Javed Boota’s book of short stories Chaulan di Burki (A mouthful of Rice) has recently been published by Kitab Trinjan, Lahore.

Javed Boota is a US-based fiction writer, translator, transliterator, and literary editor. He has translated Hindi writer Yushpal’s remarkable novel Jhuta Sach on the Partition in two volumes into Punjabi. The translation vividly evokes pre- and post-Partition life in Lahore and India. He also rendered Krishna Sobati’s highly readable novella Mitro Marr Jaani into Punjabi. He translated 20 short stories from Hindi. His lauded translation of Chekov’s play Proposal has been part of the syllabus at one of the institutes of higher learning in Lahore. He has transliterated many literary works from Gurmukhi script to Shahmukhi which included selected poetry of Pash, Veena Varma’s book of short stories Mull di Tivein, Rushpal Singh Ojla’s book of poems Shikra and Ravindar Sahra’s poetry titled Kujh Nah Kaho.

His latest book Chaulan di Burki contains 17 stories dealing with diverse experiences. He mostly builds his stories from the people’s perspective which means exploring life as lived and experienced by ordinary people. This choice imperceptibly forces him to deal with concrete life with all its mundanity. Life, ordinary and extraordinary, can never be a sanitised chunk. Conflicts, paradoxes, miseries, and joys make it what it is. And the element of the unexpected which is always there at social and individual levels makes it unpredictable but worth living. Even the worst sufferings can’t kill zest for living. Individuals and groups live sustained by hope because the act of living itself outweighs all the unhappiness they encounter.

In the book Ustad Shgird and Chaulan di Burki, Javed’s two stories really stand out. The former deals with an erotic experience of a young individual and the latter with the terrible suffering of an aged individual inflicted by the bloodied division of Punjab in 1947. Both the stories leave a powerful impact on the readers. The end of each story can almost overwhelm you because of its disturbingly emotional charge. A boy provoked by an indiscreet portrait of a woman plunges into a neurotic obsession with the female body. An image of an aged lady in East Punjab who breaks down while hosting a guest from West Punjab due to the volcanic outpouring of an unbearable pain that accompanied the Partition is extremely disturbing.

Javed is a realist who employs his literary skills to create a traditional narrative with a dose of social consciousness but keeps clear of propaganda. A traditional narrative has its advantages and disadvantages; it can help boost effortless communication, but it can also come down to a statement level. Javed’s forte is his vast experience of day-to-day life of common people and an impressive grasp of the language. His literary idiom is chaste and yet close to natural speech which he can rightly be proud of. It can also be smutty at times. He is nearly as natural as life that can spring many a surprise. His is a highly readable book. It should be on the shelves of all the public and private libraries.

We also have Shahzad Aslam’s short stories titled Daryavan de Haani published by Sanjh Publications, Lahore. The blurb says that he is associated with the legal profession and “writing stories is fun for him”. One wonders how to take this facetious remark? It becomes especially difficult to take it seriously as one finds different stuff in his book of gravitas. The book has stories, some short and some very short, which fall in the category of flash fiction. Repression, deprivation, class and caste biases, and denial of human dignity are some of the themes we come across in the book. His stories can neatly be divided into two categories; symbolic and traditional. The story Ulti is the best example of the former while Daryavan de Haani is a specimen of the latter. The first story very forcefully exposes the mechanism of repression employed by social structures to control the individual. The absence of freedom, alienation, loss of individuality, and denial of dignity can create an excruciatingly agonising ordeal for the individual who finds no option other than identifying with a slaughtered goat. The goat for him emerges as his doppelganger. The helplessness of a sacrificial goat placed in a human situation breeds existential crisis accompanied by anguish making him an angsty outsider. It’s a good narrative that leaves a deep impact.

Daryavan de Haani is a traditional narrative that beautifully delineates the lives of our nomads, the wretched of the earth. These ancient rovers have continued to stubbornly exist on the margins. It’s an exploration of a younger generation of nomads struggling to integrate with the urban society that treats them as pariahs. Young nomads’ subsequent failure appears to be a failure of the so-called civilised society and is also its scathingly damning indictment. The material at the author’s disposal had all the ingredients that would have made it a great story but two things mar it. One, the author drops his guard and becomes careless regarding the selective principle. Overwhelmed by his passion, he over-stresses what needs to be said with restraint. He stuffs the narrative with unnecessary details especially sub-stories and anecdotes that aren’t organically linked with the plot or characters. Thus frills dilute the impact. Two, his frequent detailed references to some of the living individuals bring the narrative down at times to the level of reportage. The reality of the fictional world may be impervious to the charms of facts. But still, the story is powerful and highly readable. Another sensitively written story is Lash. It skillfully explores the psychological interior of a young man of a barber family which in our social hierarchy is at the bottom rung. The thought of so-called honour killing becomes his obsession because of his sister’s beauty in a village where a young lot of the influential covet her. The brother imperceptibly develops a nagging doubt about his sister’s character without any credible evidence. His psychological tension rattles him so much that he prepares to kill his sister on mere suspicion. The moment he is about to stab her, the visual of his young beautiful sister in her sleep makes him throw up his arms. Realisation of human beauty coupled with familial feeling enables him to exculpate himself from the guilt of contemplated femicide induced by the ruling cultural values. Shahzad’s book should be a must read. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2022