THANKS to Oxford University Press (OUP), we now have at our disposal a series of selected short stories from Urdu translated into English. This series had been planned in a way that our leading short story writers, from the time of Premchand to present day, are represented in the volume; each of their selected 15 stories represent distinctive thoughts and expressions. Editor and writer Asif Farrukhi was entrusted with the task of selecting and then compiling them in a series of volumes.

So we have here a galaxy of Urdu short story writers carrying with them a rich variety of thought, vision, and styles of writing, which eventually come together to make an enriched whole.

However, I have chosen to pick up from amidst this galaxy of writers an odd man, who stands aloof from his contemporaries as well as from his predecessors because of the peculiar experience he carries with him. This experience is in relation to animals. This short story writer has a vision broad enough to see animals sharing with us much of what we call a sense of humanity. That has imparted his stories with a dimension which sharply distinguishes them from the rest of Urdu fiction. This story writer is Syed Rafiq Hussain, whose collection of selected short stories Intikhab: Syed Rafiq Hussain, published by OUP, forms part of the above mentioned series.

Hussain was born in 1895 in an educated and well-to-do family of Lucknow. But he himself was hardly a literate man as far as Urdu is concerned. He himself has confessed that he had hardly read three or four books in Urdu and could not write Urdu legibly. What he wrote was full of spelling mistakes and lacked legibility. His daughter acted as his teacher and made necessary corrections in what he wrote.

As far as his English is concerned he was well-educated and was professionally an engineer. His father Khan Bahadur Syed Jafar Hussain Musvi was an engineer and was posted as chief engineer in the Department of Canals. On one occasion he regretfully remarked that though his son is far more able an engineer as compared to him, he has failed to rise to a higher position because of his waywardness. Hussain himself admitted that he cannot afford to remain stuck for long to a job. “After doing any job efficiently I think if fit to resign and get relieved. It is for the 17th time that I have tendered my resignation and am waiting to be relieved.”

Such was this man. Even as a short story writer he did not remain long with this activity. He wrote his first story bearing the title ‘Kalua’, which was published in the monthly Saqi in 1940. His first collection of short stories was published by the Saqi Book Depot under the title Aaina-e-Hairat in 1944. This lone collection from him included only eight stories. It was in 1968 that a few more stories, hitherto unpublished, were traced and published in Jameel Jalibi’s journal Naya Daur, Karachi. They included three long short stories — ‘Neem Ki Nimkoli’, ‘Fana’, and ‘Fasana-i-Akbar’. Add to them a few articles from him.

So Hussain was fated to have a brief period of creative writing. But his brief contribution to Urdu’s tradition of short story is so precious that Urdu can hardly afford to ignore it. As for his humble confession of not being well-acquainted with the Urdu language and its “literary tradition”, Naiyer Masud has rightly reminded us that Hussain was the son of the soil of Lucknow, which is known for being a cradle of Urdu culture and language in its own refined way.

Here I will refer to his long short story ‘Neem Ki Nimkoli’. It shows us how deeply this writer was steeped in Urdu culture as it developed and flourished in the region of Lucknow. Seemingly this story is a dexterously written description of a cultured family well-rooted in this soil. On a deeper level an enriched culture is being portrayed, its finer points being highlighted.

In contradistinction to this portrait of a culture we have the OUP series of stories, where life in the jungle has been depicted in minute detail. Of course, the animals living there stand estranged from us. But there are moments when, in their behaviour, they appear very familiar to us.

For instance, mothers belonging to different species are seen behaving in the same way. And it dawns on us that a mother is one and the same regardless of which species she belongs to: whether she is a monkey or a lioness, a cow or a human.

Hussain himself admitted that he cannot afford to remain stuck for long to a job. “After doing any job efficiently I think it fit to resign and get relieved. It is for the 17th time that I have tendered my resignation and am waiting to be relieved.”

Such was this man. Even as a short story writer he did not remain long with this activity.