Masood Ashar – who passed away in Lahore on July 5 last week at the age of 90 – was not among those short-story writers who establish their authority in the very beginning. He did not display swiftness in writing short stories but established his mark gradually. His short stories are unique in the matter of selection of themes, storytelling technique and their treatment. They appear prominently among contemporary short stories with regard to their manner and finesse. His expression of the existential condition of the individual and the struggle with society forces one to think.

The act of raising questions was of fundamental importance for him. He wrote on the flap of his first collection Aankhon Par Donon Haath (Both Hands Over Eyes): ‘These are not stories but questions. Questions which I keep asking myself, at various times, on various occasions; conversations that I have had with myself and keep having. Those dreams, generally scary dreams which I have seen and keep seeing…I will insist definitely on this thing that these stories have become the means for my own psychoanalysis. I have achieved catharsis through them and have faced sometimes mental peace and sometimes further emotional anxiety…’

He wrote at the end of this passage:

‘The faster the speed of a question emerging in the mind, the need for talking to oneself and with respect to one’s self with the collective and society also assumes the same intensity. These stories have been written to fulfil this same single requirement. But the whole problem is that this requirement is never fulfilled…’

Despite his entire manner of caution, Ashar sahib remained within the ranks of distinguished short-story writers of Urdu till the very end.

Ashar sahib began writing poetry in his adolescence. The eminent poet Shad Arfi was a friend of his paternal uncle’s. He used to participate in literary gatherings at the latter’s house. The pen name of Ashar sahib was very much bestowed by Shad Arfi.

A few poems from the initial poetry were published in the journals of that period, including in Adabi Dunya and Alhamra, but this series did not continue. Ashar sahib wrote his first short story in the days of youth. Khaleej Aur Badh Gayi (The Gulf Widened Further) was the title of this short story published in 1948 in the journal Fasana of Allahabad which was edited by Balwant Singh and Siddiqa Begum Seoharvi. After this, just one short story was published in Adab-e-Latif and another one in Afkar. But these works from the first offspring remained very much the only ones and after this, he did not turn his attention towards this for a really long period. In 1964, he wrote a short story on the demand of a literary gathering of Multan to be read there, which was published with the title of Aaraaf (Purgatory) in Savera, Lahore under the editorship of M Saleemur Rahman.

Apart from classical literature, he read the Angry Young Men of England and the Beat Generation of the United States with great attention and acknowledged their deep influence. His work was too expressive of the tumultuous changes of this period. But rather than maintaining a link with some peculiar style, he remained convinced of experiments and innovation while staying close to contemporary demands.

It appears that his work was made of a combination of the colours of amazement and anxiety. The short stories written from 1964 to 1974 were published under the title of Aankhon Par Donon Haath. Intizar Hussain wrote about the short stories included in this collection:

‘This is the story that I met in the period 1970 – 1971, and I felt that the upheaval which has wrapped us, if it has been expressed anywhere at a creative level, then that is the short story of Masood Ashar. Whatever happened on the surface of the external, happened. But here it seems that a bigger tragedy has passed at the surface of the internal: a bigger fall than the fall of Dhaka. The whole map is scattered. The pictures, incomplete and unclear. It seems we are walking in the darkness. Again and again, some painful question cuts the path.’

His Saare Fasane (All Stories), that came out in 1987, was published in Lahore. It consists of the admiring opinion of Intizar Hussain associated with the present circumstances. At the beginning of the book, the writer has not taken up any other special matter, but has questioned himself:

‘One question I too will put to myself. Why did I write only short stories in the long period of 20, 22 years after all? Many collections should indeed have come in this period. But around the world so much more and so well is being written and has been written that all of that does not give me the leisure to answer this question. I think a lot to write but some book, some journal, some film and some person – yes it also includes humans – snatches my time from me and I say why not read something in the time that is left.’

In this sequence, a third collection Apna Ghar (My Own House) was published in 2004 from Lahore and the title of this collection was named after the short story that is perhaps his longest composition. His fourth and last collection of short stories Sawal Kahani (Question Story) came out last year, while his pen-sketches are under publication as I write this piece. He translated many books into Urdu, prominent among them were Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and Silence by Sh saku End .

