En mis propias palabras

Our age moves at the speed of lightning and breeds mischief. Social media and the various tools of AI have made content and information easy and quick to obtain, and this has fed the impression that within a few years the book will cease to exist. When the dangers and challenges facing the book are discussed, it is usually overlooked that in every age the book has accepted the problems and challenges before it and reappeared in a new form. At first the book lived as oral tradition and for a long time was passed from breast to breast. When human beings began to climb the stages of progress, the book came to be written on leather, tree bark, leaves, slabs of stone, and tablets of wood and clay. The invention of paper gave the book a new form, and the printing press played an important part in its publication and spread. Writing a book and introducing it to the world of learning and letters has become extremely easy. Every century appears with its own values, problems and resources. The twenty-first century is the century of the digital. Now everything in the world is being transferred into numbers, and so the book too has taken on a new form; and without understanding its nature, people began to claim that the book will now come to an end. Most of those who make this claim know nothing of the long journey by which the book was formed.

As in every era, the book has found a new form in ours. It is being made digital so that it can be received at a single click. In this century the book is not dying, nor is its importance diminishing; on the contrary, its usefulness and importance have grown. On every side there is plagiarism, imitation and black-marketeering. Without the book there is no reaching the authenticity or source of a text, and no authority for it. The faster the means of obtaining content become, the further content drifts from its origins. It is the need, and the demand, to authenticate and verify content that has given the book its credibility.

My bond with reading, the pen and the page goes back six years. It has not stayed a mere hobby but has become a serious intellectual and scholarly commitment. In this period the present writer wrote many research, analytical and appreciative essays, which appeared in journals and magazines at home and abroad. This book offers a selection of those essays. It is my first book. I hope you will like this effort.

My success I owe to my teachers, especially Dr Alamdar Hussain Bukhari, Dr Abid Khurshid and Dr Shabbir Ahmad Qadri. Dr Shabbir Ahmad Qadri stands to me as a literary guide and patron. While the essays were being arranged and corrected he gave me the guidance through which the book took its shape. He wrote the book's preface, which is an honour for me. His preface not only encouraged me but gave my literary abilities polish and strength, and I am grateful to him from the bottom of my heart for this kindness and affection. Dr Qamar Siddiqui belongs to the Department of Urdu, University of Mumbai. The flap texts have been written by Dr Wafa Naqvi (a poet, researcher and critic from Aligarh, India) and Dr Naseem Abbas Ahmar (a distinguished writer and Head of the Department of Urdu, University of Sargodha). Dr Alamdar Hussain Bukhari, a respected critic of Urdu (from whom I learned the art of writing while doing my MPhil in Urdu, and whose instructions I followed), has honoured me with his valuable opinion. I thank these kind teachers and respected men of thought and learning with all my heart and soul.

The present writer did the book's typesetting himself. During revision many problems of spelling came to light, and Mr Shahzad Baig, director of Ikai Publishers, Faisalabad, helped a great deal in correcting them. Along with him I am indebted to my classmates from the MPhil and PhD in Urdu and to my other literary friends, who liked my writing, encouraged me and praised it. Shahid Imran Bhatti, a PhD scholar in Urdu and a poet, also helped in revising the text and correcting the spelling, and I thank him for it. I thank my friends at Takhleeq Kar International, especially Mr Arham Rohan, for giving me the chance to present all the essays in this book online, where writers reviewed them critically and encouraged me. I pray before God Almighty that He bless this effort of mine and grant me the grace to write better.

Sajid Ali Ameer