Gheir Mukammal Si Muhabbat By Shah Khawar Tanha

About this novel

Ghair Mukammal Si Mohabbat (Urdu: غیر مکمل سی محبت) by Shah Khawar Tanha is a long Urdu haveli romance set in Waris Shah’s grand family mansion. It is a house of strict traditions where the women live behind its walls, and a quiet girl named Tooba tends the garden.

The novel opens with Waris Shah’s haveli, built in a beautiful blend of old and new styles and full of life again these days. It is a very big and very beautiful home. On Eid, every festival and especially during Ramzan, all of Waris Shah’s children and their families gather here to celebrate together. But this time something more is planned: for the first time, a kite-flying competition will be held here to celebrate Basant, so the whole haveli has been decorated like a bride. As big as the house is, the writer adds, the hearts of the people living in it are bigger still.

Shah Khawar Tanha then describes the haveli in loving detail: a huge gate covered with flowering vines, tall trees and greenery inside, rows of flowering pots along the paths, ornate wooden doors and windows on every room, and a large garden behind the house with fruit trees and flowers. But the haveli also has strict rules. Its women and girls never go outside the house without reason; for weddings or functions they shop only with their fathers, brothers or husbands; and the older women of the family handle matters like marriages. Girls may only leave for study or illness, and only with a mehram. No outside man is allowed to even look toward the inner haveli, and the boys of the family don’t greet the girls without permission. These rules were made by Waris Shah himself, and no son or grandson dares to break them.

بسنت کی تیاری، حویلی کے سخت اصول، اور باغ میں کھوئی طوبیٰ۔

Then the scene settles on Tooba, in her favourite spot in the garden, wearing a simple green shalwar kameez and white dupatta, watering the plants she has planted herself, so lost in them that she forgets the time – until Sultana Begum’s voice calls her for her grandfather’s tea. Elsewhere, Azhan is fuming because Fariha’s phone has been switched off for ages – and when she finally answers, he demands to know where she has been.

The title – “an incomplete kind of love” – promises a story where tradition and feeling pull in different directions.

You can read Ghair Mukammal Si Mohabbat online here or download the complete PDF for free. More by Shah Khawar Tanha: Ishq Lagan and Tery Pyar Ki Chaon Me, or see all Shah Khawar Tanha novels.