Table Of ContentDrawn 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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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