Chalo Jane Do By Sumaira Hameed

About this novel

Chalo Jane Do (Urdu: چلو جانے دو, “let it go”) by Sumaira Hameed is a short, warm Urdu novel about cousins spending a snowy winter together in New Murree. They share a family rest house, plenty of teasing and some hard feelings that each of them must learn to let go.

It opens in the big hall of the house, the warmest room, with seven young people crowded round the aatish daan on floor cushions. Muaz has switched off the TV over the girls’ protests, because he wants to enjoy the winter the old-fashioned way. Jarrar says Muaz should take the fireplace with him when he goes; Muaz says, quite seriously, that he may build one in the Karachi house.

برف، آتش دان، کزنز کی گپ شپ، اور سردیوں کی لمبی راتیں۔

Muaz came up a month earlier, after a friend’s stories about green hills under snow, and then called the rest of them. From Lahore came his khala-zad cousins Shamil and Afnan and his mamu-zad cousins Jarrar, Hira and Nimal. From Pindi came Madiha, his youngest aunt’s fifteen-year-old daughter. Muaz, about to turn twenty-six, laughs at how mad they all are; Hira, eighteen, says she’s no less mad than him. The house is the rest house of Muaz’s chacha, and Muaz had to work hard to talk four households round before everyone was allowed to come.

Much of the charm is in the small things: the girls in long coats slipping on the snow on the way to the house and wondering why heroines in films never fall; Jabbar, the house’s full-time servant, laughing at every slip; Madiha refusing to be outdone in an argument. Sumaira Hameed lets the friendships and rivalries settle before the story’s feelings start to show.

At 100 pages it’s an easy one-sitting read, good for a winter evening of your own.

You can read Chalo Jane Do online here or download the complete PDF for free. For another light family story full of nok jhok, try Ajab Bandhan by Huma Waqas, or browse more romantic Urdu novels.