KARACHI: Senior journalist and fiction writer Mateen Ahmad Khan launched his novel Chhoti Bai at the Pakistan Arts Council on Wednesday night.
S.H. Hashmi, who was in the chair, congratulated Mr Khan for producing a purposeful novel, which can be described as a true portrayal of life in the subcontinent during the 40s. He narrated his own experiences while living among a cross-section of people from different sects.
The other speakers included: Ali Haider Malik, who introduced the novel, being “its first reader even before publication”; Khwaja Razi Haider; and, Sajjad Mir. Mahtab Akbar Rashdi also reviewed the novel.
The novel describes the charisma of love between two young people coming from different sects, representing different religious which leads the delinquent boy to sanity, she said. Ms Rashdi particularly praised the novel for its “simple yet florid language” — the writer’s “Saadgi-o-purkari”.
Ali Haider found the book somewhat autobiographical, spread over the period of mid-forties — 1943 to 1947 — the locale being a town of mixed religio-cultural population. One may term the culture there the “Hind-Islami culture”, as peace abounded and love and tolerance were its distinct features. The description of highly sensitive emotions in the novel reflected the author’s own experience, Malik contended.
Sajjad Mir was of the view that the novel appeared belatedly, it should have been written at least fifty years ago. At the same time, the novel, though a fine piece of fiction was published at a very wrong time. It gives the wrong message that everything in the pre-partition society was okay and that partition was thus not needed, he opined.
If culturally we were one, he said, then division was not natural. Sajjad Mir agreed with Malik in his opinion that the novel appeared like a chapter out of the writer’s own life-story.
Khwaja Razi Haider recalled his relationship with the writer, spread over three decades, when they both were working under the same roof in two sister publications. Mr Razi in the company of some other senior colleagues benefited most from the literary discourse between his seniors.
He praised the novel for its fine prose.
Earlier, Rizwan Siddiqui welcomed the guests. He pointed out that hardly three Urdu novels had appeared in the last five years, which showed that the genre was not very popular with the fiction writers.
The last to speak was the author — Mr Khan — himself. He expressed his satisfaction over the moves between Pakistani and Indian leadership for establishing permanent peace and amity between the two countries — the theme carried in his novel.
Huma Waheed conducted the proceedings.—Hasan Abidi
