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Birthplace the soul of his works

None | ByShams Ur Rehman Alavi, Bhopal
Dec 25, 2006 04:18 PM IST

GEOGRAPHICALLY, HE lives hundreds of kilometres away from his hometown. But he maintains contact with his birthplace through his stories and verses. In fact, he lives and breathes his place of birth through his works.

GEOGRAPHICALLY, HE lives hundreds of kilometres away from his hometown. But he maintains contact with his birthplace through his stories and verses. In fact, he lives and breathes his place of birth through his works.

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Renowned Urdu litterateur from Pakistan Asad Muhammad Khan, now on a visit to his place of birth after two decades, says “Bhopal throbs in me and I don’t feel nostalgic when I am away because my connection with my birthplace never got severed at all.”

His stories —  ‘Basode ki Maryam’, ‘Mai Dada’ and songs like ‘Vindhyachal ki Aatma’ are not only set in the region but also mirror the culture of Bhopal and Malwa with finesse.

As for his command over the dialect of rural Madhya Pradesh and the portrayal of characters that have become immortal, Khan said, “I have a rural man within me and apart from the fact that we used to spend summer holidays in rural areas during childhood, the ‘lok geet’, which I heard then kept me grounded”.

Born in 1932, Khan was then a member of the banned Communist Party in his teens and was arrested. Later, elders in the family sent him to live with his brother who was studying in Lahore then.

I consciously avoided ghazal and turned to Nazm for expression, says the acclaimed writer, whose ‘Nau Manzila Imarat’ is considered among the foremost modern Urdu Nazms and is part of syllabus in many Indian universities.

The Partition failed to create schism in my mind or heart. “Later I started writing stories because prose gave me much wider canvas, freedom of style and expression besides the liberty to protest,” he said.

His stories that subtly exposed the authoritarian regimes in the 70s and 80s have been acclaimed and translated in many languages. Regarding the literary scenario in India vis-à-vis Pakistan, Khan says that Hindi story has taken a leap forward in the last three decades. He is in touch with Hindi writers and reads works in other regional languages through English translations.

“I am fond of Rajesh Joshi’s poetry and I can also see Bhopal alive in his verses.” “Hindi writers call a spade a spade while Urdu writers are not as direct.” However, when it comes to short stories, Khan is all praise for Urdu writer Naiyer Masud.

To an ordinary reader and writer, politics does not matter much and people read literature from the other country with an open mind.

“I am not a literary chauvinist and believe that language should not be made difficult. That’s why I don’t like either the Ulema’s Urdu or the Doordarshan’s Hindi.” Besides his forthcoming omnibus, another upcoming novel has been set in Bhopal’s Mahamai ka Bagh.

“I visited Banganga recently and was horrified to see the extent of damage to the place that was like a ‘jannat ka tukda’ in my adolescent years. “In Pakistan, minorities enjoy full rights and have representation in all spheres, he says, citing examples like the appointment of a Hindu as Chief Justice of Pakistan sometime back.

 

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