Rāshid Amjad – The Lamenter of the Migration

رشید امجد – غریب الوطنی کا نوحہ گر

Abstract

Rāshid Amjad is a renowned name in Urdū fiction. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Rāshid Amjad succeeded in establishing his unique identity in modern and symbolic fiction. His first collection of fiction was published in 1974 under the name Bizār Ādam ke Bete. After that, fiction collections continued to come to the fore until 2007. This was a period of political instability, martial law, and repression in which the life of the common man was plagued by determinism, fear, despair, and suffocation. Rāshid Amjad made every walk of life the subject of his stories. This is why he has a diversity of topics. After 2007, his collection of fiction Dukh Ek Chiriya Hai was published by the National Book Foundation in 2016. Rāshid Amjad made new angles of life the subject of this collection. One of the important topics among them is migration. Rāshid Amjad describes the lament of migration in his stories well. He has highlighted the causes of distance from the homeland and its effects on the life of an individual. The real situations of helplessness of old parents due to the migration of their children are particularly visible in these stories.

This article brings to light the various forms of grief and sorrow caused by the separation of parents from their children. It highlights the sacrifices parents make for their children. The painful moments spent by parents are shown in a realistic manner. Economic instability and unemployment in the country have forced the new generation to emigrate. How lives are disrupted due to migration can be seen in Rāshid Amjad's stories. In this regard, awareness is given of the conditions such asﷺ closeness, distance, happiness, sadness, peace, and anxiety between parents and children. These stories seem to be Rāshid Amjad's personal observations.