MY favourite haunts in the city used to include bookshops which stored Urdu books. As a child and later as a young man, learning my way around the city and the world of books at more or less the same time, these bookshops seemed to me to be fascinating places, the storehouses of endless treasures, inviting and tempting one to be stay on. But not any more.

Bookshops focusing on Urdu books exclusively have declined in number, not to mention in quality of display and presentation. If I go to browse in any one of them, I find shelves filled with new titles that have glossy covers and that inviting smell of freshly printed paper which used to intoxicate me.

But now I cannot help but wonder if there is anything among all these new books worth reading? They seem so similar to each other, following the same few and hackneyed patterns. What has happened to the world of Urdu books?

Nobody should be under the impression that all is doomed in the world of Urdu books as new titles abound, but a significant number of new titles are works of poetry. Or what claims to be poetry.

I have no quarrel with the astounding claims of the bestsellers in the world of recent poetry and like everybody else, I am familiar with the urban legends of this or that young person's book running though several editions with thousands of copies in circulation.

I am as great an admirer of these talented young poets as the next person, but surely everything cannot be all right if such books claim the lion's share among new titles.

I keep scouting around for new titles in fiction as this is something which interests me no end. It is sad to see that fewer and fewer younger writers are writing fiction.

After a long slump there have been some good novels in recent years but the lack of economic sustainability has seriously impeded the development of the novel in our country, and this is the form in which the modern world contemplates itself.

If you look for prose beyond fiction, you cannot but be amazed by the large number of reprints of books of history, philosophy and social sciences and translations of classics. This by itself is an important sign and shows that readers in Pakistan continue to create sufficient demand which moves the market.

However, one cringes at what is being supplied. The majority of these titles are reprints from the enterprising writers and publishers of a few decades ago. A new breed of publishers seems to have popped up, publishers who pick up old titles and simply reprint them in a new format. In some cases even the names of the translators are left out, especially if they happen to be well-known or Indians. Still, I give credit to such publishers for responding to the curiosity of the Urdu readers about the world and providing them information they do not receive from the state media or textbooks.

The preparation of such books and the translation of classics was the task entrusted to learned bodies, many of which have declined over the years and their poor performance has created a discernable void. The fate of the so-called learned bodies is a sad symptom of our national malaise.

What can illustrate this better than the fate of classics such as Alf Laila in recent years. Stories from the Thousand and One Nights are known the world over and are recognised as an integral part of Islam's cultural legacy to the world. It was in Karachi that Richard Burton — that fascinating traveller and purveyor of the colonial agenda — learnt to recognise the spirit and the cultural atmosphere of these tales, a fact which he duly acknowledged in the notes to his profuse and immensely learned English translation.

But what would you have in your hands if you wanted to get a good, literary edition of this Islamic classic in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in what is claimed to be the third largest Islamic language in the world?

The only version available is the one from which the reverse-geared officials of the Anjuman Tarraqi-i-Urdu whitened out portions of the text which the Baba-i-Urdu made available for publication. The spirit of the grand old man must be turning in his grave at the callousness of his successors. Needless to say, you switch the language to English and there are several options available. It seems that we have no choice but to depend upon the West for our introduction to the best-known classics from the East.

Sadly, the situation of Urdu books in Pakistan is not much different from India where Urdu is in danger of being eroded and ghettoised, as we repeat in parrot-fashion probably to reassure ourselves that things are different 'over here'.

An editorial in the April issue of the monthly Aajkal, published from New Delhi and ably edited by Khurshid Akram, makes a similar point 'it has come to the forefront several times that 95 per cent of non-curricular and non-religious books published in Urdu belong to the 'literary' category.'
 
The editorial makes the distinction between adabi and ilmi, noting that ilmi books are playing on a back foot and have been gradually phased out. Meanwhile adabi books revolve around a few set types, the editorial says, and goes on to make a point about the declining number of books devoted to humour and satire.
 
Religious instruction followed by so-called literature. Is that the sum total of the position we would like Urdu to occupy in our lives?