In the midst of today’s gloom and literary inactivity, hope sometime twinkles as one can see literary organization Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq hold its weekly meetings regularly in Lahore, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi for decades. Intazar Hussain, Dr Sohail Ahmed Khan, Dr Khawja Zakriya, Zia Jalandhari, Masood Mufti, Aftab Iqbal Shamim and Mansha Yad frequent Pak Tea House of Lahore and the Writers House of Islamabad to attend the weekly meetings of Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq without fail. They have refused to yield before the trends of the day and are upholding a genuine cause of promoting genuine literature.

At one such meeting of Halqa-i.Arbab-i-Zauq Lahore held at Pak Tea House on Sunday 25 December, short story writers from Islamabad and Rawalpindi Mansha Yad, Hamid Shahid and Asim Butt read out their stories to a packed audience. Mohammad Mansha Yad presided over the meeting. He also read out his short story Agay Khamoshi Hai (Ahead is Silence).Hamid Shahid read out his Case History se Bahar Qatal(Murder outside the case history) and Asim Butt read out his story Daira.

The meeting was attended by senior writers and poets like Dr Khawja Zakriya, Azad Mehdi, Amjad Tufail, and Zahid Hasan. Mansha Yad’s story was moving tale of a Kashmiri school teacher Master Din Mohammad who could not bear the loss of his class children in the wake of the earthquake and lost his mental balance. It is afterwards a survived student brings him to consciousness. The story was seen as a masterpiece by the prolific writer. Hamid Shahid’s story was received with mixed reaction as it was picked with medical terminology. However, majority of the audience appreciated the story that describes how a lady doctor identifies herself with a patient. The patient thinks her husband did not succumb to cardiac arrest. It was her delay in opening the door that caused his death. The lady doctor who is living an estranged life with her husband dies one day when her doctor husband arrives at the door and keeps pushing horn for a while. She hurries to the door but collapses in the midway.

Asim Butt’s story was an attempt at discovering the complicated relations that exist between man and society. Towards the end of the Halqa-i.Arbab-i-Zauq’s meeting, a cake was cut to celebrate Christmas and Quaid’s birthday and then a poet from Karachi Salman Siddiqui read out his poem

                          (Pakistan Observer Islamabad Sunday January1, 2006)