KARACHI: Two young men, who started their literary career in the decade of 1990, came with their nascent collection at the Karachi Press Club on Friday.
‘Mohabbat ka Mahalle-Waqoo’ by Mr Syed Kashif Raza carries his ghazals, free verses and prose poems; all three in a delicate balance to show his command over poetic language (Mr Kashif did MA in English literature and linguistics).
Mr Rafaqat Hayat proved himself a good narrator and prose writer. His story collection ‘Khamkhwah ki Zindagi’ reminds one of his commitment with fiction. After passing his intermediate in faculty of arts some years back, he refused to do graduation, and turned towards story writing. Both collections and also the Urdu version of the noted intellectual Noam Chomski, done by Mr Kashif Raza were presented at the launch. All three collections were published by Seheherzade.
Mr Ghazi Salahuddin, who presided over the function sponsored by the Club, recalled his early career as a writer, now a forgotten past, and said that after reading these books, he felt like rejoining the fiction.
Commenting on the reading habits, on the decline in our society, he said that the publishing was risky and a courageous act in the present circumstances and quoted instances from the West where in some cases, manuscripts of the noted writers were sold out to the highest bidder among the publishers, ever before those were written.
In Pakistan, he said it was an interesting phenomenon the ‘serious’ books in English were more in demand than those in Urdu. Mr Ghazi admired the attempt made by writers to translate serious and thought provoking books from English into Urdu.
Among others, who spoke at the occasion or presented papers included Mr Inam Nadim, a poet; Mr Abdul Aziz Azmi, a fiction writer and critic; Ms Firdous Haider, senior fiction writer; Mr Afzaal Sayed, a noted poet and Prof Saher Ansari.
Mr Khalid Ahmad, a famous Showbiz person, recited some poems by Mr Kashif Raza and a story by Mr Rafaqat Hayat. His recitation was much admired.
Prof Saher Ansari, in his paper while covering the salient features in the writings of both creative youngmen discovered great potential in them, as they had not followed any other writer and carved their own styles. Commenting on Mr Kashif’s poetry, he said that it was encouraging both in content and use of technique and also choice of topics. About Mr Rafaqat, Prof Ansari said, he had developed a distinct style and kept an eye on social realities.
In these stories, Ms Firdous said, love between the two sexes was shown as a binding force and the writer had kept a delicate balance between the two. Humans were the theme of Rafaqat’s stories, she said.
In his paper, Mr Abdul Aziz Azmi separately dealt with the person of Mr Rafaqat and his art of fiction writing.
Mr Afzaal Syed was satisfied to note that Rafaqat had described in his stories the lives of the lower middle class families. His characters were real and rich in variety. His realism, he said, had retrieved the genre of story writing from the meaningless symbolism.
Mr Asif Farrukhi was happy to note that the new writers had been discovered by themselves. The new talent, he said, only needs encouragement and recalled his own experience as being acknowledged by such stalwarts as Mr Ghulam Abbas, Mr Salim Ahmad and Prof Saher Ansari, when he came with his first story collection.
Mr Zabe Azkar Hussain, secretary of literary committee at the beginning welcomed the guests. — Hasan Abidi
