Which is older, poetry or storytelling? It seems both are equally old as there is no evidential certainty as to which is older.

Poetry, people believe, has been pre-eminent. Reasons are not unfathomable; structure of poetry in the absence of recording machines helped people to retain its contents in memory. Secondly, happenings and history were preserved in poetic genres for the same reason. Most of the scriptures have employed verse for its moral, spiritual and metaphysical expressions.

Invention of printing press gradually but surely transformed the entire scene. As the availability of books became common, fiction developed at a rapid pace leaving poetry far behind. Books of fiction monopolise all the front shelves of book shops and poetry has to be dug out from behind the stacks and dusted off.

Punjabi fiction had its beginnings in the 19th century and pioneers were mostly Sikh writers. Muslim and Hindu Punjabis schooled in colonial educational institutions were generally little pushed about their mother language as they had in their false consciousness declared Urdu and Hindi their mother languages respectively. History has rarely seen such a massive lie spoken by such large groups. But things are gradually changing as the writers realise the crucial significance of writing in their own language this side of the Punjab.

Among the contemporary fiction writers Naseer Ahmed has a prominent place. He is a poet as well. But what distinguishes him from others is his fiction which is as fresh as it is provocative. His latest book of short stories Ki Paatar da Jivana has been published by Ask Publications, Lahore. It has 14 stories on diverse experiences and themes. Some of his powerful stories are symbolic and have metaphorical dimensions. But surprisingly they stay clear of impotent abstraction which marks many of modern stories which pretend to be avant-garde. They effortlessly evoke the nuanced presence of the concrete. Semblance of normality in abnormality seems eerily surrealistic. In his stories what is worn out suddenly comes alive with its multiple edges. Our repeated interaction with the worn out that makes it dead for us is subverted by Naseer Ahmed by skilfully scratching its veneer and showing us how it’s organically linked with the things that constitute our actual life.

His “Angootha (A Thumb Toe)”, is a breathtakingly profound story. A thumb toe tells us the story of a man, of life lived and wasted in a society sternly driven by power hierarchy and class distinctions. It’s a tale of the wretched of the earth and of those who create wretchedness on the face of earth. It’s so vivid and magical that one feels as if one has been transformed into a toe and experiences the world from its perspective.

“Zaat di Choohi (A Mean Rate)” is another story in the similar mode that amazes you and shakes you. A female rate enters a dark and dingy temple and takes shelter in an idol to discover that it is made of dough. When she pecks at it a part of it falls. She observes what happens in the temple and around it; how caretaker’s daughter gets pregnant by nebulous young flutist and how people react when the secret is leaked. It is an expose of the hollowness of the world we have built with meticulous care and firm conviction. His stories in realistic mode are no less revealing of social sordidness that is an integral part of the sanitised space of the rich.

His story “Dozakh (Hell)” narrates the plight of a maid, a mere child, who is treated as much less than a human for being what she is, a maid. How she is forced to do chores and starved empathetically at a family wedding function makes the entire social and moral edifice come tumbling down over your head.

Poet and fiction writer Riffat Abbas rightly points out in his preface that the author while painting his creative wonderland is firmly committed to the social and cultural responsibility of a writer. “Naseer Ahmed’s stories move through difficult passes and show that weaving a story is more of a social and political endeavour than a mere creative pleasure,” he writes.

The best literary quality of Naseer Ahmed’s narratives is expressed in his being economical with the language, a virtue most of our writers lack. Saccharine expression in a florid language is what generally mars writings in our languages. There are no circumlocutions as far as his stories are concerned displaying his developed sense of language. Don’t miss these stories. They are born of a universal humanist vision.

Ibne Hasan was a teacher and academic with deep interest in philosophy, politics, and literature but first and foremost he was a Marxist who envisaged a future society free of class exploitation driven by ideals of rationality and human equality. So many in the generation that mounted the social stage in 1960s shared such a dream of universal redemption that they believed was inevitable in a transformative historical process. That it proved little more than a chimera in a world dominated by capitalism is a sad story of a grand human plan coming to naught. But it did its bit in creating an alternative vision of society, at least at the level of imagination.

Ibne Hasan died in 2012. A collection of his writings titled “Adab aur Mauruzi Haqiqat” has been published posthumously by Aks Publications, Lahore. The book has been edited by Sibgat Wain, his student, colleague and friend. His introduction traces the upward trajectory of Ibne Hasan’s intellectual development but in a slightly polemical manner. Overwhelmed by emotions for his guru, he makes a hyperbolic claim: “…I could find no one who could write a befitting preface to his works. That’s why I thought I should do it myself.” Well, what can one say? One hopes that people other than the editor would be able to understand and critique his writings. The book is divided into two parts. The first one is “Falsafiyan Pussmanzar (A Philosophical perspective) that deals with the thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Marx and Lenin. The second part Jamaliyat (Aesthetics) touches diverse subjects of aesthetics, literature and culture. Ibne Hasan’s oeuvre is a valuable addition to the repository of Marxist writings which have dwindled in number in the last three decades. The tome is for the serious readers who want to look at the world critically. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2024