Daily Times

A good tradition has been set by Basil Siddique by translating the Punjabi short stories of Dr Akhtar Shumar from his book Wailey Di Akh (The eye of time) in English in the form of a book titled Impeccable Wisdom.

I have personally known Akhtar Shumar as an established poet and educationist, being a professor at Forman Christian College. Writing columns for dailies and writing short stories in Urdu and Punjabi is his additional quality.

The short stories relate to many characters existing in our society. The first short story Khiwa is about a cobbler who had kept this name for himself as he had forgotten what name his parents had given to him. He would sit on a footpath daily in all weathers. He had his own philosophies learnt from life. About women he used to say, “A woman is a world herself. If she is out of your heart, mind and soul, you may be free from your domestic prison.”

He found happiness in repairing shoes. If he repaired one in a day, it brought him food and happiness. It was better than begging, he used to say. His philosophy was that one’s nature is turned to the nature of what one ate and one’s tongue spoke the kind of beverages one took.

The story Oven is about five friends Jajji, Jaida, Chairman, Joora and Sheeda; town folks living in the same street. They come across Peeno; a new inhabitant in the street with a young son. Peeno seemed broad minded and did not mind inculcating with these youngsters. She was 40 but could easily pass for being 25. Sheeda, the bread maker, falls for her. The news of Sheeda marrying her comes out as shocking to his friends. They grumble and make stories. In order to get rid of his friends, Sheeda too makes up a story that his wife is suffering from AIDS and that he was about to divorce her. As luck would have it, one day his wife actually falls ill and when doctors examine her she is diagnosed with AIDS and so is Sheeda.

Akhtar Shumar’s personal insight and divination over the distorted and rotten social fabric of Pakistan is beyond limits of imagination.

The story Impeccable Wisdom is about a PhD scholar falling for a woman called Rose in a conference only to be informed later that she was a robot. The story Aura relates to an old man Baba Chiragh who had come from Kashmir and had been isolated in a house outside the village as he was accused of molesting a girl. When approached, he reveals that Patwari’s daughter had fallen in love with the villager Lambardar’s son who had dishonoured her.

When Akhtar Shumar worked in Cairo, he received a letter from Waqar Shah of Taxila that he was in awe of actress Madhuri Dixit. Akhtar had befriended Shah through an exchange of letters. Once on way from Rawalpindi, he asks Shah to see him in Taxila where Shah explains of his infatuation with the Hindu actress. Shumar quotes a couplet that says, “Yaar Kare Jad Apna Tenu, Chuttan Hore Ashnaaian, Maan Payo Sajjan Yaad Na Rehsan, Hirs Na Behnaan Bhaaian” (When your lover takes over you as such, all the other relations are dismantled: You neither remember your mother, father and closest buddies nor wish to keep relations with your sisters and brothers). Shumar’s study of Sufi poetry, his paradigm of personality in spiritualism and moral atonement has been used extensively in his stories like in this one.

Due to his few years stay in Cairo, Akhtar Shumar came across his students extensively and shared their personal problems also. It is surprising to note that the social norms and taboos are also ruining lives of youngsters in that country like in the subcontinent. The story Fantasy Cottage tells why a young boy commits suicide as he cannot buy a small house for his bride-to-be. The other stories also touch upon similar social issues by the author ably translated by Basil Siddique.