Chand Muskurane laga by Mehak Roshan

About this novelette

Chand Muskurane Laga (Urdu: چاند مسکرانے لگا) by Mehak Roshan is a short Urdu Eid story about a girl who comes home to a silent, empty house. It opens with a poem to the moon that she has never quite understood, and by the end of Eid the moon finally smiles.

The story begins with heavy, dragging footsteps. Something about her walk today is strangely broken. She slowly opens the door, which creaks open with an odd sound. Every wall and every object in the house seems covered in a kind of gloom; everything looks deserted, just like her heart. The people she always leaned on are nowhere near – not Mama, not Baba, and not Ahmar. There is no one.

With those same broken steps she reaches the sofa, but instead of sitting on it, she sinks to the floor. A poem keeps echoing in her ears: “Ae chaand, you carry the messages of thousands of people, you meet the heartbeats of thousands of hearts – I have one request too: tell him to come back. Does anyone do this? Does anyone humiliate someone like this in love? Tell him this is my plea, that he should return, because without seeing him, there is no Eid for me.” It was a poem she had never understood – why the moon, of all things? But thinking about it now drains all her strength, and even the short walk to her room feels like a long, hard journey.

اے چاند، اس سے کہنا لوٹ آؤ — تیری دید کے بغیر میری کوئی عید نہیں۔

Then the story steps back to happier days. Mehrab comes home from college and immediately goes looking for her Mama and Baba. “What’s going on?” she asks, finding them sitting together in the lawn. Her mother, Habiba, explains that summer is coming and then Ramzan, so they were thinking of doing some shopping. “Ooohh! So shopping is being planned and nobody even asked me?” Mehrab protests. Her parents laugh – how could they plan anything without their daughter? Later, in her room, a cousin teases her about what their “lovely little cousin” is up to, and she replies, “Doing full justice to my food!”

Mehak Roshan contrasts a cheerful, loved daughter with the heartbroken girl of the opening, leaving readers eager to discover what happened in between.

You can read Chand Muskurane Laga online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Mehak Roshan: Meri Dastan E Muhabbat, Tanha Kisi Jazeery Par and Aitemad Or Moti, or see all Mehak Roshan novels.