Bahawalpur Main Ajnabi: a book review by Javed Khan

By Javed Khan

Believe it or not, man is a traveler from eternity. He is on travel from his birth to the next destination.

And this was a common belief not only in Semitic religions but also Aryan. According to those religions, we all will go to heaven after death.

Such belief is continuing to this day. The philosophy of transmigration of souls says that man has many births and he comes and lives in different forms in different births.

It is a fact that man is extremely attached to his past. Countless human beings have come and gone on this shell (earth), and some are passing.

Many have yet to pass. Many civilizations have risen on this earth and been buried in the dust.

Curious to find them around, people of later times kept wandering on this earth.

The proof of this search is in many forms of collected knowledge such as old manuscripts, huge piles of books, impressions, libraries, and historic buildings standing on the chest of the earth.

Why the mankind loves the past so much? Maybe, curiosity, passion, and quest often cling to it.

This knot will probably be solved by someone in the future, it could be another Freud of his time.

I have got this book titled “Bahawalpur Main Ajnabi” in my hands which is written by Mazhar Iqbal Mazhar. The book is divided into two parts.

The first part is based on the author’s brief stay in Bahawalpur, which includes a tour of the present city of Bahawalpur.

It mainly features the old city which he himself calls the city of Nawabs- the royal family of the state of Bahawalpur.

And the second part consists of two beautiful short stories. If I could say from the heart, these two short stories (afsanay) are also flowing in the spirit of the first half of the book namely journey.

Man is a mixture of emotions. For him (author), the flow of emotions and thoughts is also a journey.

Misery and poverty in society, caste system, ups and downs of a peculiar mindset, economic inequalities, civilization, and culture; all these external factors create a sea of ​​contradictions as they rake up in one’s self.

These contradictions create a commotion.

It is the character of a sea that can bear the brunt of its own tumultuous nature.

Yet, it is not possible for a sensitive human being to face such an unrestrained flow of emotions without having an impact on his own personality.

All these external factors bind a sensitive person. Then they find a direction for him and set out on a journey. This journey becomes a journey of creation.

Mazhar’s journey of creation is predictable. He writes about what he sees in the life around him.

Such as, in the short story titled “Aik boond pani”, it is the journey of his soul that witnesses the sighs of sobbing humanity and dying wells in the villages spread all over the map of the Thar desert.

He portrays the true passions of the Eastern civilization in his short story ‘Dil Mandir’.

In the journey to Bahawalpur, the author travels alone but he keeps his homeland with him.

The childhood memories of Kashmiri pears, Kashmiri students in Bahawalpur, the identity campaign of the Bahawalpur region, and the destiny of the Seraikis and Kashmiris.

Pick any topic from this book and you will find a loving reference somewhere to his ancestral land.

His memories are fragrant with a deep sense of belonging to his homeland as he instantaneously paints a grim picture of those memories.

The author, occasionally, makes strong and blunt references to the shackled history of Kashmiris.

Such as there is a bitter truth in this sentence and it is a very strong thought.

“Apart from nationalism and patriotism, the singers of Islamism, Annexism ( the annexation of Kashmir), communism, and countless other ideologies are still receiving praise for their committed and melodious tone”. Not everyone can swallow it easily.  

Bahawalpur has many colors. Inside Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur’s sweet Seraiki language, culture, Nawabi era architecture, cultural heritage, and the Sarafa (Jewellers) market, all these colors have been presented by the author in his book by painting a glorious picture of this city.

By reading the book, it seems as if you have reached the Nawabi era of Bahawalpur.

The red-brick buildings of the Nawabi era, luxury lifestyle, stories of the Nawabi era, everything in this book takes you on a journey.

Even after reading the two stories in the book ‘Dil Mandir’ and ‘Ek boond Pani’, it seems that the impression of desert life is deep in the author’s subconscious.

Especially the story ‘Dil Mandir’ is full of romantic and eastern atmosphere.

There is such a strong focus on detail and painting in every scene that not a single place in the story can be counted as just fiction, it’s more than that.

About the writer

Javed Khan is an author, environmentalist, and teacher.

The terrible demise of books

/ By Mayeda Shafique /

15 million copies sold? For a few moments, my eyes were transfixed on the statement written on the title page of the book.

The book was in my hand but the mind was baffled. In this age of social media, people read books to such an extent. Do they really exist?

Yes, the nations who are alive, never let the books die and never let their minds rusted. The death of books can only be attributed to those nations who are willing to die before real death. Such death is so terrible that we would have bodies wandering without souls around us.

Books are the source of refining and beautifying souls. The four holy books sent by God justify that books are the food for the soul. Books are so powerful that they are used by our Creator to prove His existence.

The first word revealed on our prophet was ‘Iqra” which means “Read”.Alas, the book in my hand is not the asset of any Muslim country, is not of the nation whose religion is based upon the floor of knowledge.

In fact, hardly 500 copies of a new book are sold in Pakistan and Kashmir. The book reading culture in the youth of Pakistan and Kashmir is dying and totally messed up by social media.

This is a concerning point for us all. Will Facebook and YouTube groom our generations ethically and spiritually?

A particular concern is the references of knowledge shared on these platforms which are not valid. Even the wrong verses of the Quran are forwarded as nobody knows about them.

And nobody bothers to understand the divine book. To study things means to understand them. Whereas, our generation is totally out of it.

Ethics and values are the outcomes of literature. Without literature, we are upbringing a nation that is morally disintegrated and spiritually demoralized. Books create the people of understanding.

Lack of understanding is the core reason for messing up our social relations in society. Books have the power to boost emotional intelligence in order to decorate our lives with peace.
What is left in us?, If we exclude values and ethics from ourselves?

The shameful answer is the animal being ….!This is the bitter truth that without books our generations will take an inhumane form. The form which will be lacking intellectual thinking.

This non-intellectual perspective about life will make our nation the slave of their desires and they will be unable to do any constructive work which can be marked on the map of history. Such nations who are unable to create their identities become the prey of the ruling nations and rolls themselves in chains of such slavery which eradicates their identities from the map of the world.

Standing in a corner of a book store in Canada gazing upon the words “15 million copies sold……! “, I was asking myself: “Can we do any struggle to save our generation from such ethical and spiritual demise?” “Can we be able to revive book culture by gifting books to the kids and youth of Pakistan and Kashmir?” or we will still keep sitting silently watching terrible intimidation of our innocent and beautiful faces whose eyes have a thirst for guidance.

In the future, we can expect a complaint from them that where you have been the intellectual souls? Why didn’t you guide us to the path of intellectualism? Why were you so self-centred?

Can we be able to face the greatest reformer, teacher, and guide of our souls the Last Prophet (SAW) on the day of Judgement who told us that we are the best Ummah raised for calling towards knowledge and truth and forbidding from evil?

About the writer:

Mayeda Shafique is an author, educationist, and novelist. She is the first female novelist of Azad Kashmir. She belongs to an educated family of Abbaspur-a border town located along the Line of Control. She has been writing articles for different English and Urdu newspapers. She has worked as a curriculum specialist and as a teacher trainer with the International University Pakistan. She did her Masters in English Literature and Linguistics from the National University of Modern Languages Islamabad and Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) in Linguistics from the Women University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Mayeda aims to promote book culture to build strong characters in the youth of the Kashmiri Nation regarding faith, morality, and human ethics. She is Pattern of ‘Private Literary Association’ which is a literary forum working in collaboration with private schools in Abbaspur, Poonch Azad’s Kashmir.