Simiya

by Naiyer Masud

Haunting in their unadorned and austere beauty, the five interwoven stories of The Occult have no discernible plots, their terrains are unidentifiable, the characters that inhabit them have no names. Houses possess domains where you are overcome with fear or desire without knowing why. A lone dark cloud that brings sudden rain traverses the interpenetrating landscape of the five stories. Time passes swiftly in some locations and is knotted thickly at others. An exquisitely made artifact could either be the model for a palace or a memorial of it. Has the woman fleeing managed to escape once again or has she drowned in the fast-flowing river? A narrative thread from one story may be taken up and twisted in another. Together the stories create a shimmering maze where meaning is elusive but from which the enchanted reader never wants to exit.

Genres: Fiction, Indian Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Naiyer Masud (1936–2017) was an Urdu scholar and Urdu-language short story writer.

Naiyer Masud was born in 1936 in Lucknow. He did two separate PhD degrees in Urdu and Persian, and was a professor of Persian at Lucknow University. He started publishing his fictional work in the 1970s, of which four collections have appeared so far. Two collections of selected stories have appeared in English translation as Essence of Camphor and Snake Catcher, the former later also translated into Finnish, French, and Spanish. Besides fiction, he has several volumes of critical studies of classical Urdu literature to his credit and has also translated Kafka and numerous contemporary Iranian short stories. In 1977 he visited Tehran at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture, Government of Iran. He was the recipient, in 2008, of India’s highest literary award, the 17th Saraswati Samman.

Reviews

[Katia N]

This is the second story writer writing in Urdu I’ve read. The first was unforgettable Saadat Hasan Manto. But Masud is a very different writer.

This is the collection of very illusive, enigmatic five stories. They do not seem to be connected in terms of plot, there are a deeper links however, which are difficult to pin down or verbalise: atmosphere, symbols, empty spaces? I think they deserve a second reading at least. But after the first, they leave a very peculiar dreamy aftertaste; the imagery as if you remember a part of a dream on waking, but realise it was only a part and it would be impossible to recover the whole…

It has deeply resonated with me how Muhammad Umar Memon the translator of these stories and Urdu scholar expressed his impression:

“Perhaps the sole purpose of these stories is to induce a silence in which the calmed self might begin to reflect on and experience Being.”

[Sangita]

Ok, this book is a collection of such surreal stories that I am still caught in the world oil its surrealism. It's not a pretty place of course, but ... these places do exist. These feelings do cloud us once in a w while, but we push them away to keep ourselves sane, or intact, insane.

I still have not thought about it much, cos it definitely unnerves me. Would have preferred to give it a 2.5

[Vignesha]

A very interesting read but can't help but believe that the charm of the stories has been lost in translation!

[Roshi Khan]

I love this book. Masood sahib's style is very different and I think it is magical

[Saadullah]

I revisited Murakami earlier this summer and was reminded of his fever-dreams as I read 'Seemia'. I thought, however, this was much more intense and elevated. 'Margir'/'مارگیر' was my favourite.