Light Within

Philosophy helps us to understand how varying points of view about eternal truths, if there are any, are presented and psychology to know how philosophers come up with those points of view. Widely contradicting philosophies, what one sees happening in life all around and annoying discussions with his friend Mansoor Qureshi put Abbas Khan on a path to discover what is truth? 

Famous name in Urdu fiction (short story) Abbas Khan has written 13 novels and short story books (Zakham Gawah Hain, Tu Aur Tu and Mein Aur Umrao Jan Ada (novels), Dharti Binam Akash, Tensikh-e-Insan, Qalam, Kursi Aur Wardi, U’s Adalat Men, Jism Ka Johar (short story books) and Reza Reza Keenat and Pal Pal (afsancha -- shortest story books) but this time he presenting his finding not in fiction but in hard truths.

I had a chance to speak to the writer about his new book Sach (Truth) that is likely to come out of the press by the end this year. Abbas Khan starts with his lifelong research about what earlier philosophers have been saying about truth. Did wisdom start with the thought of Socrates or were his thoughts simply end of the truth. How human are besieged by forces like sex and hunger? Abbas Khan vividly explains what philosopher from Plato to Karal Marks and so many in between have been saying about universe and universal truths if there are any. What does modern science says about truth. What are different religious schools of thoughts on the subject? How literature views the changing truth?

When most contemporary writers today are “realist, liberals, progressive, revolutionary and blunt, someone has to explore what truth is? All his life, Abbas Khan has explored achieves of history, philosophies, biographies, autobiographies, and literature spread over centuries. He himself mediates upon what he finds what truth is and has put up in his fourteenth book entitled Saach. Let truth be told!