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A
SIGNIFICANT SHORT STORY WRITER
MANSHA YAD
BY: ASLAM SIRAJUDDIN
Born in
1937, an engineer by profession, Years back Mansha Yad helped build
Pakistan's now sprawling capital. His first short story appeared in
Ashfaque Ahmad's marvelous magazine, 'Dastango' (Taleteller)-
But before he had matured, Urdu short story was over whelmed by
hordes of 'symbols', 'metaphors' and awkwardly wrought linguistic
structures. For over a decade, the miscreant metaphors, all gone
awry were to have a field day.
Though most of the veterans stayed sane; generally to be
metaphorically insane was to excel in the sublime art of
story-telling. Overnight the readers of serious story fled to take
refuge in cheap sensational fiction. Gone were the days when a new
Manto, Bedi, Krishan Chandra or Qasimi story was eagerly awaited.
In the name of creativity shot story writers triggered the smoke
guns of confusion and draped their sordid 'art' in style, all the
while knowing that style is a relative entity, if entity at all.
Style is what is peculiar to a story. Stories neither lend nor
borrow styles. But a style flaunter finds comfort in forgetting
these facts. He is infact jealous of his own creation. He chokes the
story with style and himself wears the style badge in style.
Enters Mansha Yad. He Came, he saw and though he did not conquer,
was prudent enough to be sans style. 'Glow-worms in a closed-Fist'
was his first collection of short stories.
Though linear, skin deep, much promise in those short stories.
Naively crafted, these stories exuded a sincerity of purpose, truth
and above all a lingual exactitude which helped bring back to story
reading the lost joy which makes one grateful that one is alive.
Next appeared Manssha's, 'Skin and soil', decidedly one f the
significant few short-story collections in last two decades. It put
a print of mastery against Mansha's name. Urdu short story had in
one leap left behind 'symbolical wastes.'
Frank O'Conner has written somewhere: short story is the fiction of
submerged population groups. 'Skin and Soil' literally has many a
tale to tell of those submerged groups discontent, complainant of
the soil they tread on and were fashioned from. To keep them selves
compact, and stem the rot that is howling outside to deshape them is
'life' for the people that populate 'Skin and Soil'. What can they
make from the soil they've been destined with! Void. Destined to
dote on things not their, live under laws framed by others., their
world is cruelly deterministic. The feeling which overwhelms one
traveling through Mansha story scape is: God, what a man! He is
never shell-shocked. Stealing some micro-moment from an uneasy truce
In human fray he sits aside and starts scribing fresh scenes of a
never-to-end epic.
Void within Void,, Mansha's third collection of short stories was an
expansion of 'Skin and Soil' theme, some melancholic beings living
away a lachrymose life. Same ferreting out of love from environs
whose loves have been pilfered by birds, animals and insects.
These days Mansha is busy writing a novel. He has created not an
insignificant niche for himself n the realm of short story. Will he
be able to do the same in the vaster realm of novel? It is to be
seen. What in the end will be considered Mansha's contribution to
Urdu short story? He will be remembered as the one who restored to
stories the joy which has always essentially been associated with
their telling, reading and listening to.
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