Daily Times

Mazda Ali in an article titled ‘Urban Stress & Mental Health’ published on November 2011, states that urban living is not only about getting older; it is also about taking more stress. Stress is the unspecific physiological and psychological reaction to perceived threats to our physical, psychological or social integrity. And urban living can be threatening if you haven’t enough space of your own. Stress increases with the anticipation of adverse situations and the fear of not having the adequate resources to respond to them. Muhammad Jawwad’s first three stories in his latest short stories’ book titled Guzre Dinon Ka Qissa published by Nigarshat Publishers, Lahore concentrates on the mental pressures of the urban way of living.

In the first story titled ‘Nai Zindigi’ (new life) an office going man is fed up of daily monotonous humbug of life and yearns all the time for a new life. The story ‘Ik Muthi Aasmaan’ (a handful of sky) revolves around Zafar who comes across his college-love Sarwat after many years. They meet. He starts feeling young again. Both realise they are not what they looked or felt like two decades ago. Zafar ends up in the lap of his wife. The story titled ‘Mulaqat’ (meeting) is about Aqeel’s wife imagining her dead mother and grandmother in the house. Aqeel believed that his wife saw her dead ones only when she desired to do so. One fine day Aqeel saw his wife with a satisfied look on her face. Upon enquiring she responded that her grandmother had met her and told her that all her daily worries were part of this world.

Perhaps Jawwad knew that his best story in the book was ‘Guzre Dinon Ka Qissa’ (the story of bygone days) that is why he gave this title to his collection of 29 short stories. It is a story of child-love that keeps the man alive all his life. The young girl’s touch while playing together haunts him. This plot somehow reminds me of Mahboob Khan’s movie ‘Deedaar’. An interview of Mrs Jaffery, a beautiful widow of the deceased poet Jaffery in the story ‘Yaad Uski Itni Khoob Nahi’ (her memory is not all that good) is as hilarious as Mrs Jaffery’s cough and laughter after narrating every anecdote of her life with her late poet-husband. All she remembered was a smile beyond agony and the ecstasy on her husband’s face during the days prior to his demise. Perhaps Jawwad has not met Shafiqa Nasir Kazmi, wife of poet Nasir Kazmi, who not only worked in the education department but also brought up her two sons wonderfully groomed into responsible educated persons of this society.

A question arises whether we need to prepare ourselves for a more urbanised and for a more depressed world? Nonetheless, considering the neuro-scientific approach to the topic of cities is essential, as from it we can start to understand how city living affects inhabitants’ brain biology and could therefore influence the risk for developing mental disorders. Jawwad’s story ‘Maya’ (wealth) revolves around one such urbanite looking for his house, two decades after returning from abroad. He gets baffled when developments like the Metro Bus and underpasses have ruined his memories. He had not realised that this rapid pace of urbanisation has become an important marker of the societal transition at large that had occurred since he left his country. But urban living is not only about getting older; it is also about getting stressed.

Theme of the story ‘Kutch Doston Se Guftagu’ (a conversation with some friends) is about an urbanite who is all the time acting on the advice of his friends to become a good citizen and by doing so ends up in a chaotic brain-situation due to too much discipline in his life and trying to look good in everybody else’s mind. Colian Ellard’s research looks at what stress does to the body? Our organism has two major hormonal stress systems, the quick responding autonomic nervous system, which controls the release of noradrenaline and adrenaline, and the somewhat slower hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical system, which is responsible for the release of cortisol, the ‘stress hormone’. Roughly speaking, the quick system prepares us to react immediately whereas the slow system’s reaction depends on the perceived danger of the situation. Jameel, a character in the story ‘Neem-classical’, a term borrowed by Jawwad who is also a classical singer, desires to keep semi-classical relationship with Suraiya that becomes a disastrous approach for him due to its non-decisive nature. The short story ‘Mubtila’ (involved) again leaves the main character confused and that of an indecisive nature because of stresses of urban life, traffic jams or even noise. The theme of the latter half of the book tilts towards spiritualism and psychology.