sad news reached me as I was restlessly skimming through the pictures of my recent trip to Lahore, two months ago, in November.
It was five days packed with literary events; there were lunches, dinners and teas with Intizar sahib. He was impeccably dressed, beaming, twinkling, and narrating stories with inimitable flair.
Take a look: Writers, fans mourn the passing of literary giant Intizar Hussain
Together,
we discussed Urdu legends Muhammad Hasan Askari and Ghalib. I took too
many pictures; he scolded me affectionately. I couldn’t stop recording
those precious moments.
I was in immense awe of the enormous
vista his writing spanned. Shining prose flowed from his pen in
seemingly effortless strokes. A style that is close to speech but
distinguished by its ability to grapple complexities of literariness
with deceptive simplicity.
I was introduced to Intizar sahib’s work rather early because of my upbringing in Urdu’s jadidiyat (modernist) milieu.
As
a young girl, I was perplexed by modernist Urdu fiction and struggled
to empathise with stories that seemed to have no plot. But Intizar
sahib’s fiction stood out to me in its starkness.
For more detail The timeless story of Intizar Husain
Two days ago, I received a message from a friend in Lahore that Intizar sahib was critically ill. His kidneys had failed and he had pneumonia. My heart sank; I prayed for a miracle. The
0 comments: