A story writer who strongly connects to people

‘Kis shakhs ne likhi hai bayaze ghame hasti
Meray he fasanay mein mra naam na aya
The writer of this verse is Gulnar Afreen, a well-known poet with two books of poetry behind her. Her stories collection ‘Phool Aur Woh’ like her poetry also deals with ‘ghame hasti’ carrying unmistakable traces of her poetic genie. Her stories depict realism. It is perhaps for this reason that the tone and tenor of her stories tend to be emotional.
The common thread that runs through her stories collection is empathy, with the strength of her anger. She doesn’t actively try to bring it to the surface, but sometimes it spills over. She has seen life from many angles. She is very actively Pakistani in her thinking and her travels have influenced her a lot. At times she doesn’t seem to like sitting at a desk and writing. She meets people, strongly connects to them, and that is how she writes. For her, a story is about the intensity of the moment. Sometimes, she just sits down with a pen and paper and writes the whole story. For example, in this collection the story ‘Hazaar Wolt ka Bulb’ was written like that. It is about a certain tragedy occurring in our society never even acknowledged, over the certain anger she felt.
Her stories come from certain intensity developing within her. For the reader, the principal characteristic is how skilfully the story of a life is spun within a short lease of attentive time. Gulnar Afreen is seduced by a growing wisdom though the matrix of narrative to express her concerns about women. Her stories reflect concerns about the gender and class divide. But that the writer is an eternal optimist comes through with force. Despite the despondency, fright and agony you encounter in these pages, most characters emerge proud. Circumstances occurring over an arc of time shape what her characters reveal concisely — a gem of her stories. Her story is born to shock and make you think and feel differently about what is said in some other mediums. Her stories have an emotional appeal, with a distinct local flavour.
Her story ‘Akhary Sasah’ is a symbol of political and social consciousness. It is a bittersweet story about middle class dreams and the struggle to rise above. A woman’s battle with her surroundings strikes a chord here. It showcases chaos, daily challenges, sentimentality and beauty in a turbulent city where political power struggles have left a deep impact on every sphere. And yes, there is hope for a better tomorrow somewhere along the way. Gulnar Afreen’s fascination for change is quite vivid in her stories. The stories probe hidden veils in the form of the secret desires kept by the people. They have a focused impact. The focus she has tried to keep is both social and political. Each story talks about different things, but the common thread is of people getting caught in complex waves of events beyond their control, and she has tried to write from the perspective of the voices not heard.
In her simple yet depressing stories, fact meets fiction in a rather picture perfect manner. In the process, portraits surface of a people constantly trying to keep up with an emerging world while grappling with their historical baggage. But the stories end on a note of hope, where all is not lost, and human worth endures.