Rifat Abbas’s Novel "LunR da JivanR Ghar”: A New Marvellous Entry into Siraiki Novel

"LunRi is the city without gods, war and death”

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It is the city of marvellous reality. It is incessantly lived by enchantment and wonders. The elemental life of this city is salt and its diverse forms. It is the city where clouds are bundled, stored and traded. It is the city of mirrors that are capable to mimic all real and imaginary objects.

It is the city living without and within time. Time has both transcendental and immanent character in this city. Its transcendence reveals in the search for mysteriously lost “LunRka- the prime character of the novel. His very absence assumes the form of ever-presence.

However, on the other hand, the immanence of time is played in/through city theatre. Indeed, theatre is the place of enactment where time is comprehensively lived, traversed, reflected, blended, lost and regained.

The novel poses a formidable challenge to Siraiki readers and literary critics in terms of its understanding and interpretation. It compels them to get acquainted with the post-colonial genre of novel embedded into magical realism, mythology, fantasy, history, landscape and geography. Nevertheless, I think, the most daunting task is how to place this novel in the classical Sanskrit aesthetics of South Asia?

I am immersed into this task.