Novelist Ishtiaq Ahmed Died

Novelist Ishtiaq Ahmed is No More

There are quite a few Ishtiaq Ahmeds in this world.  The one we are talking about today was a prolific writer who wrote spy novels for children of ages 8-16.  That Ishtiaq Ahmed died of a heart attack at the Karachi airport. Most probably he was surrounded by morons who did not know how to give CPR to a heart attack patient.

Ishtiaq Ahmed’s art
Ishtiaq Ahmed was famous for writing novels for children.  He wrote at least one and sometimes two novels a month.  The main characters of his novels were Inspector Jamshed and his three children Mehmood, Farooq, and Farzana.  We don’t know much about Inspector Jamshed’s wife.  Although Ishtiaq Ahmed wrote for over four decades, the child characters of his novels remained of the same age.  Ishtiaq Ahmed knew how to write a good story.  As a child you read the first few pages of the book and you get hooked.  Inspector Jamshed is trying to solve a new case.  He comes home perpelexed and discusses the case with his three children.  These three very smart children come up with clever ideas and then Inspector Jamshed is forced to involve the three in reaching to the perpetrators of the crime.  It will not be an exaggeration to say that a vast majority of Pakistani children born after 1965 grew up reading Ishtiaq Ahmed’s novels.

Influences
It will be safe to say that Ishtiaq Ahmed got his inspiration from Ibn e Safi who wrote such novels for the adults. Ibn e Safi in turn was most probably inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle, but instead of a thoughtful detective (like Sherlock Holmes) Ibn e Safi created a superman character (Imran) for solving mysteries.

Critique
Whereas Ishtiaq Ahmed’s novels for children may appear to be chaste as far as cultural environments of his books are concerned, Ishtiaq Ahmed because of being influenced by growing religiosity of his land, did carry a strong religious bias in his writings.  It will be ludicrous to accuse Ishtiaq Ahmed of doing the same to children’s minds what Naseem Hijazi did to the minds of adults in Pakistan, but it will not be untrue to say that Ishtiaq Ahmed did not write his novels for Hindu or Christian children of Pakistan.  He wrote them for Allah-fearing Sunni Muslim children.

Photo of Ishtiaq Ahmed obtained from DailyTimes dot com dot pk website.  Thank you Daily Times.