Ajnabi Bandhan By Mahrukh

About this novel

Ajnabi Bandhan (Urdu: اجنبی بندھن) by Mahrukh is an Urdu family romance about a promise made when the heroine was only seven. A dying grandfather’s last wish ties Durr-e-Shahwar to a cousin she has never really known.

The novel opens at dawn in a small house among the hills. Durr-e-Shahwar, Durri to everyone at home, is being dragged out of bed by her Nani for fajr and then for college, while her mother Neelam scolds and Nani spoils her because she is a bin baap ki bachi. Her brother Umar teases them both. It’s a warm, noisy household, and Mahrukh lets you settle into it before telling you how they got there.

Neelam married her class fellow Afnan Malik, son of a jagirdar family, by her own choice. When Durri was five, Afnan fell ill with a lung disease; his father Shehryar Malik took him abroad for treatment, but he didn’t survive. Because Neelam came from a poor home, she never got her place in that haveli, and Rayan Malik’s proud wife Rukhsana made sure of it. In the end Neelam brought both children back to her own parents, where her father Shehzad Khan took them in.

دادا کی آخری خواہش، اور ایک ایسا رشتہ جو بچپن میں طے ہو گیا۔

Shehryar Malik never recovered from losing his son. Before he died he called Rayan Malik and Neelam to him and asked for one last thing: Durri, only seven then, would be promised to Rayan Malik’s elder son Zayan, who was studying abroad, and Umar to Rayan’s daughter Kashaf. Both families gave their word that the rishtay would be honoured after he was gone. That is the ajnabi bandhan of the title: a bond with someone who is almost a stranger.

Meanwhile Durri is just a college girl laughing with her friends Wafa and Rana, with no idea how much that old promise is going to cost her. The story is gentle and family-centred, the kind you read for the characters rather than the twists.

You can read Ajnabi Bandhan online here or download the complete PDF for free. Readers who like this one often look for Ajab Bandhan by Huma Waqas too, or browse more romantic Urdu novels.