ABSTRACT
Muhammad Ali Siddiqui, a close friend of Joginder Paul as also a noted scholar of Urdu literature, educationist, literary critic, and a newspaper columnist from Pakistan locates Paul’s creative oeuvre at a point from where it appears differently to different people. He says that the writer appeared modern to those who were bereft of or despaired of tradition and he presented tradition for those who were despairing of or were influenced by modernism. Making an important point, he says that Paul’s fiction is so woven that even ‘evil’ characters are depicted with great sympathy because they do not necessarily appear to be what they are and this humanises his fiction. By focusing on some stories, looking into the question of point of view and by bringing in references from Ghalib to Hegel, Croce and Balinsky, Siddiqui shows how these aspects contribute to making Paul a writer of pleasurable complexity.
