Nostalgia makes a quick stab at your heart when you first hold Ziauddin Sardar’s latest book Ways of Being Desi in your hands. For those of us who live in a digital world, but were born into an analogous one, the word kaleidoscope also means an actual physical object. One of the many easy and inexpensive pleasures of our life was playing with the toy. Turning it round and round while peering inside it, one could conjure up hundreds of patterns, colours and possibilities. The cover of Sardar’s book brings to mind such kaleidoscopes — their unapologetically garish colours and dizzying multiplicity of patterns are emblematic of our land.

For in their shared cultural and historical legacies, India and Pakistan and Bangladesh will forever be one. When Sardar speaks of being ‘desi’, this is what he refers to.

A resident of Britain, Sardar was born in Pakistan but has cultural roots in India. He has many publications to his credit, most notably Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1986), The Revenge of Athena: Science, Exploitation and the Third World (1988), Postmodernism and the Other: New Imperialism of Western Culture (1997), and Islam Beyond the Violent Jihadis (2016). Over the course of his years as a fiery public intellectual, speaker and writer, Sardar has come to be known for his forward-looking, progressive mien.

Ways of Being Desi , which features three previously published and three new essays, has Sardar dredging his past to find insights about what constitutes this us-ness.

The essay A Person of Pakistani Origin examines national identity cards such as NICOP (National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis) and government agencies such as NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) and their many incumbent frustrations. What seems at first to be a pointedly Pakistani problem soon becomes a recognisable template. With our Aadhaar fiasco to match, we may well be brothers in our red-tape tribulations.

The question of identity imposes itself especially staunchly on Sardar, given his position as a South Asian expat — one shared by many in UK and the US. He finds himself juggling the three distinct Pakistans at all times: “A Pakistan that is projected on to me by the perception of others; it does not matter where I go; it is always there. A Pakistan that is bigger than the geographical Pakistan; it incorporates the whole of South Asia, its long history and rich and diverse cultures. And a Pakistan of my memories.”

Further, he explores Pakistan’s tenuous link with its own identity, the political narratives of its rulers, and its contemporary self-image. Cut off forcibly from the “Indian” part of its history, it limps along with a fractured sense of self, propped up only with toxic hatred of its neighbour. To quote the author, Pakistan’s nationhood is encapsulated in one word: awaara , or rootlessness. One is reminded of Aatish Taseer’s similar ruminations in Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands . Both writers seek solace from the memories of a nation before 9/11, or even before the Partition — when Muslim identity was not anathema.

After a quick recce of the battleground of identity politics, the author quickly moves over and stays languorously on the subject of culture. Of the six essays in the books, he devotes five to the impassioned discussion, appreciation and criticism of the channels of culture: Literature and art.

The essays introduce the reader to Pakistani literature and poetry — both classical and kitsch, such as the detective fiction of Ibn-e-Safi BA, comparable perhaps to India’s Manohar Kahaniyan . Further, the author throws open the doors to the world of Urdu poetry — a source of Pakistan’s constant pride. Through the culture of mushairasand the shairs ; ghazals of legendary poets such as Mahir al-Qadri, Hafeez Jallundhri, Ehsan Danish, as also Ghalib, Faiz, Iqbal and Mir, the author cements the position of Urdu language and literature as supreme in Pakistani culture.

But Sardar’s greatest love lies in cinema, to which he dedicates one voluminous chapter. He accords the warmest credit to five Hindi films from the ’50s and ’60s — Devdas (1955), Pyaasa (1957), Kaagaz ke Phool (1959), Mughal-e-Azam (1960) and Ganga Jumna (1961) — which he calls the five “texts of his youth” that shaped his growing-up years.

Sardar is unabashedly in awe of these films made in a yet socialist Nehruvian India, when films bore the responsibility of being agents of positive change. His distaste for the vacuous and vulgar cinema of subsequent decades is equally unabashed. He also writes about Pakistani television and theatre, which surprisingly retained their dissension to the oppressive forces in society for a long time. There is an unmistakable tenderness in Sardar’s recollections of the quintessential neighbour auntie, Rashida; the roads and rituals of his childhood; or his quaint and sagely relative, Waheed Mamu. He may be critical of the manners, but never the men, for he understands forces that drive our foibles. A deep thinker, an erudite writer, a vocal critic, but most of all, a genteel human, Sardar presents many truths that are relevant today, especially when our worlds are being torn apart in the name of religion and nation.

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Ways of Being Desi is an essential reminder of our shared past and identities that transcend boundaries. A reminder that we are more than nationalities on our ID cards.

Urmi Chanda-Vaz is a writer and researcher who writes on Indian cultural history