Tribute to Ishtiaq Ahmed

Ishtiaq Ahmed was a great Urdu fiction writer who passed away yesterday at Karachi Airport. He was around 71 and died of a heart attack. He was known all over Pakistan for his books, especially his detective series. He has written over 800 books, mostly mystery novels. He is well known for his 'Inspector Jamshed series', which he started writing long ago; they used to be available even when my parents were kids. He has also authored an 'Inspector Kamran Mirza series', and a 'Shoki brothers series'. They are all mystery novels, where the main charters have a very confusing different case to solve each time. You have to rack your brains thinking who would be the actual culprit, and often, the culprit is someone who seemed least likely to be one.

I and my sister really love to read novels from his 'Inspector Jamshed' series. In fact, it was his novels which brought me closer to Urdu language. After reading some of his novels, I also started reading magazine, stories and novels in Urdu.

His gift to the Urdu language will never be forgotten. He provided us with brilliant stories, in simple and easily understandable Urdu, which were absorbing and loved by children and adults all the same. Once you started reading his novel, you wouldn't want to put it back till the mystery ended. 

An amazing thing about his novels was, that right in the beginning, before the story began, there is always a short note by Ishtiaq Ahmed, which says that before reading the novel, make sure that you don't have to worship right now, that you're done with your schoolwork, and that you're done with any task if your family members assigned you with. If you have to worship, or do any other work, then put the novel back and do your work first, then read it.

I never met him, or even saw him in real life, but I am still really inspired by him just by reading his books. His demise was sad news. We don't know if there will be more people like him in future. I hope and pray that he has a wonderful hereafter. (Ameen).
He will continue to live through his books, which I hope will continue to inspire people  and bring them closer to Urdu, like they inspired me once.

Note: I wrote this tribute around 12 days ago and published it on my blog. However, my father told me to send it to DAWN Letters to the Editor, and it might get published there. So I emailed them the tribute and they replied, saying that they were reviewing the letter, and will publish it within ten days if they find it suitable for publication. Sadly, it wasn't published within ten days; so I've published it on my blog once again.