Receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez told his audience, "I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude." This 'outsized reality' that the author of 'The Hundred Years of Solitude' referred to, and which was termed Magic Realism by critics, catapulted this prolific Colombian writer to the position of the most outstanding fiction writer of today.

Gabo, as he is popularly known among his Spanish compatriots, was born in the Colombian coastal village of Aracataca in 1928. Situated at the northernmost tip of South America, known as the 'banana area', he always called this small town of his childhood "a wonderful place of 'bandits and dancers.'". Of those days he says, "My parents were poor. My father worked as a telegraphist. When my father wanted to marry the daughter of Col. Nicolas Marquez, her family opposed it. After the wedding my father took a job in another town far from Aracataca... When my mother became pregnant with me, in a gesture of reconciliation my grandparents said, 'Come have the baby in our house.' Which she gladly did. After a while my mother returned to the village my father was working in and so my grandparents said, 'Leave Gabriel with us to raise.' The family was poor. Later on when my parents returned to Aracataca I went on living with my grandparents -- where I was mostly very happy. I did that till I was eight when my grandfather died."

For formal schooling he was sent to a boarding school in Barranquilla, a port city at the mouth of the Magdalena River. After winning a scholarship later he went to a school near Bogota, but he did not like Bogota, finding it "dismal and oppressive". He was good at his studies but at the same time he was drawn towards literature and wrote humorous poems and drew cartoons. Gabriel's parents were interested in making him study law so he went back to Bogota. In his autobiography 'Living to Tell the Tale' he writes about those days, "I just dropped out of the faculty of law after six semesters devoted almost entirely to reading whatever I could get my hands on, and reciting from memory the unrepeatable poetry of the Spanish Golden Age. I already had read in translation and in borrowed editions all the books I would have needed to learn the novelist's craft and had published six stories in newspaper supplements winning the attention of critics."

By the time he was was twenty-three, he was smoking sixty cigarettes a day, of "most barbaric tobacco". He writes, "For reasons of poverty rather than taste I anticipated what would be the style in twenty years' time: untrimmed moustache, tousled hair, jeans, flowered shirts and pilgrim's sandals." His friends, especially the girls, thought him a 'lost cause'.

Earlier, when he had just finished his school and was preparing to go to Law School in Bogota, he was introduced to a 13 year old girl named Mercedes Barcha Pardo. Dark and silent, of Egyptian decent, she was "the most interesting person" he had ever met. After he graduated from the Liceo Nacional, he took a small vacation with his parents before leaving for the University. During that time, he proposed to her. Agreeing, but first wishing to finish school, she put off the engagement. Although they wouldn't be married for another fourteen years, Mercedes promised to stay true to him. About this once he talked to journalist Claudia Dreifus, "We became engaged in 1952 when I was working for the Bogota newspaper El Espectador. Before the wedding the paper gave me the opportunity to go to Europe as its foreign correspondent. So I had to choose between doing something that I always wanted to do and the wedding. When I discussed it with Mercedes she said, 'It is better for you to go to Europe.'.However, it was not very long before the dictator Rojas Pinilla shut down El Spectador, leaving me stranded in Paris and broke. So I cashed the return part of my air ticket and used the money to continue living in Europe. I stayed there three years. She was absolutely certain I'd return. Everyone told her she was crazy... From Paris I wrote to Mercedes every week And after we were married to force her argument she would always say that you wrote such and such thing in your letters."

Settling in the Latin Quarter, he lived off credit, the kindness of his landlady, and money scraped up returning bottles for their deposits. In those days, influenced by the writings of Hemingway, he typed out eleven drafts of 'No One Writes to the Colonel'. But he always acknowledged the major influence of Faulkner on his writings.

After returning to Columbia and marrying Mercedes, he moved to Venezuela for a few years and then arrived in New York as the correspondent of Cuba's news agency Prensa Latina. Having been associated with Fidel Castro of Cuba, his entry was banned in his home country and USA. However the ban to enter his home country was lifted when he became a Nobel Laureate and Bill Clinton, an ardent fan of Gabriel's fiction, removed restrictions on his entry to the USA when he became President. In 1961 he moved to Mexico.

Interestingly, most of his books were published because of his friends. He began his novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' when he was 18. In 1967, after many years of struggle and frustration, it was published in Argentina. It was greeted with these words by the famous Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa: "A literary earthquake has shaken Latin America." The critics regarded the book as a masterpiece of the art of fiction. Again it was his friends who took the manuscript of 'Leaf Storm' (1955) to the printer when they found it on his desk after he had gone to Italy in1954. Llosa remarked that, "the truth is that without the obstinacy of his friends Garcia Marquez would perhaps still today be an unknown writer." 'Autumn of the Patriarch', considered to be the best modern portrait of a tyrant, was published in 1975, and it was a drastic departure from both the subject and tone of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'. The book was initially considered a disappointment by the critics, but opinion has changed over the years, and many now consider this novel of shifting realities to be a minor masterpiece in its own right.

