The language of solitude

November 01, 2026In our increasingly fast-paced world, casual readers do not have time to go through weighty tomes and may instead prefer shorter pieces.

For those readers who instinctively gravitate towards fiction, short stories are the ideal form, tailor-made for their modern-day lifestyles, characterised by limited attention spans and the constant tussle between different mediums to capture their interest. Be that as it may, fiction writers don't choose their form based on sheer convenience.

In an introductory note to a compendium of her short fiction, titled The Complete Stories, Booker-shortlisted author Anita Desai states that the length of a story depends heavily on the "element of chance". "Each form requires a different set of abilities," she asserts, "Brevity and concision will do for one while the other requires doubt, mystery, mistake and stamina.

"Known as a publisher, printmaker and photographer, Shahbano Alvi has also emerged as a promising, prolific writer of short fiction. Her stories are not only concise, but also seem to have been produced at a rapid pace – a reminder that stamina is required for both long and short pieces.

Blue Glass, her third collection, has been released almost four years after her debut compilation of stories and over a year after her second. It brings together Shahbano Alvi's different avatars as both a short-story writer in English and a translator of Urdu short fiction.

The first section of the collection consists of Alvi's own stories. The second contains her translations of four stories by respected Urdu writer Zaheda Hina. Fuelled by these dual impulses, the collection carries the echoes of Urdu and English, and attempts to build a bridge between both languages.

This is a noble pursuit in the context of Pakistan, where Urdu and English have been locked in a persistent battle for hegemony. Over the decades, cynical readers have argued that literature in Urdu truly captures the country's cultural zeitgeist while English is merely a tragic remnant of the subcontinent's encounter with colonialism.

The latter is perceived as the language of the elite while the former enjoys mainstream appeal. Faced with linguistic dichotomies, writers in both Urdu and English have often kept a quiet distance from each other.

Alvi attempts to erase these invisible barriers by making a voyage between both languages. At first, it seems somewhat unusual for an author to place her own creative output alongside her translated works. However, this crisscrossing of boundaries among genres isn't an entirely new technique.

This year's Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to an author who seamlessly blends genres. Writers, therefore, aren’t bound by any restrictions on what they can do with their canvas. What may surprise some readers is Alvi's willingness to share the limelight with another author.

In a fiercely competitive literary world where everyone wants to spotlight their own achievements, a collaborative endeavour of this nature would likely be viewed as an anomaly. Therefore, Alvi's keen interest in creative synergies is a lesson that artistic collaborations can be rewarding.

Blue Glass is a radical departure from Alvi's debut collection of stories A Woman and the Afternoon Sun (2021), which employed a lush, unsentimental voice in tales spanning multiple genres. Her latest offering is also fundamentally distinct from her sophomore collection A New Pigeon on the Block, which provided poignant reflections on migration, loneliness and grief.

While the second collection contained pieces of varying lengths, the shorter pieces were often overshadowed by the longer ones. Alvi's ten stories in Blue Glass predominantly fall under the category of flash fiction. Even so, these tales possess a distinct sense of completeness and readers seldom feel short-changed by their length.

In fact, many of the flash pieces stand out for their polished, pristine prose and keen eye for detail. Through stories that unfold across a few pages, Alvi retains her quiet, detached narrative voice that has come to define her signature literary style.

Animals figure prominently in some of the stories and serve as a testament to the author's deep affinity with sentient non-humans. In 'A Boy, a Lame Wolf, and the River', an unnamed boy and a mountain wolf with a limp separately embark on an unusual spiritual quest to explore the mysteries of a mighty river.

The motivations behind their curiosity with the meandering river vary, but they are united by their single-minded devotion to understand its place in the universe. The tale has the trappings of a conventional fable and is imbued with a valuable lesson about how living beings aren’t always in stiff competition with one another.

The desire for peaceful coexistence between sentient beings recurs in 'Bangalore Town'. The title instantly brings to mind one of Karachi's upscale neighbourhoods, and readers will naturally expect a story set in one of the locality's posh houses.

However, the narrator deceives readers with the promise of a story they wish to hear, only to tell them a tale they need to appreciate. The reader is drawn into the narrative through captivating insights into how the neighbourhood has evolved over the decade before the story mysteriously shifts gears.

'Bangalore Town' is unconcerned with the lives of the neighbourhood's elite. Instead, it explores the struggle of a starving rag-picker who competes with a stray dog for a piece of bread in a garbage heap.

Mercifully, neither of them is made to compromise on their needs. They learn how to share in a city where resources are limited. Yet, readers are left with a lingering sense of discomfort as they wonder whether such conflicts can be resolved amicably in real-life scenarios.

'The Mugger' is another intriguing tale about our fear of nature and the numerous creatures who rely on it. At its core, the story highlights humankind's alarming capacity to inflict harm. Inanimate objects assume a life of their own in Alvi's stories and are frequently granted life-like qualities.

Since they aren't driven by the same compulsions as humans, these objects emerge as neutral observers of people and their eccentricities, and often view their antics from a different lens than we are accustomed to. In 'The Ceiling Fan and the Blue Room', the eponymous objects keep vigil for a reclusive man who derives pleasure from his own solitude.

The pale ceiling fan and the blue walls of this room are confronted with a challenge: they don't fully comprehend the man's psyche or understand his dilemma. However, their curiosity knows no bounds and they are troubled by his desire for seclusion.

