DastanELaapata

Dastan-e-Lapata, the acclaimed novel by renowned storyteller Manzoor Ehtesham, is a disturbing document of how the politics and circumstances of the time can intrude into a persons personal and intimate world. In fact, the world is not only a platform for people, but also for the missing. Like other species, the missing are born, grow, and ultimately, exhausted, meet their end. Dastan-e-Lapata is the story of Zameer Ahmed Khan, who, at the beginning of his life, confidently declared, I just want true love, and also, I will achieve it. Dastan-e-Lapata documents his growing up in this cruel world. Dastan-e-Lapata is the story of Zameer Ahmed Khan, including all those who, knowingly or unknowingly, escape the confines of a family or system. Dastan-e-Lapata is the story of those who, despite their desire, are unable to become part of the blind race, who, each time, find themselves immersed in their inner recesses, rife with contradictions. It is the story of those who hear the curses of the past in every failure of life, who carry their petty dishonesties like a bandage on their souls, only to one day, in full view, disappear within themselves. A faint line of pain runs through the narrative. Asking uncomfortable questions of their time and place, this line has been drawn inexorably from Manzoor Ehteshams previous novel, Sookha Bargad, to Dastan-e-Lapata. Although there are mundane events and the eccentricities of families and individuals to confuse the reader, none of the authors artistic experiments can completely conceal this line. In a way, Dastan-e-Lapata is a departure from Manzoor Ehteshams previous novel, Sookha Bargad. Whereas earlier the authors concern was with a minority society, this time it is a lone man who defies the definition of minority or majority, who has moved out of the periphery, a gradually disappearing man, who before disappearing leaves his footprints in the landscape of this story, with his latent pain, perhaps for the last time.