Marquez, who leans towards the political left, was upset when Pinochet took over control of Chile in a coup d' etat in which Salvador Allende was assassinated. He decided that he would write no more fiction until the American-supported Pinochet stepped down from his control of Chile, a decision he later rescinded. Now a famous writer, he was becoming more aware of his own political power. His increased clout and financial security enabled him to become politically active. Returning to Mexico City, he continued to give money to political and social causes.

Politics, however, were not the subject of his next novel. Rather it was a love story. Turning again to his rich past for inspiration and material, he reworked his parent's strange courtship into the form of a decades-spanning narrative. In 1986 'Love in the Time of Cholera' was published and well received.

By now one of the most famous writers in the world, he bought residences in Mexico City, Cartagena, Cuernavaca, Paris, Barcelona, and Barranquilla, and took part in teaching, political activism and writing. In 1990 he wrote 'The General in his Labyrinth', and two years later 'Strange Pilgrims'. In 1994 he published 'Love and Other Demons'. This was followed in 1996 by 'News of a Kidnapping', a journalistic work detailing the atrocities of the Colombian drug trade. In 1999 he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and currently he is steadfastly fighting this treacherous disease. Still, he has not abandoned writing. The first volume of his memoirs was published in 2001 as 'Living to Tell the Tale'. The epitaph of the book reads, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it." His latest novel,'Memories of My Sad Whores', appeared in 2004. The second part of his memoirs is in the pipeline.

Main aur Mera Muqaddama

Dr. Mubarak Ali

Fiction House, Lahore, 2006

Price: Rs. 120

Historians are the envy of journalists. While journalists struggle to wriggle out of the painfully strict regime raised on the fundamental that all stories must have two sides to them, they marvel at historians and all others blessed with the facility to conclude with authority.

A passage in a book I was going through recently reads (with the first line left un-translated for want of understanding): "Pakistan mein nichlay darjay kay mutawassat tabqay ki maali halat bohat kharab hay. If they happen to be salaried people, their income is so small that it doesn't allow ends to meet. Dearness is rising day by day. Hence people from this class are always looking for means to increase their income. They don't let go of an opportunity to be bribed. Those who want to keep their integrity intact they take up two or three jobs. So much so that people steal electricity to save whatever little they can...."

It is doubtful that any news editor worth his salt would entertain such sweeping statements, and I doubt that the most corrupt and most skilful of all journalists from among the sullied lot would be able to successfully plant the story.

The inability to speak bluntly in the presence of all the visible and not-so-visible factors forces the scribe to search for the alter ego, someone who can break taboos through an uninhibited or less inhibited expression.

One current favourite of the Pakistani media is Dr Mubarak Ali.

Prolific and authoritative as a writer, Dr Mubarak is willing to speak his mind on any subject from Jamaat-e-Islami to Allama Muhmmad Iqbal. In the process he has been a source of inspiration to all those wanting to throw off the sheet of convention for a free and frank view of reality as it appears. It is no surprise then that his latest book, which by the way has all the ingredients of a bestseller, encourages us to reflect once more, and perhaps even more deeply than ever before, on the times that we are living in and the people we are living with.

The book is titled 'Main aur Mera Muqaddama (Aik Zawaal shuda Muashray ki Kahani)' -- Me and My Case (The Story of a Fallen Society). The emphasis is on the zawaal shuda which is, with finality, fallen or decayed, as opposed to the usual zawaal-pazeer, which would only mean decadent or falling.

The book is about a legal case (or many cases) Dr Mubarak Ali has been implicated in over the last couple of years, along with a well known publisher of Lahore. The complainant, who introduced himself as an author of several books, did not simply claim that he had been deprived of fees due to him as a writer and translator; he had the audacity to claim that certain books credited to Dr Mubarak Ali were in fact his creations.

The legal imbroglio frustrated Dr Mubarak for a considerable period of time, details of which are provided in the book. But much before that, its very subject does point to decadence. Not that writers have not been rightly or wrongly implicated in the theft of manuscripts before. But the glorious tradition is that of giants like Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Maulana Muahammad Ali Jauhar. In the twenty year period up to 1924, Hasrat was charged by the government of the time no less than three times, and sent to jail. Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar was tried in a famous case in Karachi's Khaliqdina Hall in 1921 after he finally ruled, among his other offensive declarations, that it was haraam for a Muslim to join the British forces. The decline to a point where a reputed intellectual of the day has to defend his integrity is truly indicative of a current phenomenon. An evaluation of a person, whichever field he or she may come from, seldom, if ever, goes beyond the question about his, her or their integrity.

