Ae meray betay, tu ney bastion ko kaisa paya?

It is interesting to note that the title of the book is singular, where as the final question in Zakir’s imagination concerns ‘Bastiyan’ and not a particular ‘Basti’. We then question what this final singularity in the title means and contrast the plurality up against the various towns and cities covered in the text through memory. If Basti really is a continuous retrospect; into what may be lands that fail national narratives and are home to the exilic, then the title basti is the representation of all the exilic constructs of societies right from Roopnagar to Lahore. From states like Hindustan that excluded, and Pakistan that failed to include the individual. In that respect, Basti needs to be saved in the memory, as Zakir does. Infact he believes ‘mujhey issey qalam band kar lena chahiyeh’. On the one hand, the plural failure of the more literal, geographic earthly bastiayan is addressed in this question “Ae meray betay, tu ney bastion ko kaisa paya?” to which we hear ‘Meray baap, main ney bastion ko bey aram dekha.’ The use of the word ‘bey araam’ is apt when we describe the uneasiness that was relegated to each city and town in the novel. By portraying this as a conversation between father and son, it re-iterates the ideas of failed patriarchy in the Basti ‘Har simt main main ney Aadam key baiton ko dukhi aur pareshan paya.” Not only does this highlight the recurrent exile across generations but through a prophetic lineage, Intizar Hussain points again to the failure of the patriarchy within the Muslim tradition.