Mirages of the Mind

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Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi was born in Tonk, sixty miles south of Jaipur, in what was then the British Indian state of Rajputana, and that is now Rajasthan. The year was 1922. His father was a local politician, and, in Yousufi’s own words, ‘a simple, God-fearing Muslim.’ Yousufi was educated in Jaipur before receiving a law degree and an MA in Philosophy from the renowned Aligarh Muslim University. He married Idris Fatima in 1946, and the couple’s four children live today in Pakistan, America, and England. After a brief stint in the Indian civil service, he left for Pakistan. He arrived in Karachi in January 1950, and, aside from an eleven-year stint in London, he has lived there ever since.

Yousufi has won national awards for his contribution to Pakistani arts and letters, and critics and readers alike have praised his work, so much so that one critic has called contemporary Urdu humour and satire writing, the ‘age of Yousufi.’ He has written four works, each of which has been extensively reprinted. Yet despite his national stature and the recognition that he ranks among the best humour and satire writers in the history of Urdu literature, not much is known about his life. That may be in part because he spent his professional life in banking: after his first job at Muslim Commercial Bank, he rose rapidly in the ranks, becoming President of United Bank in 1974 and the chairman of the Pakistan Banking Council in 1977. But the scarcity of biographical information may also be due to his personality and the fact that he shuns the limelight. In one of the few interviews he has granted, he readily admits to being a private person, and states that all he has to say is in his books.

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