HE session`Narrative Forms in Urdu Fiction and Poetry` was one of the few sessions devoted to Urdu literature at the LLE Panellists were writers Khalid Toor, Ali Akbar Natig and Musharraf Ali Faroogi.

Toor has worked as a producer at Radio Pakistan for most of his life, but has been recently re-discovered as a prose writer with critical acclaim. His work has spanned over 30 years, but up until now he has remained strangely elusive to fame. Natig is foremost a poet, but has recently written his first collection of short stories, Qaim Deen. Musharraf Ali Faroogi, albeit an English writer, has a history, both personal and professional, with Urdu literature and is a prolific translator of Urdu classics into English.

The loosely structured session began with the moderator Ali Madeeh Hashmi asking what narrative meant to each writer. Toor gave a fantastic answer, saying that when a story breathes subjectivity is when it transforms into a narrative. On the other hand, Natig used the dastan to illustrate his thoughts about narrative.

According to him, the reader wants a story to be told -he/she wants to be enthralled by a narrative which, much like the dastan, has a real story to tell and is not constrained by descriptions and plot fillers. Farooqi here made an excellent point by indirectly quoting E.M. Forster, saying that the dastan at the very outset tells the reader the story, that is, when the protagonist was born, what he did, when he died. But this `story` is different from the plot in which how the story unravels is revealed. He further elaborated by giving the example of characters whose strongest traits are highlighted in the initial `story` of the dastan the plot then that takes these traits and reverses them. This narrative method, sostrongly influenced by fatalism and predestination, is a crucial part of dastan.

Hashmi asked the writers to discuss certain descriptions in their work, in an effort to understand the relationship between description (which can be seen as a pause in narration), and narrative. Natig discussed the character Selaab in his stories, and explained that the point of description is to sketch a character with whom each reader is familiar to some degree.

Whether it be a local madman chained to a charpai, or the literal selaab of Noah, the description of the character conjures up memories or images in the reader`s mind and invests his/her subjectivity into the narrative. Toor then read a portion from one of his stories. The passage described an aandhi. At the end of the storm, all that remains is the tragicomic loss of a boy`s clothes in the tussle between man and nature. It was a beautiful descriptive passage and duly held the audience`s rapt attention.

Towards the end of the short session, Farooqi said that despite being a Pakistani writer in English, literature in Urdu is far superior to what is being produced in Pakistan in English. Regardless of the language, what is important is that quality literature is being written in Pakistan and appreciated. Toor hit the nail on the head when he said that literature knows no divides of the ruler and ruled, of languages or of regions. He quite rightly asked: `Did Dickens rule us? Did Shakespeare teach us how to write in Urdu? Were we oppressed by Eliot? What is the difference between Pushkin and myself? We are both writers and are both human beings. There is no difference, no oppression and no conflict on either side.` E Anam Haq