KARACHI: The editor Aenda, a quarterly literary magazine, launched on Tuesday his Aenda Literary Forum to discuss with city writers the problems that confront the community of thinkers, intellectuals and readers in present times.

Happily announcing that his publication had completed six years exactly on that day (11th December), he said the meetings of Aenda Literary Forum would be held on a monthly basis. To begin with, Mahmood Wajid, the editor, invited writers to give their opinion on an important book from an eminent writer — Sawar aur doosrey afsaney, a collection of five stories by Shamsur Rahman Farooqui. At this inaugural meeting of the Forum presided over by Dr Hanif Fauq, the writers who expressed their opinion included Saba Ikram, Farasat Rizvi, Shamim Manzer, Najmul Hasan Rizvi, Yawar Aman and A. Khayyam.

It was observed by Mahmood Wajid and A. Khayyam, and partly supported by others, that Farooqui’s short stories should not be treated as fiction because in no way they fulfilled the technical requirements of fiction.

Farooqui was himself not quite sure about defining those literary pieces, as such those “stories” were published in his journal under a fake pen-name, “Beni Madho Ruswa” just to find the reaction of the readers, disclosed A. Khayyam, saying that people soon discovered the real writer.

Saba Ikram differed from others and highly praised the prose of those stories and the historical truth and academic knowledge that were put into them. He described those stories as an experiment in the genre of fiction. He, however, admitted that the language of those stories at places was “difficult.”

Shamim Manzer also complained of difficulty in comprehending the stories.

Farasat Rizvi expressed the opinion that those stories were a mix of history and “Dastaan,” thus the basis of a “new dastaniat.” He said the writer had visualized a very large span of the 18th-century north India’s culture with intricate and too much details. Also he had written “an impossible language,” but the way he had sympolized time as “Sawar” (a rider) was fascinating, Farasat said.

Najmul Hasan Rizvi recalled Delhi, a novel by noted writer Khushwant Singh, and said those stories reflected the culture of the 18th- century found in and around Delhi.

Dr Hanif Fauq said the definition “Fiction,” as defined in Urdu literature, was borrowed from the West, hence rejected by Intezar Husain and some others. To those writers, “Dastaan” was the real basis of Urdu fiction. If that plea was accepted, then one should not object to Farooqui’s stories, but they lacked in historiocity and also creative vision in those times, referred to in the stories; the tussle between the cultures of the West and the East had already begin, but not a trace of that phenomenon was found in them, he concluded. — Hasan Abidi