basti

A basti is a small settlement, a place where you live- your home. Ironically in the story basti, that’s exactly what we see lacking.  Throughout the story there are threads of nostalgia and displacement. Zakir doesn’t seem to have a home – not in Rupnagar, nor in Sabirah’s heart.  Although the story is one of partition, Intizar hussain focuses less on the bloodshed and brutality in terms of the violence, but more on how it affected the people in so many other ways. The partition not only displaced people from their homes, but from their roots, from their sense of identity. When Zakir goes to Pakistan there seems to be no emotional attachment to that place- he admires it like a foreign land-“who kisi naee zameen p chalrha tha,ussay kisi nae zameen par chalnay mein kitni lazzat milrhi thi”. Zakir doesn’t seem to want to be a part of the partition.  He has no idea of what is going on, and even if he does he deliberately turns a blind eye to it - "khabrein?koi khaas khabr tou nhi”.  Throughout the story we see him alienated and distant and we wonder if he has a home at any point or does he remain a nomadic figure.