Glimpses from the Life of Syed Rafique Hussain.

I am not sure about the exact year, but as far as memory serves me, it was the summer of early 80's; I was with my father in his office of Mah-e-Nau at Davis Road Lahore, a regular instance that I was attuned to; accompanying my father to his office twice a week, so that I could do my studies there during the summer holidays. While I was there in his office, the telephone started ringing. Abba attended the phone and the conversation followed. During the course of the discussion, what I made out was that Abba was trying hard to make the gentleman on the other side understand that he would receive a certain book in a couple of days, as he was sending his peon right away to the post office to dispatch the two copies to his home address.

The gentleman on the other side, however, seemed too fidgety and was adamantly not ready to wait even for an hour, and that was on his way to grab his copies personally from Abba. When Abba hung up the phone he held his forehead with his hand in a surrendering manner. He told me that the gentleman on the other side was none other but Ashfaque Ahmed, the iconic writer, and that the man despite the fact that he was burning in high-grade fever, was on his way making sure to grab the book himself. In an hour or so, I heard the typical frantic sound of a rickshaw, and Mr Ashfaque Ahmed visibly in battered condition rushing into Abba's office. He did not bother with the formal rituals imbuing pleasantries of salam-dua, and snorted 'Lao bhai dau; kahan hai meri copy...'.He then got into a fit of coughing which showed that he was not well. Seeing the two copies resting on the table, he-like a hungering hawk-lungedforward and grabbed the books in a fashion which could best be described in Urdu 'Jhappattna' turned around on his heels and vanished in a glimpse. The book in question was named Bay Zubaan, a collection of eight short stories. What was different...