Dharkano Ka Ameen By Ana Ilyas

About this novel

Dharkano Ka Ameen (Urdu: دھڑکنوں کا امین) by Ana Ilyas is a romantic Urdu novel about Yamama, a young lawyer who believes in justice. She thinks her job is to bring insaaf to people, not just to earn fees, and the story opens in a traffic jam with Yamama late for court.

Her friend Faran is driving. When the traffic finally moves, a car cuts in from the wrong side and knocks a motorcyclist off the road. The rider is lucky to survive, but the man in the car gets out and starts shouting that it was the biker’s fault. Yamama, slim and dhaan paan si, steps out and silences everyone. She tells the driver that people like him turn helpless people into luqma-e-ajal (food for death), notes down his number plate, and promises that their next meeting will be at the police station. When he asks if she knows who he is, she answers that she hears threats like his every day in the kachehri.

انصاف صرف پیسہ دے کر ہی نہیں بانٹا جاتا۔

Back in the car she explains why she studied law: to set things right wherever she can. Faran listens and says nothing about his own feelings for her. Yamama has always brushed them aside. She is busy with a case against a man she wants punished this time, and she has collected her proofs.

The second thread is a very different scene. A prisoner van leaves the city under heavy guard, with eight policemen for a single man. Shahenshah has been arrested many times before and has always slipped away, so this time he is being taken straight to the death cell. In handcuffs, he hums to himself as though he were riding to his own baraat, and he winks at the officer staring at him. Then the van starts swerving, another car shoots past, and smoke fills the road.

Ana Ilyas sets up a story of justice, danger and mohabbat, with a heroine who doesn’t back down and a prisoner no jail seems able to hold.

You can read Dharkano Ka Ameen online here or download the complete PDF for free. For more by the same writer, read Rag E Jaan Hai Wo, Teri Yad Ki Aanch and Mohabbat Ki Chaon, or see all Ana Ilyas novels.