A selection of columns “Some Columns from The Daily Pakistan” by Dr. Ajaz Anwar has been brought out by the House of Nanna Ajaz Trust, Lahore.

D. Anwar is a celebrated painter, art teacher, academic, writer, columnist, and environmentalist. The main theme of his paintings is the monuments and old buildings of Lahore. He has won many accolades at the national and international levels. Dr. Ajaz is a founding member of Lahore Conservation Society and in his own words “preserving Lahore’s heritage has become a personal crusade” for him. His other well-known books are “Reminiscences of Old Lahore” and “Nahi Risaan Sheher Lahore Dian” comprising his talks in Punjabi for Radio Pakistan spread of seven years. He runs the “House of Nanna”, an informal school for art students interested in improving their artistic practice. The House houses and permanently displays water colour paintings of old Lahore and cartoons of Anwar Ali.

Late Anwar Ali was his father who happened to be a remarkable fiction writer of Punjabi language and a much-loved cartoonist of the Daily Pakistan Times, Lahore. His famous cartoon character Nanna (little one/ a child) was inspired by his own son who is none other than Ajaz Anwar. It seems creativity is in the genes. Painting and writing would be normal activities.

About his book, the author says: “This is a compilation or reprinting of the columns that appeared in the now-defunct the Pakistan Times. It started with a column that Mr. Naqqash had solicited which he printed as it was without ‘subbing’. Thrilled seeing my writing in print in the most popular paper of the country, I wrote another, a rather lengthy one…As it was read by many colleagues and friends, I started writing regularly more of them on art and architecture of the country and abroad”.

The book contains sixty-nine columns on art, architecture, and cultural history such as The Tomb of Ghias-ud-din Tughlaq, Disappearing Monuments and the Maze of Slums, Shahdara, The Glory That Was, Red Tape Laurels for Shemza, Ana Molka at Goethe Institute, Images from Behind Stained Glass, Qutab Minar, Haji Shareef, Iqbal Hussain’s Oily Colours, Basant colours Galore, Sanyal Revisit Lahore, The Upside Up Sadequain, Call for a Conservation Plan for Lahore,etc.

The book offers illuminating insights; it not only evokes our artistic past but also points to the challenges we would face in the future. It must be on the shelf of every library, private and public.

We know that Harris Khalique, a reputable poet, writer, and columnist, is bilingual; he writes in Urdu and English. His latest book of verses titled “Heraan sur-e- Bazar” published by Maktaba-e-Danyal, Karachi, shows he is trilingual as it also contains his poems in the Punjabi language, to the pleasant surprise of many. Having an equal facility in three languages is no mean feat in itself. It implies three diverse perspectives or cultural traditions enable him to look at things in multiple ways and paint the human predicament from several different angles. Each language carries a specific worldview; a language per se is much more than merely a tool of communication. The more the merrier holds ground in our socio-cultural situation where an ill-conceived monolingual model is upheld as an ideal in defiance of historical inheritance of linguistic diversity. That act of writing in a Pakistani language, Punjabi in this case, is all the more welcome as Harris’s mother language is Urdu and most of the Urdu speakers in the country spend their lives in the cocoon of cultural hubris looking down at the indigenous literary landscapes. It seems that Harris has broken the glass ceiling; he is genuinely in creative pursuit of what one may call discovering and making connections in a hugely diverse society like ours.

Cultural traditions, defiant heroes, historical personages, and above all the working and suffering peoples who inhabit this land are the stuff that inspires his creative expression. In an unassuming hard-working but exploited individual, he can discover a person of heroic proportion when placed and looked at in an actual human context. His style is minimalist in Punjabi verses. They are unpretentious and deceptively simple. Disarming simplicity of his poems conveys both immediacy and a sense of urgency. The human situation as portrayed by him stands in an urgent need of transformation that can make life livable for all. His poem “Amritsar Aa Gia a” inspired by Bisham Sahni’s story on the exodus in the wake of the Partition is full of disturbing pathos. Let’s end this piece with Harris’s short poem on our largest city. “The village I come from is Karachi where sea breezes gather / Grass and trees hardly grow over there but the people provide shade”. Don’t miss this book if you love poetry.

“Somail” is the first publication of a series designed to bring the translations of world literature and contemporary fiction of Punjabi language to the readers especially those who are satiated to bits with the saccharine poetry which seems like a wild inedible plant one fails to deadhead. It has been edited by young writers Ejaz and Risham and published by Sulaikh Book Makers, Lahore, in collaboration with Giimmi Foundation, UK. The contents have been divided into four segments; writer in focus, foreign literature, contemporary Punjabi literature, and research and criticism. In the first segment, there are six stories by Luigi Pirandello and one each by V.S. Naipaul, Alice Monroe, Richard Brautigan, Juan Rulfo, Dorothy Parker, and Betsuyaku Minoru. The translations have been done by Khalid Farhad, Hameed Razi, Vipan Gil, Muazzam Shaikh, Risham and Ejaz respectively. The quality of the translations is quite impressive which makes them delightfully readable. The second segment has stories by Khalid Fateh Muhammad, Jameel Paul, Narinjan Boha and Shehzad Aslam. The last segment has a portion of Sukirait Anand’s travelogue ‘Baatik Beetay di’, an interview of Haneef Bawa, an exposition of theory by QasimYaqub, a translation of a part of Yuval Harari’s “Sapiens” by Faisal Iqbal, and writing on shared Punjabi culture by Dr. Paramjit Singh, Mishra.

Somail is a treat for the readers with its broad literary and cultural sweep. The duo of talented Ejaz and Risham has done an excellent job. One hopes they will maintain the quality in their future publications of the series. This publication is a must for all serious readers and libraries. —

— soofi01@hotmail.com