fहndi - Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya

The short story Najum (astrology) belongsto the genre that is called science fictiontoday. It talks of the sun, which is nowextinct after burning for millions of yearsand is ten thousand light years away fromus on the basis of the speed of lightcalculated at 1, 86,000 miles per second.Even now if a flash bursts forth, its flamestouch a height of twenty to twenty-twomiles and their light (after having travelleda distance of ten thousand light years) wasseen on this earth once in 1841 and forthe second time in 1854. These scientificevents have been narrated, linking themwith the letters of Mirza Ghalib'semployees Kalu and Munir and knowledgeof the stars with the beliefs of people ofthis age. This has been done by identifyingthe appearance of the new star with thegood news for the Mughals in the formof the publication of Mirza Ghalib's Dewan(anthology of poems), which surely is thebrightest star of Mughal culture. And thereappearance of this shining star in 1854has been indicated by the death of UstadZauq and Ghalib's emergence as a masterand eventually securing his literary position.The junctures of astrology and science andhistory that Gulzar must have passedthrough in giving shape to this story andthe use he has put to the creative fusionof all the three has resulted in an interestingnarrative coming before us. Like Najum,Aag and Jangal Nama are also enjoyableshort stories, and one aspect of this joyis that young and old, high and low allcan severally exact information from it.Besides having an archetypal element inthem, these stories can also be describedas eco-friendly. Aag has an ambience ofprehistoric aborigine imagination depictinghow the prehistoric man must have tamedfire and taken it to his house. Today wehave such a profusion of ecological expertiseand eco-friendliness that one cannot hearanything else. The terrestrial region is onthe verge of destruction and in the handsof the creature known as man water, river,mountain, tree, vegetation, beast, birdnothing is safe. Air, cloud, environment,space, everything is becoming saturatedwith poison, and the depletion of ozoneis altogether a different matter. In such asituation Gulzar's short stories are like thepuff of a morning breeze blowing fromthe forest in which man, animal, beast,bird, tree, plants, appear to be boundtogether by one common thread. And atone end of that thread is Salim Ali, loverand intimate friend of birds, who was asmuch a human being as an interpreter ofthe larger meaning that goes beyondhuman life, the full significance of whichis yet to be known.In view of such a variety of stories,Gulzar has certainly earned the right tobe called a skilled storywriter. There couldbe more aspects of this brief study, butit would suffice to say only this much atthis time. The hues of life displayed inthese short stories, the vastness of theexperience, the art of developing an20 :: April-June 2013fgndi •