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Narial Ka Phool
Narial Ka Phool A Hameed Novel
Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
A. Hameed
76 books24 followersAbdul Hameed (b. 1928) was a popular Urdu fiction writer from Lahore, Pakistan who wrote over 200 books.
Hameed was born in 1928 in Amritsar British India. He passed his secondary education in Amritsar. He migrated to Pakistan after partition and passed intermediate in Pakistan as a private candidate and join Radio Pakistan as assistant script editor. After working some year for Radio Pakistan he joined Voice of America.
Manzil's first collection of short stories received popular acclaim and made him a recognized romantic short story writer. Apart from writing short stories and novels he wrote columns for national news papers. He also wrote for radio and television.
He has written more than 200 books. Urdu She'r Ki Dastan, Urdu Nasr ki Dastan (in which he has given information about the prose literature of many Urdu prose writers from Banda Nawas gesu Draz to the recent prose writers of Daccen and Gugrat), Mirza Ghalib, Dastango Ashfaq Ahmad and Mirza Ghalib Lahore mai are his most famous books.
His drama Ainak Wala Jin was popular with children in the 1990s. Moreover his fantasy series of 100 novels for children known as AMBAR NAAG MARIA Series was a real fame for him.
Hameed died on 29 April 2011 at the age of 83
Hameed was born in 1928 in Amritsar British India. He passed his secondary education in Amritsar. He migrated to Pakistan after partition and passed intermediate in Pakistan as a private candidate and join Radio Pakistan as assistant script editor. After working some year for Radio Pakistan he joined Voice of America.
Manzil's first collection of short stories received popular acclaim and made him a recognized romantic short story writer. Apart from writing short stories and novels he wrote columns for national news papers. He also wrote for radio and television.
He has written more than 200 books. Urdu She'r Ki Dastan, Urdu Nasr ki Dastan (in which he has given information about the prose literature of many Urdu prose writers from Banda Nawas gesu Draz to the recent prose writers of Daccen and Gugrat), Mirza Ghalib, Dastango Ashfaq Ahmad and Mirza Ghalib Lahore mai are his most famous books.
His drama Ainak Wala Jin was popular with children in the 1990s. Moreover his fantasy series of 100 novels for children known as AMBAR NAAG MARIA Series was a real fame for him.
Hameed died on 29 April 2011 at the age of 83
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May 23, 2020
To go beyond the usual luminaries & appreciate the lesser but significant tier of Urdu writers who made robust contributions to Urdu literature and a vibrant reading culture it is important to appreciate someone like A. Hameed. I have had a soft spot for A Hameed due to the 100 volume time traveller Ambar, Nag & Maria series that was a mainstay as a child - his sense of wonder at the historical places he described, the passage and ravages of time, and a certain wistfulness and nostalgia for ages gone by was contagious. Then I read his book of memories about Lahore and once again got the same sensation. A Hameed - a strapping handsome Amritsar lad - was very much part of the Lahore literary circle and hung out with Ibn-e-Insha, Ashfaq Ahmad and Munir Niazi. However, even after having penned two hundred odd books he never really enjoyed great acclaim for literary style or profundity. His was a lighter pen that weaved romantic dreams. And those who appreciate that held him dear.
This one started so promisingly as a young man is woken while sleeping on his rooftop in northerly Amritsar by winds blowing from the coconut scent laden jungles of Lanka. He sets off on a journey, describing all the locations as he travels South. But thereafter the story disintegrates and even degenerates. Not only are the romantic exploits and escapades of the lad rather unbelievable they are at times pretty B-grade Digest quality. He does engage in the occasional description of torrential rain, forest thickets and dimly lit, echoing, incense smoke-filled Buddhist temples which he does well, showing that he is a romantic at heart. But he can't quite manage to decide whether he is writing an autobiography, a travelogue, a novel or a series of sketches of romantic and sexual adventures with young damsels of South Asian stock as well as European and Eurasian women on World War II era Colombo. The book is bold and even risqué and I guess at the time it was published puritanism was not as strong a censoring power. At the same time, the novel often fails to graduate from a sequence of cheap thrills, weakly and repetitively narrated and with little literary flair. There is, however, a certain rude fluency to it and a simplicity which can at times be effective.
While he is philandering here and there, the deeper infatuation comes for a dusky, slim attractive Sinhalese girl whose bewitching eye he catches as she stands in her balcony and he is headed somewhere on a tram. The girl is coy but apparently piqued by him and other such encounters lead to a few meetings and conversations and a growing fondness on both sides. Alvira - the young woman - tells him that they have known each other before in past ages. He is amused and incredulous but she goes on to share minute details that she appears to be convinced about. Here is story becomes somewhat gripping and A. Hameed well describes the war-time Colombo of the 1940s. The intense romance then dominates the novel for the last one third of the book and till its end.
This was headed for two stars or even one. And only because of my childhood loyalty to A. Hameed's time traveling saga and his sense of the picturesque. But just close to the end he gives the story a twist which creates a great sense of longing and loss, of nostalgia for past times, of a feeling that one has lived through bygone ages and met some people in different avatars in different epochs.
Nobody could quite capture a haunting, joss-stick fragrance swept, deserted old temple with an attractive ancient spirit as its denizen like A. Hameed - an incurable romantic. And the incurable romantic in me also succumbed and gave it three stars.
This one started so promisingly as a young man is woken while sleeping on his rooftop in northerly Amritsar by winds blowing from the coconut scent laden jungles of Lanka. He sets off on a journey, describing all the locations as he travels South. But thereafter the story disintegrates and even degenerates. Not only are the romantic exploits and escapades of the lad rather unbelievable they are at times pretty B-grade Digest quality. He does engage in the occasional description of torrential rain, forest thickets and dimly lit, echoing, incense smoke-filled Buddhist temples which he does well, showing that he is a romantic at heart. But he can't quite manage to decide whether he is writing an autobiography, a travelogue, a novel or a series of sketches of romantic and sexual adventures with young damsels of South Asian stock as well as European and Eurasian women on World War II era Colombo. The book is bold and even risqué and I guess at the time it was published puritanism was not as strong a censoring power. At the same time, the novel often fails to graduate from a sequence of cheap thrills, weakly and repetitively narrated and with little literary flair. There is, however, a certain rude fluency to it and a simplicity which can at times be effective.
While he is philandering here and there, the deeper infatuation comes for a dusky, slim attractive Sinhalese girl whose bewitching eye he catches as she stands in her balcony and he is headed somewhere on a tram. The girl is coy but apparently piqued by him and other such encounters lead to a few meetings and conversations and a growing fondness on both sides. Alvira - the young woman - tells him that they have known each other before in past ages. He is amused and incredulous but she goes on to share minute details that she appears to be convinced about. Here is story becomes somewhat gripping and A. Hameed well describes the war-time Colombo of the 1940s. The intense romance then dominates the novel for the last one third of the book and till its end.
This was headed for two stars or even one. And only because of my childhood loyalty to A. Hameed's time traveling saga and his sense of the picturesque. But just close to the end he gives the story a twist which creates a great sense of longing and loss, of nostalgia for past times, of a feeling that one has lived through bygone ages and met some people in different avatars in different epochs.
Nobody could quite capture a haunting, joss-stick fragrance swept, deserted old temple with an attractive ancient spirit as its denizen like A. Hameed - an incurable romantic. And the incurable romantic in me also succumbed and gave it three stars.
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