By Asif Farrukhi
Not only is the name mysterious, so is the persona. Three memorable encounters come to mind as I try to profile Ali Baba. The first one is at some colourless literary gathering, one of those rather dull affairs resounding with shop talk. "That's Ali Baba, the well-known Sindhi short-story writer and TV playwright," pointed out a friend to a man surveying the room from a corner. Nonchalance was writ large on his face. For one brief moment the magic of his name rubbed off on the sundry crowd and turned it into the fabled 'forty thieves'. I smiled at the name, but the world is but a variation of the Arabian Nights, I thought, and all that remained was a fleeting glimpse in a crowd.

I recall a conversation with him in the office of Abdul Karim Baloch, then the General Manager of PTV Karachi. Sitting next to the huge official desk and sipping tea, Ali Baba seemed to be delighted when I mentioned one of his stories. In fact, he immediately offered to do a TV serial based on it, telling me that the story was nothing compared to what he was prepared to do "if I said the word." When Karim Baloch intervened to tell him that we were not negotiating a new TV serial, Ali Baba became the soul of indiscretion and began telling me in a stage whisper that Karim Baloch, in his younger days, wrote some good stories in Urdu. When I last saw him, it was late afternoon in Bhit Shah. He was literally orbiting around a tree, even as the heat poured down. He smiled vaguely as I greeted him. His eyes had a faraway look and it was quite apparent that he was closer to the tree than to me, so I stepped back. My folly was that I was looking forward to a pre-planned conversation with an elusive Ali Baba. I should have aimed at tying a knot in the wind. It was between the many chance encounters that I finally managed to find out how difficult it is to meet Ali Baba. Nobody, not even Ali Baba himself, knows where he is to be found the next moment. He is a man of the moment, the eternal present. He comes and goes as he pleases. A restless spirit, he does the disappearing act for days. One of his friends recalls how Ali Baba came home after one of his trips and, seeing the telltale signs of a dinner party held the previous night in his home, asked what the occasion was. "It was your daughter's marriage last night," he was reproached. His contact is a neighbour's telephone number. The unidentifiable voice at the other end of the telephone is as clueless about his whereabouts as me and hangs up. It is like chasing a wisp of smoke on a gust of wind. But suddenly we had a chance encounter and I wondered if it was really Ali Baba. The conversation began haltingly but when it flowed, there was no mistaking Ali Baba for anyone else but himself.

Ali Baba is an enigma, more of a character than anyone from his own works of fiction. Unconventional and nonconformist, Ali Baba may well be the last of the bohemians. Ali Baba's writing is imbued with a passion. He is fully preoccupied with being a writer. One finds reflected in his short stories, novels, children's literature, poetry and teleplays, experiences gleaned from his wanderings. I find him comfortably seated in a chair in a room filled with paintings and books. He could be a bust of clay, dressed and come to life. Framed by henna-streaked hair, his face has a faraway look but soon he is talking about the books in his life, the ones he has read and the ones he has written. And he begins by telling me how he became a reader and a writer. A simple tale, with a clearly defined beginning and a real name. Ali Mohammed Rind Baloch was born in Kotri and became Ali Baba almost by accident. He recalled his school days and the discovery of the Municipal Library. "Writing just meant imprinting faces and characters on the canvas of my mind," he wrote in the preface to Moenjodaro, his major novel, describing how he would go all the way to Hyderabad and buy copy-books and fountain pens. Writing meant filling up one copy-book and then going on to buy the next one. He had no idea where the office of the Sindhi Adabi Board was located, no clue about the magazines that were printed and was unaware of the unsavoury reputation that preceded editors. He had a vague notion that all Sindhi writers wore spectacles and were "suited-booted" like Dr Gurbakhshani and I.I. Qazi. He wrote four short stories while in school. After the death of his uncle, who had brought him up like a son, a friend took his story Pinjray Ja Pakhi (Birds in the Cage) to the poet Shamsher-ul-Haideri, the editor of Mehran. A literary career was launched but the name remained an anomaly. ''I had wanted to use the name Ali Darawar or Ali Sindhi, but it was the Ayub Khan and one-unit era and such a name would have brought about the wrath of the authorities. So the editors decided upon the name. When the issue of Mehran came out, I looked at it and said to myself that the story is mine but who is this Ali Baba? I still don't like the name." Ali Baba has written three novels so far. His favourite is the novella for young audiences, Sindbad Jo Safar, which he describes as "pure fiction", born out of his life-long fascination with the Arabian Nights. His most ambitious work is Moenjodaro. He says that he started drafting it when he was about 12, and wrote the first few chapters around the time he wrote his earliest stories. "This novel will be a classic when completed," was the unanimous opinion of friends and mentors who read the rough drafts. But the course of good writing, like true love, is beleaguered. "Writing a novel requires time and concentration. It requires continuity of effort. Many aspects have to be explored. In the short story we may take up one event, but in the novel life has to be depicted in its complexity. That is why the novel is the most difficult literary form. A good novel may take years for you, it is difficult and laborious," says Ali Baba. "The main reason for the lack of good novels in Sindhi is that writers are not able to support themselves through writing," he goes on. "Even the hari gets to rest once a day and the mazdoor rests after eight hours of work, but the novelist is working 24 hours every day for his entire life. After that he gets nothing in return for his work, sone of the peculiarities to be found only in our part of the world. Even a writer of the stature of Qurratulain Hyder is not paid the kind of money her books earn, "he says in a matter-of-fact manner and then becomes pensive: ''if I had more free time, I would have written more novels!"