Despite being a fellow Lahori living at a distance of a mere 15 minutes from my own home, my meetings with him remained too scattered to be meaningful. Perhaps I was too deferential or intimidated by his seniority and stature. My first interactions with him were as a 20-something Bachelor’s student and budding communist in the late 1990s when I used to visit the Mashal offices opposite Barkat Market in Garden Town to peruse their latest translations. I always used to see a white-haired, bespectacled, genial person seated behind a table who looked like a salesman at worst and a loving grandfather at best. In later years, I would think that he looked too important and genial to be a mere salesman and I revised my former opinion of him. Our interactions increased many years later when as president of the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) in Lahore, I would regularly invite him at the Pak Tea House to preside over our usually literary functions celebrating the centenaries of important writers like Manto, Bedi, Krishan Chander, Bhisham Sahni, Ismat Chughtai, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, etc. I was quite amazed to find out that he actually read my plebeian literary essays in The Friday Times and whenever he met me somewhere, he would openly say to my face, ‘Are bhai tum toa bohat kaam karte ho!’ and I would become all shame-faced in the presence of so many people at such effusive praise from such a great writer as himself. He once even wrote about my contribution to the PWA centenary seminar on Rajinder Singh Bedi in his widely-read column when he did not need to. The purpose of mentioning this here is not to blow my own trumpet but to share that among his generation, some people did still possess the magnanimity to read and encourage younger writers, who wrote albeit in a colonial language.

I also remember when in August 2019, we had invited him to preside over a function remembering the great communist poet Makhdoom Mohiuddin on his 50^th death anniversary at the PWA, it was my pleasant task to pick him up and drop him off. The problem was that I had already been invited for an hour-long talk at another venue before that event. Would Masood sahib mind not only being picked up so early from his home but also sit through my boring diatribe on ‘Kashmir in the Literary Imagination?’ He kindly consented and it was during the drive to that particular talk that he actually asked me why – a young man with so many diversions and distractions in this day and age – was I so attracted to the Progressive thought, even though, unlike the former’s own youthful days, the Progressive Movement was no longer the force it once was? I remember I actually had to think of an answer convincing enough to impress him.

Another thing I found out as my interactions with him increased was that he would not actually treat me as a junior and whether it was one of his better interlocutors like the late Asif Farrukhi, or a young literary upstart like myself, he would use the directly personal Tum and not the more informal Aap.

When his last book came out, he inboxed me a personally inscribed copy, saying I should stop writing about dead people and review his book instead.

I am so ashamed Ashar sahib, I did read the book and I enjoyed it very much, but I kept waiting to read your other work in order to write a more comprehensive assessment of your works. Alas, that moment never came.

It was partly as a result of immense guilt emanating out of this that I called him in February this year after learning that he had had a fall, requesting some time to interview him for your 90^th birthday. I was finally able to visit him on February 12 for a three to four hour-long sitting in which we talked about everything from his early childhood in Rampur to his literary and journalistic lives, his opinions about classic and contemporary writers, the status and survival of Urdu, etc.

I will always cherish two things from my long one-to-one sitting with Ashar sahib that balmy February morning. One, his message for the younger generations: ‘live a good life and have a link with good art.’ Secondly, I asked for his permission to translate one of his classic short stories on Bangladesh into Urdu, given that this is the year of the golden jubilee of Bangladesh, to which he graciously agreed. When I suggested that it was probably time to write his memoirs, he dismissed it smilingly with a wave of his hand saying that he had done enough.

I would like to end this tribute with a verse of the distinguished poet Anwar Shaoor, which occurs in the ‘Last Word’ at the end of Sawal Kahani; one that Ashar sahib used to say described him best.

Tasaahul aik mushkil lafz hai, is lafz ka matlab/ Kitabon mein kahan dhoondhoon, kisi se pooch loonga main

(Laziness is a difficult word, its meaning/ I will ask somebody, I cannot find in any books by gleaning)

Note: All translations are by the writer.

The writer is a Pakistani social scientist and award-winning translator and dramatic reader based in Lahore, where he is also the president of the Progressive Writers Association. He can be reached at razanaeem@hotmail.com