Mumtaz Ahmad Sheikh has a passion to serve the literary community the world as far as Urdu literature is concerned. He has ventured to capture selected Afsana (short story) writings from 1901 to 2017 in his quarterly magazine, ‘Lowh’ (June – December 2017) as a gift from Old Ravians (old students of Government College, Lahore) to the present students of Urdu literature. Starting with traditional Hamd-o-Naat and Salaam sessions, he gives the selected stories for six eras; first era from Akhtar Aureenvi to Niaz Fatehpuri, second era from Ahmad Ali to Rasheed Jahan, third era from Akhtar Ansari Dehelvi to Mumtaz Mufti, fourth era from Agha Babar to Hajira Masroor, fifth era from Agha Gul to Younis Javed and the sixth from Asif Farkhi to Nuzhat Abbasi. It was Mumtaz Sheikh’s dream since forty years to start a literary magazine, and the closure of Naqoosh, Auraq, Funoon and Symbol encouraged him to start this venture – an effort he has carried out selflessly.
Selecting the short stories in alphabetical order, he has only picked those of six eras of the twentieth century to-date. He does not include critical appraisals or criticism to avoid any uncalled for debate among the rival groups prevalent in literary factions (Page 16). The pattern of writing short stories, themes, and change in techniques are some of the areas that can be appreciated in his present selection. Mumtaz had to undergo a lot of trouble especially when it came to collecting short stories of the pre-independence era (before 1947). This reviewer had no option but to take a sample from each era and see the changes in themes, writing styles etc. if any.
