1. Fikr Taunsvi was the pen name of Ram Lal Bhatia (1918-1987), a noted Urdu satirist and columnist, born in Taunsa Sharif, which now lies in Pakistan. He is best known for his popular column of social satire, ‘Pyaz ke Chhilke’, or ‘Onion Skins’, that he wrote for the Urdu daily Milap. Fikr published over twenty books in Urdu, including Chhata Darya, Chaupat Raja, Fikriyat, Fikr Bani, Fikr Nama, Aakhri Kitab, and at least eight in Hindi. 2. Maaz Bin Bilal is associate professor in literary studies at the liberal arts school of Jindal Global University. He earned his PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in 2015 for his dissertation on the politics of friendship in E.M. Forster’s work. Maaz is also a translator, poet, and critic.
<p>The Sixth River is the journal Fikr Taunsvi—born Ram Lal Bhatia—wrote from August to November 1947 as Lahore disintegrated around him. His identity reduced, overnight, merely to a Hindu in his beloved and cosmopolitan city, he is angry at the shortsightedness and ineptness of Radcliffe, Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah. In the company of likeminded friends such as the poet Sahir Ludhianvi, he mourns the loss of the art and culture of Lahore in the bloodlust and deluded euphoria of freedom. He is bewildered when old friends suddenly turn staunch nationalists and advise him to either convert or leave the newly created country. And then the unspeakable trauma that millions are facing during Partition reaches Fikr’s doorstep when a neighbour murders his daughter, and he is eventually forced to migrate to Amritsar in India.</p><div><br></div>
