Bachpan Ka December, a masterpiece by Hashim Nadeem, having classical plot with discriminating characters.
The abstract thought of the book covers late 70’s through a little boy’s point of view and then late 80’s through the same mature man’s thoughts, a journey from childhood’s December to the December of youth. The book explains childhood innocent memories, followed by coming age experiences and feelings. Apart from its majestic writing and extraordinary choice of words for illustration, it is also having few appealing and beautiful lessons for our society. The book talks about parental control in childhood, family affairs and relationships with neighbors. The sarcasms used in the novel are sharper and humor is more ridiculous. Hence everything that needs to be felt is more penetrating.
‘Aadi’, the main character of the novel, never knows, that with ‘Wajjo’, with whom he has great affection, turns into a romantic interest later in his life. While reading this novel, you will feel yourself in every sentence and this will remind you of your childhood. The feelings and expressions are communicated in such a way that the reader can’t stop himself/herself to deny the fact that how innocently happy your childhood was and how adulthood can suddenly make your life different from the way it was supposed to be. The kind of relationship in which ‘Aadi’ and ‘Wajjo’ were tied together, was too sacred to be replaced by any other bond.
In this novel, I found these things a little poor and cheesy:
– Exaggeration: Some ideas are dramatized extremely.
– Repetition: You’ll found some plots are rehearsed more than once.
– Few scenes are explained in the way that doesn’t relate to reality.
– Few incidents are lengthened more than they needed to be.
After finishing it, I am having mixed feelings. It has not a happy ending but it has definitely a realistic and well deserved ending. I love this novel and it’s going to stay with me forever to make feel and understand the life in its true sense.