WITH a number of new publications scattered on the table before me, I found myself confused. After all, one can read only one book at a time. And frankly speaking, not every book is worth reading. And not every book worth reading is expected to meet the mental requirement of the reader. So one has to be choosy. And so, I had the option to choose only one book from the heap before me, leaving the remaining ones to be sorted out at some other time.
A number of volumes bearing impressive titles attracted my attention. However, I caught sight of a lean volume. The name of the author, Wali Ram Wallabh, appeared a bit odd to me. Inquisitively I picked up the book and cast a cursory glance at its contents. Soon, I found myself absorbed in reading it.
In fact, just one statement from the author compelled me to cast aside my casual attitude and read the book seriously. Wali Ram Wallabh, born in a little town of Thar called Matthi, was saying “this little town appeared to me, in those days, a vast, wide world. Even now it appears so to me. All that I have seen has been seen in the perspective of this little village.”
How genuine, I said to myself, paused for a while and then began reading him carefully. Wali Ram now lives in Hyderabad yet feels lovingly for Thar. “The land of Thar,” he says, “lies within me.”
Here is a writer who comes from the desert of Thar, a landscape so different from the one I have been familiar with. The desert land of Thar, though a part of Pakistan, appears to me to belong to a different world. A writer coming from that land should have a flavour very different from the one we are familiar with in Urdu. The present volume is a selection from prose and verse, say, a few poems and short stories written in Sindhi and translated into Urdu by Bashir Unwan. Along with these poems and stories is a detailed interview with him and an introduction by Asif Farrukhi. The volume is titled Zindagi se kata hua tukra and has been published by Sheherzade, in Karachi.
Wali Ram’s stories are fine pieces of fiction steeped in mellow colours and soft tones. He has devised for himself a way of saying things with ease and in a subdued manner. This is in sharp contract to the loud style adopted by his contemporaries. As has been pointed out in the foreword, those were the times when Sindhi writers were in a protest mood and, therefore, liked to be loud and tended towards politics.
Wali Ram tells us that his acute sense of belonging to a minority compelled him to be cautions in his writings. That explains why he evades political themes. Instead, he chose for his fiction purely social times. So he is seen portraying a society which suffers from poverty and where the woman is seen groaning under repressive conditions. But here, too, he has chosen not to be loud or sentimental. And he has evolved a style of writing which gives the impression of not being a style at all. These characteristics have found their best expression in Zindagi ka kata hua tukra.
A girl from a poor family is married off into a well-to-do family. The situation weighs heavily on her. But she remains calm and quiet in her suffering. The poor brother comes to see her. It is a situation pregnant with emotions. But we see a sense of restraint on both sides. So we see gaps of silence recurring throughout their talk. And they appear more eloquent in their silence than when they are talking. Such is the art of the storyteller.
The woman here is submissive. But in another story, Pushup, she is always willing to protest. But here, too, the tone is not loud. Because of a sense of helplessness, all her protestations remain subdued.
But, unfortunately, his promise as a story writer remains unfulfilled. His output in fiction is meagre. As for his poetry, here, too, he lacks the kind of concentration needed for it. In fact, he has concentrated more on translations than on creative writing. And on that score, he has much to offer his readers. He has translated more than three hundred stories in Sindhi. Add to them the famous Camus novel, Outsider, that he translated into Sindhi. In the field of poetry, too, he has made a large number of translations.
In fact, Wali Ram attaches much importance to the job of a translator in relation to a language. Translators, according to him, hold the position of blood donors, their translations being their donations to the language and its literature in which they are done. Wali Ram himself is a big and a very devoted ‘blood donor’. He has donated much blood to Sindhi language and literature.
WITH a number of new publications scattered on the table before me, I found myself confused. After all, one can read only one book at a time. And frankly speaking, not every book is worth reading. And not every book worth reading is expected to meet the mental requirement of the reader. So one has to be choosy. And so, I had the option to choose only one book from the heap before me, leaving the remaining ones to be sorted out at some other time.
