E hear stories, we tell stories all our lives. But life is always more than what we think it is.

.`This more` is the mainstay of creative expression. Our stories are as ever present as our breath. That`s why we become oblivious to them.

But we become fully aware of our stories when they appear in structured forms. We come across some softly structured stories in Akmal Shahzad Ghumman`s latest book Pinfray Vich Aahina published by Fiction House. The author is a wellknown media person, broadcaster and writer. This collection has 13 stories set mostly in the rural background which is as old as the hills.

But he doesn`t pitch country against the city as it is traditional writers` wont, points out Sarmad Sehbai in the blurb. Instead `he (author) wants to explore the unending path that takes the people from the countryside to cities, and the countryless from one culture to another culture.

It`s intriguing to note that Akmal`s stories give a deceptiveimpression of being straightforward narratives in traditional modes but once you are into them you find them complex and multilayered. In other words, his stories portray and delineate complex characters and situations in a way that looks simple. This is the result of his delving into psychological and psychic recesses of characters with panache. `Kaalh vich Likki hoi Kahani` explores forcefully how fearlessness born of adolescence and eros in their interplay with entrenched power structure in a patriarchy-based hierarchical society lead to blood and gore. Ghairatt is a terrible story of young innocent lovers, shamelessly betrayed by their friends, who get brutally killed at their very first rendezvous in broad daylight in the full glare of public. The event is quite opposite of what happens in Marquez`s The chronicle of a Death Foretold in its eerie suddenness. Horigan is a painfully sad story on the division of Punjab and forced migration of Punjabi Sikhs from their ancestral homes. Villagers talk of the people who were forced to flee. Their reminiscences create in a subtly amaz-ing manner the presence of what has gone absent. Their conversations laced with pathos and empathy evoke an image of syncretic society that was murdered which they are unable to forget. The impact reminds you of what James Joice grappled with in his In Search of Lost Time; the persistence of memory. The Author employs the chaste idiom of language that`s both refreshing and accessible which is no mean feat. Akmal`s stories are a must read.

Prakash Tandon`s Return to Punjab (1961-1975)`, translated by Muhammad Athar Masood with the title Punjab mein Wapsi has been published by Fiction House.

Prakash Tandon has been a wellknown name to English readers for his celebrated work. His magnum opus is The Punjabi Saga, a trilogy that narrates the story of his Punjabi family from the mid-19th to early 21st century. It comprises Punjabi Century, Beyond Punjab and Return to Punjab. The Saga deals with a highly significant and eventful period of history starting from the occupation of Punjab by the British colonialists to the Partitionof India and years that followed it.

The thread in this grand narrative is apparently the author`s family but it`s actually more of a chronicle of socio-economic and politico-cultural life that shaped society in modern Punjab and India.

Bornin1911,Tandongothiseducation from Government College Lahore and The University of Manchester. Later he became a high-profile business leader and also worked in private and public sectors in high positions. The first two books, Athar Masood writes, were translated by Rasheed Malik, an intellectual and a music maven.

It was he who prodded the former to translate Return to Punjab into Urdu. The translator`s effort as mentioned in the preface to get help from Indian scholars to correctly decipher Hindi names that one comes across in the narrative is a sign of his being meticulous.

Syed Kashif Raza writes in the blurb: `This book is apparently Prakash Tandon`s autobiography but it is one of the original sources of information about Punjab`s culture, colonial period, preand postindependence changes that tookplace in Punjab...Muhammad Athar Masood has recreated the author`s fascinating style to the extent that is possible in a translation.` The translation is competent and highly readable. It portrays for us Punjab`s life as it has been till recent times.

Luki hope Akh (The Hidden Eye) is Sarbjit Kaur Jass`s collection of poems. It has been transliterated by Maqsood Saqib and published by Suchet Kitab Ghar. Her ancestors lived in Lahore before their forced migration to Ferozpur in the wake of the Partition in 1947. This is her fourth collection but the first one to appear in Shahmukhi script this side of the border. The title is intriguingly suggestive. The hidden eye! But whose eye? A poet`s eye or the eye of a woman? Sarbjit Kaur is both a woman and a poet. It reminds one of Shiva`s third eye that can see what cannot be seen with the sensory eyes. Not that sensory eyes mean something insignificant. For a woman seeing through sensory eyes is inexorably linked to the objective experience of life that usually reduces her or represses her as an autonomousbeing in a patriarchy-based class society. Thus her experience becomes existentially challenging.

Sarbjit Kaur draws two distinct strands together in a poetic unity.

She puts the myriad problems of social life under sharp scrutiny as a poet gifted with insightful imagination. But at the same time as a woman she explores existentially what gender discrimination and violence results into. `They had a problem with my speech/They gouged out my tongue/Then another tongue grew out of my fingertips like the tail of a lizard/Who would now stop me from speaking?` In another poem she says: `Hunger hasnoface/Buteachhungry person wears the face of hunger/In order to really know the hungry one has to go to their homes and look at their kitchen/one has to count the blades of grass in their mud stoves.` Some of her poems seem to have been inspired by poet Pash. She uses similar kinds of poetic constructions but her language leans more towards chaste central Punjab`s dialect. Hers is enjoyable poetry that simultaneously illuminates.

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