Kaleem omar biography of barack

The tragic transformation of a literary hub.
By Khaled Ahmed

 

 

Living in Zaman Park and going to school in Dharampura, my ruling passion growing up was cricket followed by reading Urdu novels and magazines.

The early ’50s belonged to Faiz, Manto, and Abdul Hameed Adam. As literary types gathered at the Pak Tea House, I read Lail-o-Nihar edited by Sibte Hasan (and even got a letter published in it), Chattan by Shorish Kashmiri, and Tarjumanul Quran by Maududi in parallel with Parwez’s Tulu Islam. I got into Government College on the basis of cricket, ragged there by Salman “Crusher” Qureshi, whose poetry in Pieces of Eight I would later admire.

In Class 12, I and Khalid Ranjha, later Pakistan’s law minister, started versifying in English.

Sample: “How can I be gay/when you are away?” My teacher Abdul Qayyum Jojo, the thespian inspiration behind the G.C. Dramatic Club, told me my prose as written in my exam sheets was unreadable. Shoai