Being in Karachi at my Nani-ma’s house was like living in my favorite cafe/used book store for a week. So that would be Cafe Macondo in the Mission District or Karova in San Diego or Cafe Trieste in North Beach & Moe’s Books in Berkeley or City Lights in North Beach. Although City Lights isn’t used… Kerouac and his fellow Beats shoulda done something about that.
There are like 3 rooms filled with bookshelves with some some of the greatest authors - Galeano, Kundera, Ellison, Hemingway…It’s been a constant “Damn, he liked them, too. Hell yeah.”
It’s been nice investigating his past, although my Nani-ma has been a little restrained on what she feels I should know. That’s been frustrating as hell. She also claims that she burned his letters and journals because that is what he wanted. Why would anyone want their memoirs burned? And then she asks me “Well, if I did have them…what would you use them for? Why would you want to see them?”
This made me kind of uncomfortable when she would ask questions like this.
“Ummmmm….because I want to know what he was thinking, feeling, and doing during different periods of his life.” Why the hell else would I want to see them?
All in all though, it was excellent spending quality time with her and hearing her reminisce about Anant. When talking about him she would stare into space, with a twinkle and a grin bringing her back to that specific moment or story.
He was born Victor Anant…a Brahmin turned Muslim, leaving his family in Kerala. He worked for UNESCO for a period in Uganda and taught a journalism course. He spent much of his early years in London as a jazz critic for SPECTATOR. As I searched through his hundreds of records I found a ton of gems: Coltrane, Miles, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins. Many cats who I only knew by name like Ahmad Jamal & Art Blakey.
He also wrote for THE GUARDIAN, AMBIT, and published a few novels. One of the novels, SACRED CROW, is basically autobiographical. I’m currently searching for a superb piece he wrote after Nehru’s death for THE GUARDIAN.
He liked his tabacco and his wacky-tabacco. He said “he could see colors” when blessed by the herb’s essence. He was a dynamite cook and his love for travel caused him to seek abodes all over the world: London, Galicia, Karachi, Kuala Lampur. It was in Galicia, a town called Betanzos, near the city of La Coruna, in the north-western tip of Spain, that I last saw him. It’s an old stone house on a sizable piece of plush landscape, next door to a farm with horses, sheep, chickens and dogs running around. I was 13 or so. Right when we got there, without request from my sister nor I, he told us that he was going to quit smoking. It was out of nowhere. But being so young and innocent, we were happy that he was finally going to give up that unhealthy habit. Towards the end of our week long stay, we caught him puffin’ a stoagie… naturally we were upset he had broken his promise after just a week. During our stay he also got a little too drunk and yelled at me, which caused me to cry. Wah.
I don’t know if it was because of the broken promise and belligerence…but I kept very little contact with him after we left Spain. It was 93′ or so and he passed away in 99′. I revisited the old stone house when I was in Spain in 02′…I stayed with Raimondo and Antonia- the neighbors who own the farm next door. They were the one’s who bought the house from him, at far below it’s actual worth. I didn’t know the details of the sale of the home until just recently though.
Antonia & Raimondo bought the house from him so their daughter and her new husband could live there. Anant had agreed on a price with them along with other parts to the deal: he would be able to live in the home until the end of the year and he could stay there for awhile during future summers to come. Sounds like a good deal…He later realized that the price was quite below its actual value. But that didn’t matter to him because he had given them his word regarding the sale. But Raimondo and Tony later told him that the deal had changed and he couldn’t stay the rest of the year or return during summers. They probably realized that he would be a difficult man to accomodate and since they are farmers, this land was of vital importance to them. So he sold the home and died a week later in London.
The funny thing about Anant and his neighbors hit me after reading a few of his short stories. He constantly is writing about Galicia, Betanzos, & Raimondo & Tony- with a critical analysis. It’s interesting… it sounds feasible that they didn’t like being written about right? Maybe I’ll ask them the next time I visit…
People I met in Karachi had nothing but good memories of Anant. I commonly heard, “He was a good friend. I miss him dearly.”
I hope to read and learn more soon and later.
Here you can find a portrait, a story, and an elegy written by John Berger, for the late Victor Anant. R.I.P.
I was able to catch President Masharraf speak at the opening of a new school with 200 hundred other folks. My previous notions of the General have now been all but squashed to the ground. I had thought the basics: He came to power in a bloodless coup & he is a military dictator, which makes the US support of him the utmost hypocritcal.
But he is smart, he knows his numbers, and economic development is occurring for the people who need it in Pakistan: Everyone. Everyone I spoke with, talked highly of him. His charisma, intelligence, and verbal literacy caused my perception to alter greatly. I will now look at him with more respect, intrigue, and regard than I do for our own President.
I came across your writing when doing a search on google for my late grandparents home in Betanzos, La Coruna. Interestingly, my grandparents passed away in 1992 and 1993 respectively. I have two questions that hopefully you can kindly answer. The address of Anant’s former home and the estimated value that he realized it was worth. My only interest in the address of Anant’s home is solely to determine it’s proximity to my grandparents home. Thank you in advance for any information you can provide. Sincerely, Lourdes.