|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
K. A. Abbas’s stories, written years ago, are as relevant to this day and age as they were half a decade ago. He has written on the themes of poverty, sadness, rural issues, people beset with hunger and oppression. His are stories of the ordinary people, the aam adaami log who are always around us but (thanks to the globalised glitz we prefer to soak in) we are not really interested in. Neither do we like to read stories about them nor watch them in TV serials or even look at or acknowledge them when we pass them by.
Most of us are familiar with his best-known story, The Sparrows, and that maybe the extent of our knowledge of this writer who was prolific and well known in his days, but seems to have fallen into shaded obscurity now. However, Abbas has explored several themes and many lives, to make him deserving of much more significance than is accorded to him today. Yes, sometimes the stories are a little old-fashioned insofar as their over the top sentimentality or melancholy goes, but still, the sensibility belongs to that time and for that, too, they are noteworthy. Abbas explores his characters with felicity`85he is the master of many lives—their dilemmas, troubles and tragedies. This collection of stories edited by Suresh Kohli has a particularly tragic theme. The people who live in the pages of this book grieve for various reasons but somehow or the other, bravely or abjectly, deal with their fear, humiliation and rejection. The Sparrows, about which Mulk Raj Anand wrote, in January 1947, to Abbas, "the strength of your short stories, my dear, Abbas, lies in the fact that you have grasped the weaknesses of your characters amid their strengths", is a moving tale of a bad-tempered, anti-social man who finally finds love in some baby sparrows. The story is O Henry-isque in nature, reminding us of The Last Leaf. Flowers at her Feet is the story of a courtesan, who is famous in her days of glory, and whom many love. Her tragedy lies in a loss, so sad that it leaves the writer’s heart cleft. Sword of Shiva is a story narrated by Chanda, an outcaste, old woman in a village. She tells the story of divine vengeance and fury. But yet, there are themes of hope in stories like The Green Motor Car which narrate the tale of a love lost and found. Sylvia is the story of a nurse in a hospital tending to the festering wounds and fevered brows of her patients, her feet and back aching, who realises that, in fact, the moaning patients, whom she provides relief, too, are her real succour. This edition of Abbas’s stories includes a section that has interviews with the author that were published in the India Today and Indian Literary Review. The book also includes a letter from Mulk Raj Anand, which he wrote to Abbas on reading The Sparrows. This section is important, since it informs the reader about various interesting facets of Abbas’s life and work. For instance, we learn that he wrote the screenplay for Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani which was made into a hit film by V. Shantaram. He was attracted to the freedom movement and had a long friendship with Pt Jawaharlal Nehru. We also come to know that it was he who gave Amitabh Bachchan the first role of his career in the film Saat Hindustani. It is sometimes essential for the litterateur and the historians to delve into the chronicles of the noteworthy writers of yore to discover their significance and relevance to the world of literature, both at that time and today. In the rediscovery of an author, in this case, K.A. Abbas, this book is an important work.
|
Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (1914–87)
was a prolific political commentator, short story writer, novelist,
scriptwriter and a film-maker. He published seventy books in English,
Urdu and Hindi, including an autobiography.