Dr Mubarak Ali has felt the need to clear his name in his usual no-holds-barred style. The sad bit is that in the process he has cast a sorrowful mood others may find difficult to escape. Sorrowful is an understatement. It is plain gloomy with the door to redemption firmly shut.

Dr Mubarak Ali uses his case to take us on a tour of society inhabited by lawyers who don't impress him, journalists who take bribes, policemen who are bossy as they are inefficient and even indifferent personnel manning visa counters. The trip leaves us suspicious of almost everyone we meet on the way. Almost, because even Dr Mubarak in such devastating form cannot deny a few select intellectuals the benefit of doubt. A conscientious policeman attached to a deputy superintendent makes a brief appearance somewhere, conveying to the accused the good news that the police inquiry against them was faulty from the beginning. There are good people around who have been mentioned in the book; and to one of them is the book dedicated. There are a number of journalists and scholars who stood by Dr Mubarak Ali; those who wrote in his favour even at the risk of being labelled as biased and those who put their signatures to a campaign run in his support. Let us not speak of those among them who rather unprofessionally held on to their reports for fear of complicating the matter and instead silently wished for an amicable solution to the problem that should never have been. They all come to naught when it comes to the overall impact of 'Main aur Mera Muqaddama', eclipsed by the darkness inherent in Dr Mubarak's final verdict on the society that we make up. History cannot be rewritten. But can't historians be proven to have missed out on a few aspects in their keenness to reach people post haste? The inhabitants must come up with a reason for hope, or be condemned.

If you ask this question from writers and readers, you are most likely to get an affirmative answer. In fact there seems to be some consensus of opinion regarding the decline of literary magazines. It has been assumed by almost all of us that the good days of literary magazines have passed away. It is also believed that we do not have editors who are able, hard working and sincerely committed to their cause like those of the past. Editors of today do not try hard to collect good writings. Their literary taste, like their literary knowledge, is often doubtful. They are more concerned about collecting advertisements for their journals. They do not encourage new writers and their contribution to the promotion of literature and literary culture is almost next to nothing.

Complaints are also made about the price of literary magazines. Elderly writers and readers nostalgically recall the days when they could buy their favourite magazine for just two or three rupees. Now the prices of such magazines usually ranges from one hundred to four hundred rupees making it difficult for students and common readers to buy them.

The middle decades of the past century are usually remembered as the golden period of Urdu literary journalism, when monthly or quarterly magazines like Adabi Duniya, Humayun, Saqi, Adab-e-Latif, Nairang-e-Khayal, Nigar, Chamanistan, Shair, Sub Rus, Naya, Adab and Aajkal were published. Later on Funoon, Auraq, Naqoosh and Al-hamra also started publication. Many of these magazines have now ceased publication.

Dr. Anwar Sadeed has now come out to challenge some of our basic assumptions regarding literary magazines. His dialogue with Sehar Iqbal on the topic of 'A critical review of the causes of the deterioration of literary magazines' has been carried by the monthly Al-hamra. He draws our attention to the fact that a number of new magazines are now being published and they have taken the place of those who have disappeared from the literary scene. Many of these new magazines are quite up to the mark and they are serving well the cause of literature. Their list includes Irtaqa, Khayal, Al-hamra, Seep, Takhleeq, Angaaray, Mukalma, Shehrzad, Ainda, Swera, Sareer, Al-Zubair, Shab-o- Roz, Roshnai, and Mah-e-Nau. The list is not complete. There are many literary magazines that are regularly published from various places.

These magazines are not only read in Pakistan and India but in many other countries where Urdu-reading people have settled. It is also gratifying to know that some Urdu literary magazines are now published from Britain, Canada and Middle East.

These facts go against the impression that the good days of our literary magazines have passed away. However it should be kept in mind that the publication of literary magazines has not been institutionalised. Despite their history, spread over a century, these magazines remain a sort of personal adventure. They are founded and run by individuals who usually also edit them. Consequently they totally depend on their owner-editors. When an owner-editor looses interest in literature, gets involved in some other business or runs out of funds, his magazine's publication comes to a full stop.

Some of our renowned literary magazines have gone with the wind simply because of the death of the person who managed it. The closure of the monthly Afkar of Karachi is a painful recent example. It was a journal admired and respected for its quality and regularity, and had been published for more than a third of a century. It was generally believed that its foundations have been strengthened and it will not be difficult for it to continue its regular publication after the passing away of Sebha Akbarabadi, its owner and editor. Sehba Sahib had even constituted a board to look after its affairs after him. But Afkar failed to survive his death.

Perhaps by increasing the number of readers, a literary magazine can be put on strong and durable foundations. Dr. Anwar Sadeed is of the view that the publication of good pieces of literature is necessary for increasing the number of readers.