The Venomous Fog: A Meta Narrative Of Woes Dr Mushtaque B Barq

​The Venomous Fog : A Meta Narrative Of Woes

A Short Story Collection

Dr Mushtaque B Barq

 Story writing is an art. The ability to weave a story, novella, or screenplay demands a deep understanding of the society in which the writer lives. Narratives drawn from everyday life often carry greater appeal than those set in imaginary or Utopian worlds, which may feel detached or influenced by external forces, creating a distance between the reader and the writer. A successful storyteller builds a connection between society and personal observation. This book is one such effort, where all characters and plots emerge from the soil itself, and each story stands as a reflection of lived reality.

 Bashir Dada’s The Fog is a pathway leading to a world in which these stories have been woven. ​Since the author is well-versed in cinema, the impact of it is clearly seen in the entire collection. These stories are copious with conflict, both internal and external, social unrest, political foregone conclusions, and above all emotional stagnancy. The stories are not conventional in texture, with a dictated storyline and expected climax, but are fragmented slices of life presented to us through a camera. This collection is densely packed with scenes, gestures, heart-wrenching visuals, and emotionally charged dialogues. This contributes to cinematic humanism, which encourages structures and techniques otherwise borrowed to translate emotions and human agonies into pulsating realities, forcing a reader to explore the space between the lines. One can find shattered memories, inescapable yore of yearnings, and above all psychological trauma—not as a victim card but as a nameplate hanging on the door of customized and compromised shelters we call homes, wherein characters live like hollow men devoid of voice. As the creator of the stories, the author has consciously controlled commentary that either grabs the emotion of the reader or forcefully guides them to follow the confined line of thought.

Let us delve deeper into the stories and find out the essence and orientation of the author, who wants to unfold the half-broken dreams, partially crafted conventions, and sugar-coated injustice through the scenes. ​In Where Tears Froze on the Eyelashes, Ghulam Padshah has been portrayed as a labourer caught between hardships and humanly possible resolutions. His sighs are frozen for lack of expression as his hut has turned into merciless ash, besides the displacement of his family, under the might of Sulla Mukhbir: Sulla Mukhbir hissed, ‘Listen, as your neighbor, I’m warning you, just stop breathing. Seal your breath. Don’t even let a sigh escape. The whole village will be put to task. You’ll be interrogated about why the infiltrators entered your hut. Go and hide yourself. I’ll take care of the rest.

Ghulam Padshah represents our common narrative that once was unfortunately bruised by violence and exploitation. He moves like an unruly man through the streets of Padshahi Bagh before returning to the shrine. An impalpable section of the story reveals the intense outcome of justification of the brutal assault on a chinar lying in the lawn of Lassa Kaul, which, in the garb of an ill omen, was cut down by the villagers under the malicious mind of Sulla Mukhbir. Thus, the severity of the antagonist forces the protagonist to seek inner solace, and he returns to his Murshid. So the underlying current of the story proposes that the never-ending chaos of the world has its end at the feet of the Murshid.

The Mocking, is a haunting portrait of Zainab scripted by the patriarchal culture, where silence is a metaphor for unaddressed woes. Zainab was not welcomed by family members. Her father was seen wearing an ugly look on his face at her birth, and her mother’s obligatory silence narrated: a daughter is a burden, a disappointment, an ill omen, and what not. This patriarchal inheritance of Zainab is the central theme of the story. The plight of her misfortune can be felt by those who witness such an incident or are victims of the same. Zainab was kept nameless for many days till her grandfather named her Zainab Lala. The nameless woes in a newborn’s breast cannot be drawn on the pages as a tale, but are an abyss, a bottomless gorge that can seal the entire humanity. This nameless entity is not Zainab, a character in the story to serve the narrator, but a living and haunting smear on the face of humanity. Her fear is not natural as one can relate; it is a purely manufactured, well-thought detestment. Zainab’s trouble is not external but emotional as well, as her sister Shugufta stands in contrast, a free bird. A wonderful slice of the story introduces a parrot—caged, yet trained and allowed to sing when asked for. The bird is yet another projection of Zainab’s inner turmoil, which Dada has skilfully framed. A heart-touching line of Zainab is enough for a reader to understand the inborn suffering: “You are my soul and I am your cage.” 

