Muhabbat Ka neela Rang is Ammar Masood’s maiden effort in prose. A collection of 22 short stories, each set in a particularly momentous moment of time, swaddled in various shades of love. These are real ‘short stories’ by definition; short, directed and convincing. Most of the stories are done as monologues, an expression which is considered to be the toughest approach in prose writing. The language though, is kept simple and understandable. The words form a rhythmic flow of phrases that captures the readers and charms the listeners in an enchanting world of fiction.

Unlike what the title of the book indicates, these short stories cover an ample range of subjects other than love. There are stories about human emotions and behaviors; like. Then there are stories about the social attributes customary to our society like Ironic and satirical Time bound like and situation based & the most interesting and enlightening are the philosophical ones. About a quarter of the stories are purely symbolic.

The book opens with an extremely well written Deebacha (foreword) about the story of the story itself, written as a personification of the story, followed by acknowledgements and dedication.
 

First of the stories is Dastak. Written as a monologue, it’s the story of a blind man who lives in a world of sounds and voices. His perception is based on the sounds that are sieved through his hearing all day long. The story digs into a blind man’s life like seeing the world through a blind man’s eyes.

Gulabi Ribbon is a beautiful sarcasm on the beaurocratic evils of the system we are surviving. It’s about an extremely competent man who is thoroughly wasted by the parameters of a social system where he has to look after survival and not utility.

Sabit Qadam is another comprehensive narrative of our system. It revolves around the treacherous methods that are inevitable to use for a Government officer to survive the alligators of the society gone astray.

Speedah-e-Seher, Writing Table & a few others point out the social pressures prevalent. Social reactions to Handicaps, infertility, economic constraints and urbanization are all being addressed as the ghastly realities of our society.

Another very interesting effort is “Yar –e- man bea”. Written while following the footsteps of Bano Qudsia, (inspiration admitted by the writer) this story flows like a calm river and one is completely mesmerized by the take on the only 2 characters that appear; a lost-in-love gentleman & the love smitten woman he encounters throughout his life carrying a different persona every time Till her last breath, she wonders if it’s possible for a human to love someone again. And ironically, they both have a disagreement answering this.

8:52 & 9/11 are both written in the perspective of international events of Pakistan’s earthquake and WTC crash; the subject being very bold for a fiction writer. 8:52 tells a story of a new life springing in the middle of a chaotic disaster where life was coming to an end all around. It symbolizes how life would always keep moving ahead despite everything.

Mohabbat ka neela rang is a layman’s love for something he can not even dare to desire.Siddique Rangrez is a hardworking dyer in the middle of a downtown market. He is once visited by a lady clad in a blue Sarri, in a blue car, with blue jewels and hands him some clothes to be dyed blue. One look at her and the biggest reality of life is dawned upon him. He develops an inane association with blue and his brain gets stuck to the point where he thinks Love is Blue in color.

Barf ki sil, Kunj-e-khwab and Alamton ka jungle use a lot of similes, symbolism and philosophy. But the best of the symbolism comes in a package called Mehwar.

Mehwar is a universal story of human bounds and limitations & the circle of fate and destiny that a man is unable to escape. The story moves in parallel lines where a felon, is looking back on his life. Raised by a religious scholar, he still is unable to restrain his insurgent immoral nature. The story moves in short unrelated spans, which ultimately are all the parts of the same big nexus called life.