ABSTRACT
Wahab Ashrafi begins his essay on Joginder Paul’s short stories with the writer’s oft-repeated question, ‘Why do I write?’ and goes on to explain this through several of Paul’s non-fictional statements on the theory of fiction as well as by highlighting examples from many of his short stories. Ashrafi, an academic and literary critic in Urdu, sees Paul’s fiction as turning directly to life to use it as a mirror to create the warp and weft of his stories without ever resorting to the usual climactic scenes that readers have been exposed to. Ashrafi maintains that the temper of Paul’s stories give him an intellectual form which is so unmistakable that it cannot be compared to any other short story writer, while his individuality remains intact amongst new writers. The critic goes on to analyse Paul’s fiction with references to the Urdu critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi as well as the French philosopher-writer Auguste Comte, highlighting the positivistic and existentialist elements in it but insisting that his fiction moves much beyond these since the writer is essentially operating with a free mind. He also writes with references to T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus.