The twist in the story is both alarming and shocking. The fragment of the story that connects Zainab’s everlasting agony is Jabbar Terror’s might, which he imposed on Zainab. Jabbar Terror, a character carved out of lust, brutality, and debauchery, represents the institution usually named as the highest seat of learning, where Zainab was threatened over her viva. This official control over a student seeking her education is another example of power in the academic system, which exposes how patriarchy takes a toll on both domestic and educational setups. She reclaims the identity denied to her at birth, and she raises her brow at her father, husband, and man in general, but comforts herself for the reason that she has tried to combat with the sacredness of her being Zainab—a name that deserves respect, when that great soul fought against the tyrant at Karbala.

​Akbar Tangewala is a tragic tale of a tangewala. Dada has helped us understand that love is a common ailment, a rightful wish of any human heart. Emotional attachment has no nomenclature, yet any human heart can rise out of the ribcage to soar in the azure of love. Akbar’s innocence is symbolized by his curly hair, a visual echo of his malice-free mind and his wishful dream of owning a tanga drawn by a white horse. To him, the tanga is the ultimate purpose of living. His struggle is not merely to fill his belly but to wage a war against poverty, humiliation, and survival. No goal, however small, comes easily, and the narrator seems to plunge into Akbar’s very existence to extract the emotional outburst of a simple man who lives for a dream. To dream is no shame, but for Akbar this dream carries human agony, forlornity, and the broken narrative of a man deprived of life’s basic requirements. Akbar, admired by college girls whom he ferries to college, feels proud and uplifted when boys chase after his tanga. Yet beneath this lies a pathetic undercurrent: he runs a horse on the road but must “attend the horse of his heart before the court” whenever he disappears for a few days each month. 

Akbar becomes the victim of the rigid brutality of Mokhta Maal, supported by a chain of like-minded oppressors—Razaq Bhat, Miyaun Gafoor, and Oshur the barber—who collectively inflict pain on him, leaving Zaina as the only person who acknowledges his dream. It is said that when suffering surpasses its limit, it gives tongue to the sufferer; similarly, Zaina openly defies the system, declaring that if Akbar is not released, her bridal procession will carry her corpse instead. When Akbar is beaten at the police station on the fabricated charge of kidnapping a minor girl, he makes a single plea: “You may cut my throat, but don’t disrespect my curly hair.” The tragic separation of Zaina and Akbar stands as yet another testimony to the injustice that defines their world where dream is a nightmare and love is the grave, the ultimate destiny of lovers.

​Cinematic sequencing appears in Pain: A Commonality Amidst Diversity, where tragic gloom falls upon Nazir Chaprasi’s family during COVID when Nazir Chaprasi lost his life in the hospital. The plight of the family multiplied when Gul Kraknaad imposed a self-styled restriction on the wife and daughters of the deceased. They were locked inside and condolences kept waiting at the door, searching for a way to soothe the affected family. Empathy became the worst-hit trade—good for nothing. The story has ripped open the human breast and exposed the honey-coated humanity when compassion was reduced to a mere noun, raw and naked like a leafless tree under the intense snowfall. The daughters’ last wish to see their father before he was sealed and buried by men unknown to them, like other victims, found no human hand to slip him under the thick merciless cover of soil. The situation soon found a fragment which connected the half-scripted fate of Nazir Chaprasi when a man became a pulse at the window who, like the affected family, was seeking his own family that was deprived of seeing his dead body. Dada has glued a fragmented reality of the past where a particular class was killed or executed unjustly. A conversation in the story branches over the very existence of a reader like thunder when the man in disguise of a shadow reveals: As I died, I heard my wife’s cries: ‘Take his Dejihoor (the sacred Kashmiri bridal ornament) and shoot me too. Then place the ornament on my dead body.’ She pleaded with him, but he ignored her. ‘I have orders from above,’ he said. ‘Wail over your husband’s body for the rest of your life.

The story is one more silent sigh lost in the vast expanse of violation, whether political or pandemic. The barbarous Gul Kraknaad at the end shouts: “Respect your neighbour, but not at the cost of the entire village!” This verdict captures the core of the tale that displays fear as a brutal force, pitiless enough to consume entire humanity.

​The Monochrome Idol is a spiritual allegory centered on Khala, nicknamed Saat Rangi. This nickname is not due to any lavishness or vibrancy on his part but because his clothes carry the colors of the spices he handles in the factory. Despite being associated with seven colors, his true inner color remains unnoticed by everyone. His strongest character trait is that he never dramatizes his limitations. He accepts them without complaint and never uses them as a means to gain sympathy. The true color embedded within him is humility and an unshakable faith in Providence. Beneath the stains of spice, his soul remains stainless. His honesty and morality are tested when he crosses paths with Siraj ud Din, the factory cashier, who considers Khala inferior. Siraj’s arrogance, however, is shattered when Khala finds an envelope filled with money. The real test of Khala’s character emerges when, despite his poverty, ill health, and his daughter’s impending marriage, he never entertains the thought of keeping the money. Instead, he takes the envelope to the police station. Khala lives not for wealth but for morality. 

