An understatement: time flies. Only a year ago, on June 1, 2020 to be precise, Dr Asif Farrukhi — the renowned writer, translator, publisher and one of the founding members of the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) — died of a heart attack in Karachi.

At the time, the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic had not completely subsided. A year later, while we are in the midst of its third and arguably more lethal wave, avid readers of Urdu literature in particular, and world literature in general, have not yet come to terms with Farrukhi’s passing. His absence from the literary world is conspicuous; to a certain extent, painful.

It was but natural that a decent number of events would be held on the first anniversary of his death to pay homage to him. At one such programme at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, a book titled Majmua-i-Asif Farrukhi: Afsaanvi [Collected Works of Asif Farrukhi: Short Stories] compiled by Rukhsana Parveen — who is a lecturer of Urdu at Government Emerson College in Multan — was unveiled. If the word ‘untimely’ was accurately used to describe the eminent writer’s death, then its opposite, ‘timely’, can be perfectly employed to celebrate the arrival of this book. Why? The answer is that it is a compilation of all of the afsaanay [short stories] in eight volumes that Farrukhi had penned — a cerebral treat.

Speaking on the occasion during the event at which the book was unveiled, a critic urged that there was a need for revisiting the author’s stories anew. After going through this treasure trove, one feels that there is a reason why due attention was not paid to these extremely incisive and poignant tales and why now they will be read with undivided attention.

In his lifetime, Farrukhi had become a larger-than-life figure. He was a master of multitasking and, whatever he did, he did with flair and elegance. The magazine that he edited, Duniyazaad; the publishing house that he ran, Scheherezade; and the literary festival that he founded, had turned him into a colossus that many looked up to — some with a degree of envy. This pushed his creative work, namely his short stories, to the sidelines. Today, one hopes that they will be read with the kind of unwavering concentration that they merit.

A book of Asif Farrukhi’s short stories, released on his first death anniversary, is a timely reminder of his oft-overlooked creative prowess

Describing the genesis of Majmua-i-Asif Farrukhi, Parveen writes in the preface: “In 2014, I wrote my MPhil research paper on Asif Farrukhi’s short stories. If, on the one hand, it was hard to find some of his material, on the other it developed in me an interest in his tales and I decided to compile his complete works. Doing that, I kept the contents of the stories in mind and sought Farrukhi’s help (when he was alive) if I hit a snag ... I did that keeping in mind the modern trends in research and included his story Ban Ke [To Be], which was hitherto unpublished, as the last story in the book. He helped me every step of the way.

“I’d also like to thank Dr Fatema Hassan who not only gave me her valued opinion on the subject, but also gave me two of his stories — Aadmi [Man], which was published in 1979, and Khaali Makaan Mein Reh Jaaney Waaley [Those Left Behind in Empty Houses] (2019).”

Back to the stories put together in the book! For sure, readers of Urdu literature and admirers of Farrukhi would have read most, if not all, of them. Since it is no less than eight sets of tales that are on offer, it will be difficult to chance upon a thread that stitches them together thematically. This is because they have been written in different time periods and at various stages of his life. In those times, the world changed rapidly, both in terms of externality and within the writer’s personal life.

The one feature of his writing, though, which can be referred to as a contextual link between all these stories, is his awareness of this very fact — that the world is changing at breakneck speed, especially with reference to technological development — and his fondness for tradition (rivayat). The second part — tradition — is extremely important to understand in two senses: one, Farrukhi belonged to a renowned literary family; his father Dr Aslam Farrukhi, grandfather Deputy Nazir Ahmed and maternal uncle Shahid Ahmed Dehalvi were all writers of formidable repute.

The second was his fondness for his mother tongue, Urdu, all its idiomatic flamboyance and the history of fable-rich written and oral forms of storytelling associated with the language. The first set of short fiction published in 1979 — yes, when Farrukhi was barely 20 years of age — contains ample proof to endorse this observation.

There are pieces in it, such as Shaitaan Ka Charkha [The Devil’s Spinning Wheel], that speak of a constantly transforming world, with inventions such as the television, but the narration bristles with Urdu expressions that people from pre-Partition Uttar Pradesh (UP) in India could not do without. Critics, perhaps, did not pay enough attention to Farrukhi’s narrative prowess when he started out as a fictionist because his father was a master writer and they always judged him by that yardstick.

In his later stories, the charm of the language remained the same, but there was a definite evolution as far as subject matter went. Farrukhi was taken with the city he lived in — Karachi — and the trappings of an urban culture that was bringing with it a new array of norms. The city meant multiple things to him: urbanity, migration, assimilation — or the lack of it — ethnic strife and political unrest etc.

This enabled him to create masterpieces such as ‘Samandar Ki Beemari’ [The Sickness of the Sea] from the eighth set of stories, Merey Din Guzar Rahey Hain [My Days are Passing]. Another remarkable thing that he did, which completely went unnoticed, was that he wove the contemporariness of this new unstoppable culture — fast food, superheroes etc — seamlessly into his plots as metaphors of an atmosphere which was, and still is, global in essence, but local in approach. The story ‘McArabia’ is an example of it.

Mind you, the one thing that stayed steady and beautifully unalterable all this while — meaning throughout the composition of these works of fiction — was the charming use of the Urdu language. Farrukhi is a storyteller for whom the medium becomes the message, without the latter getting overwhelmed by the former.

The reviewer is a member of staff. He tweets @SalmanUnCool

Majmua-i-Asif Farrukhi: Afsaanvi
Compiled by Rukhsana Parveen
Fiction House, Lahore
ISBN: 978-9695629024
784pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 27th, 2021