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Travails of poor lives By Mushir Anwar The life of the poor that once inspired so many literary works of fiction evokes little interest now. It is as if the poor have vanished from our world. The subject of poverty is not sufficiently entertaining for our times. We are so surrounded by it and it is so common place we would rather not dwell on it. Not some but many of us well-fed would rather a global tsunami took them away from our sight. But alas! That is not to be as Jesus said. We are doomed to live in their neighbourhood. The Third World is the First World's backyard. It is too big to sweep clean. Ah! Shut that window please. The slum stinks. The run of the mill writer, the average man of letters, who is in the business of providing escape from this looming reality to his clients, therefore, chooses the endless tedium of the puerile life of our rich in TV plays, cinema and theatre that now mainly consume the written word and have replaced the need for books which authors now print at their own cost and for their own reading pleasure. The common story revolves without exception around goofy guys chasing dumb dolls in glittering, gaudy settings. The virtual stench of social rot these pseudo modern life styles portray radiates through the mini screen. One doesn't get to read much fiction these days with so much of the real world making claim on one's time. But from what one watches on TV and sees on cinema screen with high living getting the most focus, it's no wonder the attention of writers may also be shifting from the travails of common people and ordinary life. It's a world trend though. Hamra Khaliq's attention to the wretched of the land in her collection of stories, Mijzgan to Khhole, is a break from the current vogue. Told plainly without arabesque stylicisms she terms her stories in her foreword to the book as an unburdening of the heart, that neither concern any great issue nor any philosophy or abstract thought or symbolism. There's famished Sabir who would have someone die daily in his family to make obliging neighbours bring the traditional food for the bereaved household like the hot rice he ate on his father's death; the nameless hag whose body is dragged out from the debris of a fallen city structure; Zulekha the maid servant's daughter who can only dreams of going to school; Naseer Bhayya whose resources shrink for his parents even as they increase for his wife and kids; Razia the broken-hearted domestic who is falsely accused of stealing a dupatta; the chauffeur of an old car who sets a fleet of limousines on fire; Jamu the hospital attendant whose wife dies in labour unattended; Barkatay who would rather her daughter played with the street urchins than give company to a rich man's daughter in a posh bungalow; Humayun Bakht struggling in Karachi after the fall of Dacca; and the last journey of Ghafoor the young hearse driver. The story titled Take Care deals with poverty of another kind that parents whose sons and daughters go abroad to make a living have to live with. It is caused by the loss of one's most precious asset, one's children, to fortune that haunts one in empty houses as the bell rings from afar and the hideous perfunctory endearment 'take care' stabs a parent's heart. ***** Yaqoob Shah Gharsheen is a new writer of short fiction from Balochistan. Aakhri Aansoo (The Last Tear) is his first collection of 14 stories, that in general possess little local colour one prepares to look for in books from the vast arid expanse of our south west. Told with maudlin sentiment the stories have a theatrical flair in the mode of speech. There is a lot of smart talk and much romance over coffee. He should be able to eschew this tendency to dramatize as he writes more and pays less heed to preface writers and friendly praise like some Mr Agha Gul's on the back cover who acknowledges 'without fear' that Gharsheen is a great (barra) writer and this collection can be classed with literature of world stature. What looks promising in him is his broad range, the variety of subjects he is ready to broach - from mythology to science, black coffee for two to thirst in the desert, and match sticks and monkeys and men. Gharsheen sure has a lot on his hand. ***** Babur Ke Des Main (In the land of Babur) is Farida Hafeez's skimpy travelogue of her journeys in Central Asia that records the transformation which Muslim society has undergone during the Communist era and after its end. She doesn't find there the kind of enthusiasm among people for religious revival that Pakistanis in general expected the lifting of Moscow's yoke would bring. Society is struggling to come to terms with the vacuum that the folding of the Socialist system has created. There is a rehabilitation of historic and cultural symbols that is visible everywhere and national heroes like Babur and Taimoor have been put back on the pedestal. But the author is unable to suppress her angst seeing the absence of religious fervour that keeps the people back home in a state of dreamy expectation. She blames this on Communist rule but, at the same time, she does not fail to notice the advances made by these basically pastoral societies in education, development and emancipation, particularly of women who are economically active alongside men and yet retain their peculiar Eastern character. This difference would not have escaped the author had she travelled down southwards into Afghanistan's colossal all-round backwardness. This brings to mind Ashfaq Salim Mirza's essay on Colonialism published in the 23rd issue of quarterly Tareekh that Dr Mubarik Ali edits. It discusses with liberal candour the crucial social and economic advancements towards comparative modernity that colonial rule brought to the Subcontinent and which we see our independent neighbour to the north missing by a century. Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
