MANSHA Yad, who passed away on October 15, was a leading writer of our times. He had grown as a writer in the company of those writers who were under the influence of a modernist mode of expression. Employing this style of writing, they had gone to the extent where it eventually lost its meaningfulness. For the sake of appearing modernist, they thought it necessary that their expression must be divested of all those elements which are traditionally regarded as the ingredients of a short story, a proper beginning, development leading to a climax, followed by a clear cut end.

Yad, while moving with perfect ease among these ostensibly modernist contemporaries, refused to be swayed by what was in fashion with them. He stuck to his guns and went on writing in his usual realist style, caring little that this mode of expression was being looked upon as obsolete. And in time, what was in fashion during those years gradually receded into oblivion. Eventually Yad emerged as a leading writer, attracting the attention of critics, while his modernist contemporaries seemed to lose their passion for writing.

In fact, Yad’s realist manner of writing suited the experience he was trying to capture in his stories. The experiences he wrote of were related to the rural society of Punjab wherein he seemed rooted with an overall rural sensibility. Of course, urban life too finds expression in his stories, but when writing in the background of Punjab’s rural life, Yad is in his element and writes more intimately. His rural characters are more alive and more deeply rooted in their soil and surroundings.

Yad also devised an expression of his own: his Urdu carries a tinge of Punjabi. This linguistically mixed expression is well in tune with the stories he writes. Adding to his credentials, apart from writing short stories, Yad has also written a novel in Punjabi. He loves to breathe and incorporate his rural surroundings, but at the same time he keeps up with urban life and the problems it is accompanied by.

This situation compels us to examine more closely the form he chooses for his stories. Dr Gopi Chand Narang has, in one of his articles, selected Yad’s short story “Tamasha” for study. He points out that while we find all those ingredients which form part of a traditional short story in “Tamasha”, yet it is not a traditional story. The writer, while writing in a realistic style, also employs allegories. The whole description in the story betrays signs of symbolism. The allegorical method is only a part of it; in the process of symbolic treatment, the reality undergoes a transformation and turns into what has now been termed magical realism.

Critics Dr Narang and Muzaffar Ali Syed have paid many compliments to this short story. Dr Narang in particular seems to suggest that in spite of the fact that Yad gives the impression of being a traditional short story writer, his stories carry symbolic dimensions.

There is no doubt about the fact that Yad has been very faithful to his art. Amidst the din and noise of modernism he went on writing in his own humble way and his persistence paid off well. Slowly and gradually he touched great heights, which remained inaccessible to his fellow modern short story writers. In him we have lost a fine story writer and a good soul.