Table Of Content

Drawn Out Death Novel Translated from Punjabi Drawn Out Death By Makhdoom Tipu Salman (Translated from Punjabi) MTS ePublishing Lahore 1st Punjabi (Shahmukhi) Edition : 2019 Original Punjabi title: Addhi Mot, , ਅੱਧੀਮੌਤ تﻮﻣ ﯽھدا Published by Sanjh Publications, Lahore 1st English (ePublished) Edition: 2019 2nd English (ePublished) Edition: 2019 3rd English (ePublished) Edition: 2019 All rights reserved Table of Contents 1. Chapter 1- Right & Left …… 5 2. Chapter 2 – Nature …… 25 3. Chapter 3 – Bank …… 48 4. Chapter 4 – WhatsApp …… 70 5. Chapter 5 – Disease .….. 97 6. Chapter 6 – Class ….. 120 7. Chapter 7 – Whore ….. 143 Then I returned earth- Chapter 1 side and took flight like a sparrow. It was a Right & Left street of Lahore’s Jauhar Town, lined on either side by rows of ten-marla, double- I first looked in from storey houses. Three or space, like a satellite. four of the houses had a N o h u m a n – a n d tree standing guard indeed no living thing – out-front. One had is visible from that chairs arrayed on the distance. The world itself lawn, in the driveway, looked like a small and outside the gate – ball in no way chairs made of shiny distinguished metal frames clad in a m o n g red Rexine. Parked in innumerable the balls big and small, dark and luminescent. Drawn Out Death street were a dozen people’s ears and c a r s a n d a f e w noses, hands and feet, motorcycles. Inside the arms and legs. house were a couple of Women sat on white dozen people, some sheets and children ran standing and some about. At the center of sitting in the red chairs. the scene was a cot I assumed the holding point of view of a corpse t h e g e c k o covered clinging to the porch in a white sheet. It was ceiling. People arrived my corpse. And this was in twos, threes, and my house – or rather it fours. Men would stay used to be while I lived. outside and women I circled my body for a would go inside the while but soon tired of it house. and found a perch on I entered the house as a the curtain rail to keep mosquito – whining and a n e y e o n t h e b u z z i n g a r o u n d proceedings. 6 MTS I had been dead for couple of bystanders four hours now. Death recognized me and had come as I rode my rang up my home. Then motorcycle along a I – err my cadaver – was busy road. I had a flash carried home. of something rushing at It seemed all my me from the right, and emotions and feelings then everything fell to had died with my the right. Next, I found death. I was neither myself flying like a angry with the motorist sparrow. I saw that a who had crushed me car had overrun my against the pavement motorcycle, and I lay to death there on the roadside, nor felt my skull torn open a n y against the footpath. sorrow on seeing myself T h e r e w a s b l o o d dead. Nor did I even everywhere. A crowd get misty-eyed on had gathered. As my seeing my wife and house was nearby, a children wailing. 7 Drawn Out Death Aimlessly droning like Born to a clerk, I had the two or three flies gone to public school. buzzing around my M y f a t h e r h a d a body, I got home. My cauldron of rice cooked life of a half century was to feed the poor when I in front of me. Nothing matriculated placing in was obscure, nothing first division – and incomplete. I was several cauldrons when r o a m i n g a b o u t I passed MA History. pointlessly, now a What was the point in satellite, now a sparrow, all the revelry? It was now a mosquito. not as if I had I could travel drunk deep back in time at will of the Pierrian – could even freeze Spring. I had time if I wanted. In fact, passed the exam by I had already taken a l e a r n i n g c a n n e d tour of my time in this answers from cheap world, taking in a birds‟ guidebooks by rote. eye view of my life. What difference would 8 MTS it make if I had failed? It b e e n s o m e w h a t was not as if I could slimmer, and the now eat sushi and relatives would have summer in the Swiss been a little less jealous. Alps. I was still eating I would still die right here the same old vegetable in a motorcycle crash. ghee parathas with It would have been lentil gravy and would different if my father n o t and his father had been t a k e successful in bringing a day about Red Revolution o f f – if they had not been from work cowed by batons and for fear I would prison ter ms and be transferred to a far hunger. That would off station. Things would have indeed made a have been scarcely difference. For then, different if I had failed. nobody would eat sushi At worst, the annual if I could not, nobody pay raise would have 9 Drawn Out Death would have a car if I Idly floating in the air, I could not. had wandered onto the What a life had been porch when I heard a mine! Even wild beasts stern voice question have it better. In that me, “What are you moment, I could see doing here?” only one difference The question was aimed between my life and at me – for all that of an ox yoked to a other voices seed crusher. His burden sounded as if was different from mine coming from – and that was all. Or the bottom of a rather, there was one deep well. It was more difference: The ox then that I noticed two is kept blinkered by the s m a l l b e i n g s crusher operator, and I accompanying every h a d b e e n k e p t person, one perched on blinkered all my life by each shoulder. They the society. were small but beautiful humanoids – tiny sprites 10