KARACHI: Anwer Abro, young short-story writer and poet, launched his first collection of short-stories — ‘Khudkushi Jo Romance’ (romance of the suicide) on Sunday. Senior journalist Anwer Pirzado presided over the function.

Aged Jamal Abro, the stalwart of Sindhi faction, was there as a special guest to bless the occasion. Senior writers Rauf Nizamani, Taj Baloch, Agha Saleem, Qamar Shahbaz, Taj Bewas, Hidayat Baloch and Rakhial Morai, delivered their papers and comments on the stories, 17 in number, based on feudal life of Sindh and its oppressed people.

All the speakers lauded the diction and theme of the writer, portraying the brutality of the age-old socio-economic system, rotten to the core and yet reluctant to change itself.

Critic Rauf Nizamani admired the observation of the young writer. Munir Manik and Shaukat Shoro, both stylist story-writers, shared the view that depression and frustration were the common elements in the young people’s writings because they were close witnesses to the system, its lawlessness and political uncertainty. Taj Baloch said suicidal trend was an old phenomenon and referred to the stories from Krishen Chander and others. They were real artists, yet Anwer, too, had the potential to portray realities.

Suicide, however, was not the answer to the barbaric social order.

Ameer Abro, himself a fiction writer, did the compering.—HA