Critics

In the domain of modern Urdu short story, Mansha Yad is a force to be reckoned with. He writes against the backdrop of Pakistani culture with its synchronic expanse and diachronic depth. There is no denying the fact that a genuine artist is at once the eye, the ear and the nostrils of his environment or in Ezra Pound’s words the ‘invisible antennae’ of Society, but he cannot be a great artist unless he takes the intuitive step to delve deep into the labyrinth of his culture, top feel its pulse and to hear Ophelia-like, ‘the snatches of its old times’. He has to keep in mind the fact that culture is Janus-faced. It has within its more hierarchal folds a built-in scenario of binary opposites. That is why it is more like a language. When a short-story writer unfolds the stratified stuff of his culture, he comes across not only the proto-types of Characters and the inherent codes encompassing them but also the traces and the “traces of the traces” locked within the matrix of his culture. Unless he does that, he cannot claim to have touched the geological strata and the archaeological layers of his characters and plots. It goes to the credit of Mansha Yad that his short stories are not mere collections of known facts and ‘types’ but are rather webs of relations vibrating and pulsating with characters and events, structured in accordance with the primordial hierarchies of human culture and its language. Therein lies his importance. He is not the mouthpiece of any political or ideological stance, or a reformer wielding a rod neither of correction nor for that matter, a simple narrator of tales. He is in fact a creator-one who plant-like sucks the ambrosia from soil and radiance from the sky and then transforms the elements into petals and flowers. His creative act is both syntagmatic and paradigmatic -a rare synthesis, as it were, of binary opposites. That accounts for his being a towering personality in modern Urdu fiction.

The soul of two great masters, Gorky and Maupassant , have come together in Mansha Yad. The structure of his stories is in Gorky’s style, while the final touch is like that of Maupassant . Mansha Yad’s stories are certainly a forward leap in the development of the short story.

Had Mansha Yad written these short stories in any European language, he would have been translated into dozens of languages.

Mansha Yad has revolutionized the tradition of short story reading and listening at the fall of night. His stories are to be enjoyed right at sunrise. They are a sharpener which whets the mind.

Mansha Yad has acquired a peculiarly personal style, which is far from being prosaic or inspired and never ornate or florid. Simplicity of the folk tales, suggestivity of the parables and myths, and the intricacy of the modern sophisticated craft of fiction are very artistically blended together by him. That’s why his stories do not create serious problems of comprehension and communication as we encounter in the works of his contemporaries.

Mansha Yad is supposed to use with dexterity such clever modern fictional techniques as flashback, super-naturalism and the stream of consciousness. He uses a last-minute twist in his plots, reminiscent of Maupassant and O.Henry.

Ahmad Nadim Qasmi also ranks among those short story writers who are deeply influenced by Prem Chand, the architect of modern short story. And lately a new name has emerged on the horizon of Urdu short story with a promise to move forward. He is Mansha Yad, a young man with a rural background but with a sharp eye and intellect. His characters are deeply rooted in the soil. Since he holds a treasure of rustic characters, he finds no difficulty in portraying his plots which he draws from among the peoples with whom he shares joys and sorrows.

Mansha Yad made his debut as a short story writer in early seventies. He soon came in prominence at that point of time when modern Urdu short story was loosing its ground due to over emphasis on abstraction resulting in absence of story. Mansha Yad rescued Urdu short story from state of asphyxia by integrating real and surreal in a palatable and convincing manner.
Mansha Yad’s stories depict the transformation of rural sensibility under the impact of industrial culture leading to the disorientations of the indigenous traditions. As compared to his contemporary fiction writers, he is more rooted in his cultural ethos. His stories and characters abound in implications.

Mansha Yad is modern in spirit and form. After the demise of Saadat Hasan Manto in 1955, a trend of  new symbolism was set by young writers in Urdu short story. But unwary excessive employment of the grotesque technique gave way to glamorous mannerism suppressing the melody of story. The broad spectrum of the readers began to loose interest in this type of a story  which had literally got confined to the discourse of a few critics. If someone took the courage to point out this insipidity, he was looked askance. It was Mansha Yad of course, along with others like Jogindar Paul and Khalida Hussain, who took a bold step to reinstate the melody of story in his work of art. Thus the dichotomy that had taken place due to the display of mannerism was replaced by the concord in style and personality. Mansha Yad’s stories are articulately characterized by the classical tinge of delineating the minutest details and modern symbolism, association of thoughts, stream of consciousness, indigenous mythology and folklore. Thus there is a fascinating amalgam of classical and modern patterns in his work of art pointing to new dimension in Urdu short stories. The primitive story, according to E.M.Forster, “is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence”. But the modern short story is a slice of life narrated in dimensions of a space-time continuum. The modern story, instead of satisfying the curiosity of mind, awakens the intellectual imagination of reader because of its emphasis on causality, contrary to the flow of events in a mere time sequence. Unlike the traditional storyteller, Mansha Yad is the Marlow of Conard who keeps his audience wide  awake while narrating the story even at small hours of night.
Mansha Yad’s modern sensibility thrives on the moral, psychological and social problems as opposed to the classical sensibility which flourishes on metaphysical questions! His stories scintillate with originality and freshness as they spring out of his personal observation, experience and intuitive perception. Because of his superb craftsmanship, originality and artistic vision, Mansha Yad stands conspicuously in line next to his outstanding predecessors -Monto, Bedi and Intizar Hussain, and is, of course, head and shoulders above his contemporaries.

The collection Khala Andar Khala of Mansha Yad includes a story titled Tamasha (a public performance spectacle, fun, show). It is rare to come across a story, which shocks or sweeps us off our feet. Tamasha is one such story. It may not be so shattering in case of good verse but one has to struggle a lot with a good story – lives vicariously its woes and travails, and forge unseen bonds with the story in which a pain flares up suddenly and overpowers you.