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"Maati Kahe Kumhar Se" is Taaseer’s latest
collection of 28 stories that are veritable slices of the life
around us. They deal with human fads and frailties, aspirations
and struggles, failures and success. He has the knack of
exploiting common place situations for his stories. The title
story is woven around the primordial human urge for grabbing
material possessions that our dear and near ones leave behind
when they die, forgetting that we ourselves have to follow suit.
"Matwazi lakeerain" centres round the theme of
maternal concern for a young daughter. A mother accompanies her
daughter to the bus stand and is worried about her travelling
alone. She feels comforted when a passenger in the bus happens
to know her. She entrusts her daughter to him and feels
relieved.
In a parallel
situation involving motherly concern, a mother and her young
daughter feed themselves on the advance money they get for the
flesh of the daughter. Thereafter, when the daughter accompanies
her customers on a three wheeler the mother wishes she had noted
the number of the vehicle! "Pagal larki" is a subtle
study of how paternal neglect and discord leave psychic scars in
the mind of a daughter. Her suppressed urge for paternal
affection makes her violent and she attempts suicide. But when
her repentant father returns home she is cured.
The fact that
human beings are basically good, though their goodness is
sometimes clouded by social, fiscal and familial compulsions, is
illustrated by two stories. In "Bhai band", Nihaley
Shah, a village money-lender exploits his helpless victims with
impunity. But the untimely death of his son brings about a
complete change in him. He consigns all the mortgage deeds to
the fire of his son’s pyre. "Kaya janey kis bhais mein"
tells how the goodness of a hard core dacoit surfaces when a
stranger, carrying shagun material to a village strays into his
den. The dacoit makes his stay comfortable and his wife offers
him a "phulkari" as a gift for the bride-to-be."
Gardash-e-ayyam
etra shukrya" depicts the frustration of a freedom fighter
when he finds a yawning gap between what they had fought for and
what they have become now. He is pained to see corruption and
nepotism rampant in every walk of life. He declines any
gratification from the government and refuses to seek favour for
the members of his family who ultimately discard him as a
worthless person.
"Jo kooye
yar se nikley" exposes how social and literary humbugs
treat the genuine and talented persons with utter disdain.
"Rishtey nahin toottey" has communal concord as its
theme. Two friends, Deepa and Chhinda have inherited respect for
communal harmony from their elders and are keen to pass it on to
the next generation, but they themselves fall a prey to communal
paranoia. "Basi phool" is an interesting study of Babu
Harish Chander who retires from a government job. The very next
day he realises that his regular pattern of life is suddenly
disrupted and that he has been rendered irrelevant.
Such, then, are
the glimpses of the vast and varied canvas on which Taaseer
works so adroitly through characters drawn in chiaroscure and
having psychological veracity. Pulsating with the warmth of
life, his characters like Master Ulfat Rai, Amli Chacha and
Sardarni touch responsive chords in our heart and linger long in
our mind. His artistic finesse is evident from the way he pilots
his plots - never shifting his focus from the main situation. He
is aware of the subtle nuances of words and his prose has verve
and pace.
Taaseer has come a long way
from his first book of short stories (1974) to the present one
(2001) and he has a long way to go - for the road to perfection
is always under construction.
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