KARACHI: Pen-sketches/pen-portraits from different writers were discussed at the monthly literary sitting at Irteqa with fiction writer Mustafa Karim in the chair.

Poet Jamal Naqvi read out an introductory paper defining the genre of pen-sketches. Two more papers were presented, one by Shore Sehbai and the other by Ikram Barelvi. Sehbai, having a long time association with writer Agha Sohail, penned the loving and caring character of Agha, a college lecturer (now retired) devoted to literature and teaching.

Ikram Barelvi, a “youthful octogenarian” whose creativity has never been dampened by age, read out the sketch, of a biographical nature, of Mukhtar Siddiqui who, despite being a unique and gifted poet, remains almost unacknowledged.

Mukhtar Siddiqui belonged to the very productive decade of the 1940’s, when N.M. Rashid, Faiz and many other great poets emerged on the literary scene. Introducing Mukhtar Siddiqui, Ikram mentioned many others and also painted the age that is now part of history.

Shafiq Ahmad Shafiq’s brief paper on the art of sketch writing carried the names of writers known for their sketches.

It was, however, Shahid Henai who had come with all the relevant facts on his fingertips; from the first pen-sketch in Urdu to the most published and the most translated and the most quoted in literature, he made a brief mention of them all.

Pen-sketches also expose the writer’s own inner-self. These are at times adulatory, downright flattering, others are based on true depictions of persons, the negative side couched in appropriate idioms not distasteful in the least. But during the 60s and 70s, with a wave of “realism” in literature, sketches were quite often written as if to blacken the character of persons. A controversy on the usage of English words into Urdu crept in the discussion—a topic no more popular when in the electronic media Urdu is found heavily loaded English idioms.—Hasan Abidi