SO’AMBAR by Naseer Ahmad Cheema; pp 220; Price Rs250 (hb); Publishers, Pakistan Punjabi Adabi Board, Ilaqo Mansion, Patiala Ground, Lahore.
Born in 1940, Cheema is an educationist by profession and his literary career started as an Urdu short storywriter. At a later stage he was attracted by his mother tongue and the book under review is his first collection of Punjabi stories.
The title of his Urdu stories was Rexona ka Qilla published in 1998.
He has two other publications in Urdu, one on atomic energy and the other Yeh hey Dariya-i-Sindh; both published in 2004.
With rural background of the colonised areas of Faisalabad, his major theme is the chivalry of the old settlers usually known as Janglis and the new settlers mostly from the eastern and upper Punjab (before) the 1947 Partition. This produced the most famous or notorious character known as Jagga…. Jagga Daku about whom the following lines indicate the political period.
That means it was the British period when telegraphic system was in vogue. Many Urdu writers from Punjab had woven their stories around the characters of Bar areas and among them was most known and popular Balwant Singh.
Cheema is perhaps among the early settlers of the area where Sandal and Ganji Bars meet …. i.e. around Toba Tek Singh – the area which produced poets like Ali Haider who out rightly condemned the invasion of Nadir Shah and he had put all the responsibility of the poor performance of Mughal Darbar on the in-fights of the Iranians and Turanis. Ali Haider was among those Punjabi writers who out rightly condemned the invasions from the west and the east. Perhaps that was the tradition of the area which the locals continued to follow after colonisation. Almost same sort of characteristics are visible in the characters of these stories. Mallan, Satto Jindaan and Dilmeer all have a disliking for the changes introduced by the British after suppressing the rebel souls of Ahmad Khan Kharal, Wattoos, Balochs and others. Because that had disturbed the many of the old social values.
Mallan is the mother of four young, healthy and robust sons who are not ready to hand over the land they had on lease from the Syeds to another party headed by comparatively an elder person, therefore they trapped him and killed him. To hide that crime they plan to kill one of the women of their own family which they collectively nominate. That was to make the defence case. They wanted to take plea that the man was killed because the deceased tried to molest the concerned woman, the quarrelsome wife of the elder brother and on her raising alarm he killed her and then all the brothers jointly killed the man to save their honour.
This planning was over heard by the mother of the killer brothers by herself and she immediately decided to save her sons, daughters-in-law and granddaughters. And she killed herself and set the typical motherly example. That is Mallan whose husband died when she was still enjoying the last days of her youth.
Though many of the old characteristics and values have changed but still we practically come across such people with the traits of Mallan, Satto and Jindan and Cheema-like writers are there to write about them.
The special things to be mentioned about prose style of Mr. Cheema is that it covers the dialects of the south and the grammatical varieties of the language as used by all the Sufi poets and all the poets throughout the history of our literature… tenses, verbs, principles of further word or vocabulary-making. Following is a piece from the book.
Our other models of prose writing are Janamsakhis of Nanak, lectures of Sufi poet and saint Nosha Ganjbukhsh and Pucci roti.
Unfortunately, the tradition has been carried even by Ahmad Rahi and Muneer Niazi but only in poetry. To bring closer to the different dialects of the Punjabi language this prose tradition must be followed strictly.
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MEHKAAN…. Bi-monthly edited by Mushtaq Aadil with poet Talib Jatoi, chief editor; pp 60; Price Rs50; published from 92-Ravi Block, Shadmaan Town, Sahiwal.
This latest issue of a magazine from Sahiwal with editor from the old Kathia tribe of the area also mentioned by the historians of Alexander the Great, carries the third and the last installment of Prof. Dr. Razzaq Shahid’s article, Punjabi da Jangli (Janglu) Lehja (Asl tey Qadeem Punjabi), the original and the older dialect or base of Punjabi language. This part of the article is related to proverbs, usages and their use by the classical and modern poets in their verses and in Dhollas – the local genre of folk poetry. One usage is Talian heitth angarey (burning coals under the naked feet) and its used in a dhola related to 1857 war of independence, Mein Chawaymoey toon pichhoan such naheen sutta hein tatalian heitth angaaarey. (I cold not have a sound sleep after the British soldiers killed my comrade Chaawa … says Amad Khan Kharal. This is a great treasurer of our historical and linguistic heritage which we are fast losing because this language is out of bound for our elementary students. This tradition can cement our all dialects and reflect how we faced the historical times. — STM
