Comments on Jannat Ki Basharat and Neend Nahin Aati.

While I agree with the general opinion of the class about neend nahin Aati generally being a scattered piece of writing where there's imagination and more sort of an unorganised writing, I still strongly felt that it does hit at some parts while one reads it. The sequence where Akbar talks about his mother, how he misses her, how he misses his childhood days makes one realize that if not valued, precious relationships and things he have in our life at the moment, might become past one day and all we'd be left with is, memories and regret.

Coming on to Jannat Ki Basharat, I personally felt that apart from coming up with a deeper intellectual meaning, the intentions were also to settle some personal scores. How? We have had extremists and this is on both the ends, I personally felt that This piece of writing has to do with one extreme side talking about the other. There's a long history of good-for-nothing Mullahs criticising anybody who has a glimpse of being liberal and modest. At the same time we have had intellectuals choosing other sides of extreme and through any medium they can use, they have kept coming up with solid crticism on this extreme Mullah chunk of our society. While I say this, we should also not forget that Jannat ki Basharat comes from a writer sitting comfortable in London, knowing there's no potential security threat to him, having good amount of financial resources at his disposal and growing  up in well-off family. Coming back to the point, I feel what he tries to come up with (which I think is right in many instances) that those who show that they're steadfast have actually most disturbing thoughts in the mind. Bring psychology in, a famous theory is, people get their fantasies fulfilled in their dreams, so when Mualana gets that dream, it shows that though Mualana is one of the most pious people around, his fantasies lie in women. People whom we call bad, are all the times thinking of how to 'get' women while he is all the time thinking how to stay away from women, but both have women in the mind all the time. So at the end of the day, these are all my vague opinions, and nobody laughs!