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 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.

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