MAIN AINA HOON-(I AM A MIRROR)

AN OVERVIEW………..BY:-IKRAM BRELVI 

The stream of short story today is as broad as the stream of life itself.  A really comprehensive study of books of short stories could fill several five-feet shelves. To cut my work down to a handier size, I  will of course, ignore writers like Manto, Bedi, and Krishen or for that matter Ismat, Hayat Ullah Ansari, Ali Abbas Hussaini and Ghulam Abbas who, in their times, brewed tempest  in exquisite tea-parts.  By all this I mean to emphasize  that short story, like ghazal, is a very popular genre in our literature, and like ghazal, it mirrors life and love; so to say ,it has the taste of “soup” as well as the “savoury”. By this I mean the ‘real ‘and the ‘ideal’ flavours  in life and love. 

To come to the point , I mean Sultan Jamil Nasim appears to be a realist as well as an idealist in the seventeen short stories included in “MAIN AINA HOON”(I am a Mirror), and is therefore, one of the reasons he is widely  acclaimed as one of the finest short story writer of the post-partition. He, in his latest collection of short stories, is queerly akin to Ghulam Abbas in treatment and approach to his themes, and in simplicity of narration and expression, yet maintaining his own style in protesting against exploitation of man-by-man and in pleading passionately for co-existence, peace and understanding on one side, while on the other side, for the delineation of thought contents and characterization. I also like these short stories because they imbibe the grace and the tenderness as well as the sensitivity, the symbolic beauty and abstractness of ghazal. To mention some of these, I like most are “Tarka” (Heritage), “Khiyal ka Saya”(Shadow of Ecstasy), “Roshni  ka Daira”(Circle of Light), “Main Aina Hoon”(I am a Mirror)and last, but not the least, “Par Kata Farishta”(Angel with Broken Wings). 

Sometimes, Sultan Jamil Nasim, in these stories, deals with Buddha-like compassion, care and suggestiveness which links him with the mainstream of Pakistani traditions and brings out a Pakistani sub-culture and characteristics as well as  the use of

‘motjustes’, virtuosity and a thorough grip on the realities of life. 

People should, therefore, read him for pleasure, for education and edification, and for understanding of life. 

Sultan Jamil Nasim in these short stories does not stand for any “ISM” as he stands for  the man and his mission in their entirety and that is the message and hall mark of these stories in general.