Qurratulain Hyder’s The Housing Society:An Interplay of History & Fiction

Quratulain Hyder’s novella The Housing Society portrays the tragedy of partition of the sub continent. With the focus on problems faced by Muslims migrating from India to the newly created state of Pakistan, the novella explores the cataclysmal relocation of the populace resulting in an abrupt change of social order. The socio-cultural differences of the Mohajirs with the existing population of Pakistan, the downfall of the Zamindari class which suffered most due to the loss of their holdings, the new order emerging out of the opportunities offered by a newly created state and the search for an identity by the younger generation eager to break away from the past but constrained by lingering bonds of language, culture and tradition, have been condensed into this remarkable narration. In typical Hyder style, the novella avoids the gruesome details of mayhem that accompanied the partition. Instead it focuses on the myriad problems faced by the population as a result of this greatest of tragedies to have effected the sub continent. While other contemporary writers dwelt in considerable detail on the issues of the partition along with the heinous crimes committed by the key components of society on one another, Hyder, at the cost of being labeled “bourgeois and reactionary” (Naim. xix) chose to depict the “disorientation and deracination of a generation of people who, for no fault of their own, found themselves strangers in the country of their birth one fine morning.” (Asaduddin 163).