As Khala’s health declines due to constant coughing and weakness, his seven-colored identity gradually fades, revealing a single serene shade. The transformation of his many mundane hues into one monochromatic tone symbolizes his spiritual growth and enlightenment. He dies only after dissolving all the colors of his hard life into a single, everlasting one, represented by the white marble headstone that eventually marks his grave. Over time, this headstone becomes a shrine where people offer their tributes in both cash and kind. Khala lived in poverty, but his purity and steadfastness ultimately transformed the lives of his family—his wife, daughter, and son-in-law. Thus, Saat Rangi Khala lives eternally beneath the white marble headstone, revered as a monochrome idol.

Another signature of Dada’s craft is non-linear use of time by taking refuge in the digressions In The Curse, the author has brought to light an effort of a low cast family of the cobbler Jumma Sheikh and his wife Zoona and their only son Sabzar who cracked the pigeonhole ideology of the family norms by studying medicine to become a doctor. As Sabzar leaves for the city, the gloom prevailed over the parents. Zoona’s motherly love brought her to the bus stand on every Saturday to receive her son. Sabzar’s apprehension had tented its roots in his mind to erase the family symbolized by the Scheduled Caste as marked in the certificate displayed on the wall. When Sabzar permanently settled in the city, the concerned parents paid him a visit but the change of status not only humiliated the parents but he also hesitated to acknowledged them. Zoona collapsed and Jumma sorrowful broke the photograph of his son. The act was not a protest of a cobbler but a ‘movement’ to support his identity. One more interesting character namely Azi Masa in the story had adopted a son namely Rustum who was drawn into crime and disappeared. So the meta-narrative brings two mothers on the same page: one bound by a fake support and other bound by obligation but held by status. When Rustum hit Azi Masa she was shattered beyond repairs and ran to the shrine revealing

  “My Reshi Malei, I am destroyed! My heart is broken! But don’t punish my Rustum and the fight is between us. We will resolve it together!”

(She had heard somewhere that if a mother’s heart breaks because of her son, a curse befalls him.)  After that day, Rustum disappeared without a trace. Some said he had been thrown into the Veth near the gambling den.

The Echoes Still Linger in My Ears is a story of Maqbool, an idealistic and pro labour intellectual. He is labeled as atheist, nationalist and even India agent, traitor and fraud. The scene of the overgrown gate with birds nest as tuned to an intense metaphor of life under the ruins. This story brings at fore the ideological battles obscure the realities and the predicament of people who seek dignity and peace.

​The Most Wanted is a blunt literary accusation of how sinlessness collapses under the system of mistrust, militarization, and communal trauma. Mama Kol, yet another character taken from ordinary life, is a physically challenged and morally innocent man. His entire character is our collective consciousness personified, as his tragedy is not a personal reversal of hamartia but a script written by power, with post-scripts added by violence that re-labeled a simpleton as hostile. Mama Kol is an epitome of selfless service, defending and honouring womenfolk and feeding pigeons. The twist in the story is like a long dark night after a cloudy day. His innocence becomes his worst enemy when the state and its uniform erase his identity. This transformation from a simpleton to a terrorist ended his life. It is a sharp critique of militarized truth. Dada wants to tell us that in the conflict zone, Mama Kol is not discovered; he is declared. The military narrative labels Mama Kol “The Most Wanted,” with his corpse dressed in army fatigues, photographed like a trophy, and wasted like a rotten mass of flesh amidst vultures in the desert.

​Kaneez Fatima’s story has been crafted as a single sleek arc. A world of colours, hues and shades, but as the blazing sun of worries reaches its zenith, the colours start to fade, the wishful hearts begin to wither. The bond between a mother and daughter, as depicted in the story, stands as a divine shelter to beat the challenges of time and weather. Khatoon, a mother, represents a common mother with the most common challenges ahead; she has been portrayed as a mother by conviction and not as a model of liberal philosophy. This story exposes the hollow religiosity of the clergy, the Colonel’s influence, official delays, and above all, the collective silence of neighbours. The story moves poetically from the colourful world of Fatima to the most soothing white glory at her burial, making her a fairy of sacred radiance. The presence of the Faqir as a guest appearance at her death has turned the story of Fatima from a simple tragedy into a mystical transcendence. Fatima has been raised to the level of spiritual elevation, and the credit for her status has been towered by suffering, which Dada has given a place in this story, saying that mundane suffering is yet another leap to eternal peace.

