“It seems like it was yesterday that I started writing and continued writing for five years,” said Abdullah Hussein about Udas Naslein, one of Urdu literature’s most famous novels.

The year 2013 marks 50 years since the publication of Udas Naslein. The Urdu Conference celebrated this milestone through a conversation with Hussain, presided over by Dr Shamim Hanfi and moderated by writer Mohammed Hanif and Arts Council’s Karachi president, Ahmed Shah.

Hanfi said that 50 years of Udas Naslein were also celebrated in India by the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University who wrote and read papers on the novel as well as on Hussain’s other works. “The novel is required reading for every student of Urdu literature,” Hanfi said.

Asked about what motivated him to write, Hussein said it was “boredom.” “People have theories about writing coming from inside you but in my case it came from having nothing to do for eight hours of the day.”

Hussein was working as a chemist at a cement factory in a remote area where he did not know anyone. After working for eight hours and sleeping for another eight, his only option was to “stare at a wall” for the remaining eight, hence he started writing. “It’s possible,” he said, “that if I lived in Karachi or Lahore I would never have started writing.”

Claiming to be weak in Urdu, Hussein said he invented words where he couldn’t think of appropriate ones and wasn’t sure if the book would be accepted by any publisher. It was accepted, of course, but on the condition that Hussein first writes a couple of short stories to familiarise readers with his name so that they buy the novel when it is published. Hussein did so, writing the short story ‘Nadi’ which was published in Sawera and immediately became famous.

Hussein said he started Udas Naslein as a love story but about 150 pages in realised that the novel is becoming something else for which he needs to research more. That took him on a fascinating journey to meet the only Indian who was awarded the Victoria Cross in World War I, Subhedar Khudadad Khan, a soldier who was retired soon after the war and lived on a small piece of land in a village which even a tonga could not access. Khudadad Khan showed Hussein books given to him by the British that mentioned the campaign in which he had fought. Being illiterate, he couldn’t read the books.

Ending the conversation on a sombre note, Hussein said that our generations are becoming “uadas say udas tar.”