We are talking of no one else other than the Father of English Drama William Shakespeare. To how we profess our love to each other, and to how we express our grief his influence pervades so much in our lives, because his work has become so timeless in its ability to touch upon human nature. Now the long story of separation begins.On 23 April, 1616, a man died, but with his death a legacy was born one which proved so essential not only to the development of drama and literature, but to language, to thoughts and ideas. Though he also loves her, he can not rise above his family values and succumbs to his parent's pressure to marry someone against his wishes and leave for London to look after his family business. Aftab belongs to a Kashmiri business family. Seemin is a modern and attractive urban girl and attracts most of her male class fellows, including the narrator (abdul)Qayyum and the young liberal professor Suhail. Plot: Seemin Shah, hailing from an upper middle class family, falls in love with her handsome class fellow Aftab in the MA Sociology class at Government College Lahore. Every sensitive reader who has attended a college or a university in a Pakistani setting is bound to find some similarities between themselves and one of the characters. Her characters are not black and white ones as some of the critics would like to suggest. But she does not sacrifice the flow of the narrative anywhere in this novel. The nostalgic narration of the historical Government College Lahore and of the Lawrence Garden Lahore lights upon the days of seventies and eighties.īano Qudsia is among those Urdu writers who would think ten times before writing a sentence. She seems to suggest that the abnormality is transferred genetically to the next generation.Īpart from the above implication the novel has many social, emotional and psychological aspects. In the opinion of many readers and critics she manages to convince them that the pursuance of Haraam, be it financial, moral or emotional, results in the deterioration of a person's normality in some sense. Naturally the plot is woven to support the thesis. Many readers tend to interpret Raja Gidh as a sermon, in which Bano Qudsia puts forth her theory of hereditary transmission of Haraam genes. The metaphor of the vulture as an animal feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals is employed to portray the trespassing of ethical limits imposed by the society or by the religion.īano Qudsia has written this novel drawing on the religious concept of Haraam and Halaal.

In fact, parallel to the main plot of the novel, an allegorical story of such a kingdom is narrated.

The name anticipates the kingdom of vultures. Gidh is the Urdu word for a vulture and Raja is a Hindi synonym for king. Raja Gidh (Urdu: راجه گدھ) by Bano Qudsia is one of the most widely read and acclaimed Urdu novels.

Raja Gidh / راجه گدھ by Bano Qudsia