The image of the fig tree has been presented in the story as if painted with accuracy. The tree seems, for a philosopher, a reason to disturb a conscious mind; the same tree, for a mother, is yet another worry of the growing age of her daughter; and for the rest of the people who dare to carry a raw eye to cast evil on the growing limbs of the fig tree. Dada has painted the tree with emotions, philosophized it with human urge, and at the same time has seen it through the eyes of a sensitive mother. The tree above all stands as a symbol of Fatima’s purity and innocence.

The Fog is a saga of the collective trauma of people living in a conflict zone. Mashooq is a boy who seems a prototype of death and dearth, and like many others, a victim of war. His imaginations are directly connected to the historic inhuman treatment at Karbala, where children, before knowing how to deck up their dreams, were put on the blade. Taking clues from this tragic incident, Mashooq dreams of himself as a healer, a sage with a silent wish destined to heal the needy, to quench the thirst of millions, and above all, he stands as a towering figure to reveal his inner purity. The story opens with a vicious force encouraging children to undergo guerrilla training, but like a true fighter, Mashooq distances himself from the training, declaring he is meant to save and not to harm. But in the conflict zone, innocence is like a prostitute—rated and raised and finally ruined as an unrecorded victim of lust or brutal assaults.

The tale moves ahead when the killer of Mashooq, a military officer named Dharam Pal, undergoes a spiritual transformation, forcing him to bury the dead body of Mashooq with religious rituals. 

“His lifeless body was dragged and left near a crude bunker. Inside sat an officer—Dharam Pal—engaged in prayer. Without interrupting his worship, he ordered that Mashooq’s body be hung from a tree. While he continued to pray, his form seemed to wither like autumn leaves scattered on cold ground. Only God knows what message reached him during his prayer. Moments later, he emerged from the bunker and gave a new order: ‘Wash the boy’s body properly.”

The pulse that keeps the story alive and active is the realization that violence not only buries a victim but also affects the slayer. It is here that the fog turns into a metaphor separating underscored scripts and silenced sighs. The weight of the loss of her son further withered widow Hajra’s health when she stood before the mirror to scan herself and felt that suffering had laid its ruined mattress on her face. Her mental agony results in visions, hearing owl cries, and seeing Mashooq crossing mounts, leading him to his destiny. The story is multi-layered in its treatment: it is about a mother waiting for her son to return, and Mashooq’s grave near the military picket makes him a successor to the martyrs of Karbala.

​The title The Venomous Fog itself is a profound metaphor for the emotional, psychological, and historical reality of the characters. Fog represents the inability to see ahead—an obscured future in which characters cannot determine what comes next. Many of Dada’s characters live in suspended emotional states: Zoona continues waiting at the bus stand night after night; Pushkar Nath lives among memories that cannot return; Khala achieves reverence only posthumously; Akbar loses dignity to power but refuses to surrender identity; Zainab must fight to be heard in a world built to silence her. The fog also signifies a broader historical blur. Kashmir’s political upheavals are not recounted in clear terms but appear through fragments, rumors, destroyed homes, and isolated acts of fear or loss. Trauma has no clear beginning or ending. The stories feel as if they occur in a space where present and past overlap like layers of mist. In this way, the fog is not climatic; it is a psychological condition shaped by grief, uncertainty, and suspended time.

​Bashir Dada’s style draws strong parallels with William Faulkner, who similarly depicted communities trapped in the echoes of their own history. Both writers foreground fragmented time, symbolic objects that anchor emotional meaning, scene-based storytelling, and characters defined by the burden of memory rather than their capacity for change. Faulkner’s famous declaration that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past” applies equally to Dada’s Kashmir, where trauma is not remembered but constantly relived. The symbolic fog that surrounds Dada’s characters is equivalent to the suffocating historical atmosphere that envelops Faulkner’s South.

​In conclusion, The Fog stands as a powerful example of cinematic realism in short fiction. Bashir Dada’s stories bear witness to the emotional consequences of history rather than merely describing its events. His characters are witnesses, not chroniclers, and their lives demonstrate that in Kashmir, narrative resolution is impossible because history itself is unresolved. Through cinematic technique, symbolic imagery, and a compassionate yet unflinching eye, Dada captures a society living inside fog—unable to see the future, held in place by memory, and struggling to survive within the emotional spaces history has left behind.