and then with infinite precaution made a mark about as big as a bean upon the affronted snow-white shield.’

While he was still contemplating that bean, a friend Lady Lavery noticed his cowardly hesitation. Taking the largest brush he had, she made several large, fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the cowering canvas. ‘The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with berserk fury. I have never felt any awe of a canvas since.’

To Churchill, the blank canvas presented a challenge; to others blank surfaces constitute an invitation. Blank cheques wait to be completed. A billboard stands impatient for an advertisement. Even Allama Iqbal’s epics Shikwa and its riposte Jawab-i-Shikwa, now immortal, began as blank pages.  

A blank demands creativity, even from the heavens. The Hindu religious treatise Bhagavata Purana describes creation as emanating from the Supreme Seed — ‘more powerful than even the wind and all the gods, more resplendent than the Sun and the Moon, and more internal than even the mind and the intellect.’ The Big Bang in scriptures. Now scientists predict that our universe will disappear into a black hole. We began with a blank and will end with a blank.

For modern voters, the most potent blank is still is the virgin surface of the ballot paper. Whatever is smudged on it during elections can make or break administrations, create or destroy governments. It can make an iron rod of a Brexit referendum or unleash a weapon of mass destruction in a presidential election. 

And the most enigmatic blank of all? Undoubtedly, the creaseless brain of a politician.

 

F.S. AIJAZUDDIN

 

[Dawn, 2 May 2019]

 
02 May 2019
 
All Articles
 
Latest Books :: Latest Articles :: Latest SPEECHES :: Latest POEMS