A voracious reader, he says that he loves nothing better than reading poetry. His own poetry is closer to folk songs, but he has not compiled it. Turning away from poetry to the short story was a conscious decision he made very early in his career. He felt that there were a number of good poets around, but the Sindhi short story had suffered a major setback in 1947 as the leading writers migrated to India. It is in the short story that he has excelled. The experience which leads to a short story is based on observation and personal involvement. "When the mood comes upon me, then I begin to recall things which may have taken place 20 years ago. The story develops when I become involved in it. There is a story of mine called Ma Giddu Bandar Jo Chariyo. A particular mood had taken over me while I was writing it. It was based on my observations and the character was a Bengali man I had seen. I put together my own sorrows with the sorrows of other people, and this leads to a story. What shape or quality the final product takes is beyond me. Whether the readers like it or not, this is the best I can do." Whatever shape the story may ultimately take, one thing is certain, it is rooted firmly in its soil. "The tribulations and sorrows of Sindh are a constant subject for you, and you trace these going back in time," I comment. "I thought about Sindhi society and its distinguishing features, the wind-catchers, the dresses and needlework, so I thought that the Sindhi story should also be like that, not borrowed from anywhere and our very own. When we look at what we have, we see deserts, the sea and its life, rocky terrain, cities like Karachi and Sukkur. And then there is our history which stretches even before the time of Alexander, the mighty conqueror who tasted defeat here." From this point onwards, Ali Baba begins to drift, as if on a tide, recounting various periods and eras as stories. "I make an effort to create my stories out of the earth," he pauses to articulate a very precise phrase, "the quintessence of dust out of which we are made, and the story should also be from the very same earth and dust. I have attempted to walk under the shadows of the great master and do my work. I cannot put them before the Russian or the French masters or the great Sindhi writers. I feel disappointed that I have not been able to do my best," he says, and then begins to talk about what were the main causes, narrowing down to the struggle for earning one's living. Economic compulsions led him to write for the radio and TV. His plays like Paying Guest and Kawarial Manhoo were highly successful. "These TV plays are as dear to me as my stories," says their writer. However, Ali Baba does not agree with "the big guns" that TV drama has replaced fiction and literature. "The short story has its own place and TV plays their own. TV plays cannot take the place of a really good story. On the other hand, you can have TV plays which are as good as short stories and I can make the claim that this is something which I have done, though they may have lost out in production," he says. "The main thing is the artiste and his vision, and what he makes out of the form. TV plays do not have to be mediocre!" A lesson which our media moguls will find hard to accept.

"I have been reading some new science fiction. They are writing quality stuff which we cannot even imagine. One of them has scenes on a grand scale which cannot be shown on the film screen." He points out that you have to read and then imagine. "My story Mujassimo has such a large canvas that the camera cannot do justice to it, even with modern techniques. The eye has a larger perspective than the camera, and what it can see cannot fit a small screen. And the eye can see dreams, which are bigger than 75 mm. The eye can see much more than the camera. It can accommodate the entire universe." He is concerned about the trend that turns literature into a commodity. "There are some people who want to reap dividends from literature like one does from an industrial unit. This sort of thing cannot go on. Literature is holy, pakeezah, and to create literature you have to become pakeezah yourself. "It is a matter of putting one's heart and soul into it. I am not a farmaishi writer," says Ali Baba as he describes his work in hand. "I am writing a TV serial these days, but my serial has no knife-wielding acrobats. It is about educated people sitting down for conversation, people who are capable of talking about the finer feelings inside." To drive home the point, he mentions the "very artificial" TV plays which announce the locale of Sindh but talk in "accents as yet unborn," to use a phrase from Tennyson. He goes on to question "how longer shall we suffer this nonsense, which is a zulm on both Urdu and Sindhi?" Ali Baba is also working on a novel these days, but his new mood is painting. "I began as a sculptor but my father was a religious person and said that I should not do this as a Muslim. Now I have come back to my initial love. I did some good work, but had to destroy it and I feel a vacuum because of it." And in this he has discovered the secret of longevity. "Painting is an art which enhances one's age, it freshens up your eyes and brain cells. The short story uses up your brain matter and causes it to shrink but painting and colours make you younger." The conversation flags and then starts again as Ali Baba talks about his major concerns. "History fascinates me. History is all that is there in this world! Call it time if you will. It is a flowing sea in which our earth and all our galaxies are floating. The individual registers his name, but only for a moment. We can learn from the truth of history but if we cut ourselves from it, then God knows what we turn into. Not even monkeys!"