Asif Jalal
I encountered Edward Gibbon first in his quotes like: “The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” “All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”
His English was tough. And in the early days when I learnt English, I thought if a text did not have tough words and complicated sentences, it was not worth reading. A page with words whose meaning I knew was not going to teach me anything, I thought. Hemingway thus did not offer much, but the pages of the likes of Winston Churchill and Gibbon were worth devouring.
Thus, Edward Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ fitted well in my category of readable books. It was something with which the mind had to wrestle.
Friedrich Nietzsche whose sentences in his works did not make much sense to me was also to be read. My classmate Rahman, a graduate in Philosophy, frequently mentioned the name of Nietzsche, who, he said, became insane towards the end of his life. Kamal Mustafa Bhai qouted sentences from ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ while discussing an issue or a person at Godavari dhaba in the shadow of the girl’s hostel. That intensified my fascination for him.
I saw one officer trainee the first thing doing when he reached LBSNAA, Mousoorie to photostat Nietzsche’s book at the free xerox shop of the Academy. Then one page of photostat cost
But I found these books in libraries only, not like Paulo Coelho or Norman Vincent Peale at everybody’s house where from I could borrow and feed my curiosity.
Najmul Hoda Sir spoke English like Gibbon at the dhaba outside Brahmaputra Hostel‒ tough, rich, grandiloquent like him. I told him a few times way back in 1998, “Sir you are as pompous as Gibbon.” Then he just smiled. His audience I am sure would have hardly followed him.
Latest copies of Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’ I found in the Library at Shimla’s state government secretariat. It was like a series of the world's great books by Penguin. They were medium-sized, handy, divided in six volumes. As I have the habit of reading from the middle of a book, I found it tedious, characters’ conduct not understandable. But I romanced with its few pages everytime I went to the Secretariat for some work, sitting near a window overlooking a glen of tall deodars. Mr Jaideep Negi, the librarian was very kind to me, and allowed me all kinds of liberties.
I knew the wealth of knowledge and the literary beauty of the book. So my fascination did not end with this book. I got it on the gutenberg.org website and felt thrilled, still could not read the digital pages.
This book was not only the history of Rome and Roman Empire. It was a history of Judaism, Christianity, of the Chinese, of Europe, Atilla the Hun, the Mongolians like Genghis Khan and Timor the Lame, the gory Crusade, of Islam and Arabia, Persians, Eastern Roman Empire, of North Africa, Russia, of host of activities between Danube to Tiber, of rulers like Heraclius, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Hadrian, Caligula, Constantine, and Justinian; Greek places of worship and Greek gods like Jupiter and Juno. If one did not know the history of these people and countries, one actually could not make sense of lots of literature and discussion. So I did not give up.
My father said reading history made him sleep. But pages of this book, the kings, conquerors, writers and philosophers in those pages revved up blood in my veins and dove my sleep miles away. I felt victorious and defeated, bruised and fulfilled like the characters on the pages.
Then I bought ‘Decline and Fall’ published by Wordsworth Classics of World Literature from Midland Books in South Ex, and thought my fascination with this book would be soon over. But it was an abridged version and many chapters which I wanted to read were missing. I read more than 400 hundred pages of it, but I was not satisfied.
Then came Kindle Paperwhite. I thought I would get all the volumes and finish them all. Words looked like golden pearls on the screen. But Kindle did not allow me underlining, scribbling notes on page-space, opening the topic/page of the book as I desired. I got no idea where a paragraph ended and where another started.
I kept searching for the book and found it in the Penguin Classic series in three volumes--one volume (of 1000 pages) containing two volumes of the original publication. I bought all three volumes (each 1000 pages) and started reading every morning sitting with a halogen heater before going to the office in Shimla. The pages glowed in heater light, while a flock of mongoose roved in the lawn downstairs.
Now everything was fine except the book’s font. The font size appeared to be eight (😎. The paper quality was worse than the envelope I bought roasted groundnut at the gullis of Karim-Ganj, Gaya. I thought I should not lose battle with it and I bought a magnifying glass to read it. I read several pages and wanted to finish the three 1000-page thick books in 2020 but could not do it.