IT was a book launching ceremony with no reference to the book which was being launched. None of the speakers talked about it. Only the banner in the background reminded the audience that a posthumous collection of Mumtaz Mufti’s short stories hitherto unpublished or had appeared under the title Guddi ki Kahani, and that this function was meant to be its inaugural ceremony. But those who spoke on the occasion seemed to be oblivious of the significance of the work. In fact, they were so enamoured of the man who gave the impression of being a mystic, that the fiction writer that he was hardly mattered for them.
In fact, we now have two Mumtaz Muftis — Mufti the fiction writer and Mufti, the man engrossed in mystical experiences. The function held last week in Lahore was meant to be a tribute to Mufti, the fiction writer, with particular reference to the posthumous collection of his unpublished short stories. But it eventually turned out to be a tribute to the latter Mufti — a mystic and a wise man.
Mumtaz Mufti had started as a short story writer in the late 1930s. In contradistinction to his distinguished contemporaries known for their social realism, he gained prominence as a short story writer under the influence of modern psychology, more particularly Freudian psychology. Freud, in those years, was a craze in our literary circles. But Mumtaz Mufti drew inspiration from him on a creative level. His short stories speak of the deep influence Freud had on him.
His novel, Alipur ka Aily, may be seen as the culmination of what he had been doing in his short stories. The novel may be regarded as autobiographical. And Mumtaz Mufti took pride in saying that as opposed to the idealistic approach of Urdu novelists in general, he had chosen to be starkly realistic and had brought out all that was dirty in him. However, he has won distinction in Urdu fiction more as a short story writer than as a novelist.
Alipur ka Aily was published in 1961. Thenceforth, we see Mufti drifting in a different direction. It may be deemed as a journey from Freud to Qudratullah Shehab. Mr Shehab was a bureaucrat with certain peculiarities of his own. In addition to his bureaucratic position, he enjoyed the reputation of being a man with mystic learnings. The group of writers who had gathered around him gave a boost to this aspect of his personality. Foremost among them was Mufti, who firmly believed that Shehab was associated with some mystic order and mysteriously received messages from somewhere beyond our known world. Other admirers chimed in. This helped Shehab to feel higher than the terrestrial position of a bureaucrat and attain the status of a mystic.
This devotion to a personality, whom Mufti now regarded as his murshad, helped him undergo a process of change. He was no more the Mufti of the ‘40s and the ‘50s, drawing inspiration from Freud with a secular outlook. He now could boast of having some spiritual experiences. And so the secular outlook gave way to what he regarded a mystic vision. He now behaved in a different way and talked in a different tone. Here I am reminded of an occasion, when I had the opportunity to talk to him.
“Mufti Sahib, for so long I have not seen your stories appearing in any of the journals.”
“I am,” he said, “in a state of wonder. Alam-i-Tahyyur main hoon.”
“When are you coming out of your Alam-i-Tahyyur?”
“The moment I will come out of it, I will dissolve into particles.”
He spoke all the time in this mystical vein, leaving me mum. Frankly speaking, I was much impressed by his mystical utterances.
Mufti was in this state of mind when he reached Islamabad and settled there. In this new city, he soon found himself surrounded by admirers, who were charmed by his personality and listened to him with admiration and reverence. And they were so charmed by his personality and so impressed by what he talked about that they cared little to know about what he had written in the past and how he stood as a writer. They adored Mufti, the man as they saw him. Mufti, the story writer, least mattered to them.
So what we have now is Mumtaz Mufti as understood by his admirers and devotees in Islamabad. This Islamabadi version of the Mufti is the man of a later period, minus the story writer. So when a function is held in his memory, we hear so much about the man as he lived and thought in his later period, while the story writer is rarely talked about. But it is because of his story writing that Mumtaz Mufti has a place, a distinctive place in the history of Urdu fiction.
IT was a book launching ceremony with no reference to the book which was being launched. None of the speakers talked about it. Only the banner in the background reminded the audience that a posthumous collection of Mumtaz Mufti’s short stories hitherto unpublished or had appeared under the title Guddi ki Kahani, and that this function was meant to be its inaugural ceremony. But those who spoke on the occasion seemed to be oblivious of the significance of the work. In fact, they were so enamoured of the man who gave the impression of being a mystic, that the fiction writer that he was hardly mattered for them.