The story reverses the stereotypical idea that only human beings are curious about their surroundings; in some exceptional cases, our surroundings are equally curious about our wellbeing. 'The Blue Glass Bottle and the Delft Pepper Shaker' doesn't view the ornaments placed on a polished oak sideboard as lifeless bric-a-brac with no connection to reality.

Instead, these objects dance off the page as full-fledged characters plagued by a complex network of unspoken fears and frustrations. After a male-shaped Dutch salt shaker breaks into pieces, his counterpart – the pepper shaker who resembles a woman – finds herself somewhat bereft.

A blue glass bottle, which remains a secondary character in the story, comes through as a saviour of sorts amid a climate of chaos. But it cannot spare the characters from their tragic fate. Curiously enough, the plight of the salt and pepper shakers mirror that of The house’s inhabitants, a couple who remain on the periphery of the tale.

Ambitious in its scope, 'The Blue Glass Bottle and the Delft Pepper Shaker' offers an intriguing glimpse at the complex workings of grief from a cold, measured perspective. Not all of Alvi’s stories approach the challenges faced by humans with the detached eye of a stranger.

In fact, some of Alvi's tales centralise the lingering effects of the pain individuals endure as they cope with life's adversities. 'Anonymous' offers a sensitive, poignant portrait of the ways in which street crimes have plagued the lives of Karachi's citizens.

The story offers a haunting image of a criminal’s blood blending with that of a victim. This disturbing visual lurks in the reader's mind long after the story comes to an end. Many readers might even wonder how the battle lines can be drawn when street crimes are linked to an overarching financial crisis and blood is being shed indiscriminately.

In 'The Weeping Willow and the Jacaranda,' the quagmires faced by street children as well as women shackled by patriarchal demands assume centre-stage. The two-part tale offers a powerful evocation of human suffering. In addition, it stands out for its knowledgeable reflections on trees that are, by turns, a narrative foil and a symbol of hope amid distress.

A vast majority of the stories in the first section highlight the importance of solitude as an antidote to misery. Using the crippling realities of the pandemic as a springboard, 'Cold Walls' reveals how confinement becomes a source of relief.

Separately, 'Emperor of the Night' features a garrulous family whose endless chatter inadvertently subdues the voice of a neighbourhood stray dog. As a result, the voiceless creature only finds the freedom to howl and "be himself...in the stillness of human-less nights.

" Alvi's tale is a breathtaking reminder of the ways in which an overpowering desire to fill silences with words can undermine solitude. The centrepiece of Alvi's collection is undoubtedly 'Mosaic: Tesserae of Life', a tale consisting of five vignettes that reveal some familiar and shocking realities of the human condition.

Each anecdote introduces a character and offers a detailed exploration of their emotional and spiritual challenges. The first two sketches capture the highs and lows of parent-child relationships and personal ambition. The third vignette fashions a warbler perched on an old oak tree into a tender witness to a series of curious happenings at a farm.

The last two sketches have a darker, sombre quality and examine the stultifying effects of social and political oppression. Barring the final sketch, each of these episodic tales ends with the character's name. This serves a refreshing reminder of the ways in which names can individualise experiences that are universal.

Alvi's short fiction is not only defined by its cast of compelling characters, but also by its overpowering narrative voice. More often than not, the detached narrators of her tales confine characters within specific bounds and carry the weight of the entire story on their own shoulders.

Sometimes, they are possessed by a desire to offer explanations, delay the climax or a moment of revelation, and elide certain details. Some readers might initially be thrown off by the exceedingly controlled narrative voice.

Once they finish the first section, they might begin to understand why some of her characters need to keep within boundaries as they are capable of self-destruction. The narrator, therefore, shields the characters from revealing too much of their inner turmoil and darkness.

The section on Zaheda Hina's stories is equally intriguing. The Urdu writer's translated stories have characters with itinerant souls who fashion homes in foreign lands. Their lives are radically altered by multiple migrations and, in some cases, the weight of history.

As the blurb by Aamer Hussein on the back cover of Blue Glass suggests, the translations of Zaheda Hina's work "provide fascinating parallels and contrasts" to Alvi's storytelling techniques. Zaheda Hina's stories don't maintain a cold distance from their subjects – a quality that is evident in Alvi’s stories.

Instead, the narrators of her four tales venture into the landscape of emotions with comparative ease. Fuelled by a longing for a forgotten era, 'Hear Me Surayya' skilfully employs the second-person voice to show how the vicissitudes of time rob people of happiness and certainty.

Using the first-person voice to great effect, 'Echoes of Twilight' chronicles the experiences of a woman who carries the memories of those she loved as she traverses geographical boundaries in search of new beginnings.

Narrated in the detached third-person voice, 'The Babylonian Well of Solitude' juxtaposes ignorance of centuries-old philosophical traditions from the East with the anxieties of a post-9/11 Western milieu. With its stunning evocation of the unusual ways in which different worlds intersect, 'There Was Once a Somebody and a Nobody...

' offers a poignant tale featuring multiple tragedies. The piece is interspersed with translations of Urdu and Persian poetry, including that of the 14th Century poet Hafiz. A rich, inventive collection, Blue Glass offers a thought-provoking glimpse into solitude, despair and the intricacies of the human experience.

The writer is a critically acclaimed author. All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer. Pages.

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