LAHORE, April 29: Famed Urdu fiction writer Abdul Hameed passed away early on Friday. He was 83.

A. Hameed was admitted to the Jinnah Hospital over a month ago with medical complications like chronic asthma, pneumonia and lung damage.

The Punjab government had borne the expenditure of hospital and medicines during his ailment.

A. Hameed was born on Aug 22, 1928 at Amritsar. He received secondary education in the same city and migrated to Pakistan after partition. He joined Radio Pakistan as assistant script editor and after some years tried his luck with Voice of America.

His first collection of short stories “Manzil Manzil” won acclaim and introduced him as romantic short-story writer. He penned 200 or so books.

Besides short stories and novels, he wrote columns for national newspapers. He wrote a number of scripts for many programmes for Radio and TV, which won wide acknowledgement. One of his known books is “Urdu nasr ki dastan” in which he has given information about the prose writings of Banda Nawaz Gesu Draz, Mirza Ghalib, Dastango, Ashfaq Ahmad and Mirza Ghalib among others.

He extensively wrote for children. His play for PTV, “Ainak wala jin”, was extremely popular in the 1990’s. Moreover, his fantasy series of 100 novels for children known as “Ambar naag maria” was a real fame for him.

Short-story writer Intezar Hussain said Hameed’s writings especially his early short stories were a great contribution to Urdu literature. He said that in 1947 he and Hameed started their short-story writing career.

He said romanticism was the integral part of Hameed’s writings and he could never dissociate himself from the golden memories of Amritsar. Hameed was highly inspired by Krishan Chandar, he said.

Progressive Writers Association of Pakistan Secretary-General Hameed Akhtar said his association with A. Hameed went back to partition time. He said Hameed was the only writer who would eke out a living through writing. “I had over 60-year association with Hameed and in the last five years I used to meet him after some months,” he added.

Attaul Haq Qasmi said Hameed was among those writers who inspired him to become a writer. He said when some seven months ago the Lahore Arts Council held an evening at Alhmara, Hameed was overjoyed to see his friends around.

He said Hameed had beautifully described the characters of middle-class Kashmiri families of Amritsar in his writings. His travelogues such as “Barma ka safar” had strong element of romanticism about it, he added.

A. Hameed’s funeral was held at Samanabad’s Masjid Khizra and he was laid to rest in Miani Sahib graveyard. He is survived by widow and a son and a daughter.